Crappie Fishing

It was a big day. The kid, ten years old, was going crappie fishing with his grandfather and uncle. His grandmother had woken him up early to biscuits and gravy for breakfast, his favorite. It was still dark outside. While the men sat with their coffee, his grandmother made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and packed them into bags with Wise potato chips and fried apple pies. Any day with fried apple pies was a good day.

They hooked the Ford up to the boat trailer and drove to the lake, the boy in the middle, on the bench seat. Got to the boat ramp as the sun was turning the dark sky to light grey. When the boat started it smelled like Castrol and gasoline, just like the dirt bikes he lusted for. Soon enough…

The men dropped him off on a sandbar with his fishing tackle, some crickets for bait, and his lunch in a brown paper bag. Then they headed off around the bend, out of sight. He rigged up his rod and looked out across the green water. The lake was so wide here you could almost see the curve of the earth.

Almost immediately, and unexpectedly, he hooked a large crappie. It took him three or four minutes to get it to the sand, where he gently unhooked it and admired its beauty. All silvery and sleek, the morning sun reflected off its scales. He put it on the stringer and cast again. And immediately caught another, reeling it in slowly to avoid tearing their delicate mouths, playing it closer and closer to the graveled sand, tiring it out enough to land.

And this went on. He had never had fishing like this. It was the perfect storm of schools of Spring crappie swimming the channel, right off his sandbar. By lunch, he had twenty shimmering crappies on the stringer and was excited enough to about burst wide open. He sat down on a pine log and ate his lunch, savoring the day, and his silver treasure, finning in the current.

After a while, he heard a boat in the distance, and when it came around the point he could see his grandfather and uncle. Before they had even nudged the boat onto the sandbar his skinny arms had the stringer held high for them to see. His grandfather’s face lit up like a Christmas tree. The boy had never been so proud in his life. He had twenty-six beautiful crappies, and the adults had caught….none. Nobody could stop smiling.

That afternoon his grandmother cleaned the fish on her big metal table by the barn, neatly fileting enough for dinner. The rest went into the chest freezer in the basement. Battered in seasoned cornmeal and fried up with hush puppies, mashed potatoes, and okra, it was a meal for a king. And that’s the way everyone treated him, the fisherman crappie king. When he thought he couldn’t eat another bite, a bowl of chocolate ice cream appeared. Heaven.

The kid did a lot more fishing as he grew older. Caught bigger fish. Even caught more fish. But he never had a better day on the water. That was a special day, fishing alone on a spit of sand in the middle of the wide lake. And then sharing it with his grandparents. And though he didn’t really understand it then, the fabulous meal together around the dinner table. A day in the life, about as good as they come.