Dad and I love to fish. Every Friday, winter and summer, we would drive two hours to the cottage for the weekend. Dad would stop at the small general store before turning onto the road leading to the lake and I would go inside clutching a quarter in my hand. For twenty-five cents I could buy enough penny candy to last me the entire weekend. As I exchanged my warm coin for the paper bag of candy, my eyes would invariably be drawn to the stuffed and lacquered fish hanging on the wooden wall behind the counter. A small brass plaque beneath the fish proudly proclaimed “Speckled Trout, 12lb 5oz, Rainy Lake”. Purported to be the largest trout ever caught in the area, it was the grandfather of all fish.
Saturday morning Dad would be up first to light the woodstovestove while I stayed cocooned under the blankets, savouring the warmth for as long as I could. Outside, Dad would tinker with the snowmobiles until he convinced the engines to cough and sputter to life. On this particular day we packed our fishing gear, lunch, thermoses of warm tea, and my paper bag of candy, and headed out on the snowmobiles to go ice fishing on Rainy Lake. It was our favourite lake for fishing and only accessible in winter. Forty-five minutes of snowmobiling through the wooded hills would see us arrive at the lake, our eyebrows and wisps of hair frosted white with the cold. Dad and I would take turns auguring our way through two or more feet of ice to create several holes and Dad would set up the fishing gear and bait the hooks with half-frozen, sluggish minnows.
It was a cold, miserable winter day and the clouds pressed heavily on us. Despite the cold, Dad and I loved the solitude and silence of those winter days when only the cracking of frozen, wind brushed branches and sometimes the startling boom of cracking ice would disturb the quiet. By late afternoon without having had a single tug on the lines, Dad declared the fish were not in a biting mood and we packed up to leave. I was about to start my snowmobile for the trek home when I looked back for Dad. There he was, lying on his side, flat on the ice, his entire left arm down a hole. He stood up, cold water dripping down his now sodden arm, an incredulous look on his face. As he had pulled up the fishing line he saw a fish was on the hook and just as he pulled it to the surface of the water, it let go and, taking the minnow with it, swam deftly back down the icy tunnel. As futile as it was, Dad had plunged his arm down the hole after it, claiming it was the biggest fish he had ever seen. Bigger certainly than the general store trout and definitely the true grandfather of all fish. The one that got away.