First Fish

“Dang it, missed another one,” I said to myself, “Oh well, there are always more fish to catch.” “Meghan, set the hook, how many times do I have to tell you?” my dad asked. I replied with a shrug of the shoulders and cast my line back into the river.

It was the Fourth of July and I was on the peaceful St. Joe River near the Idaho-Montana border. It was a cloudy, rainy day, but I didn’t care. I was having the time of my life. I had good company and fish were biting my fly nonstop. The only problem was, I either wasn’t setting the hook or I was high-banking the fish.

If my dad wasn’t harassing me about doing something wrong it was my cousin, Becca, pestering me, saying things like, “Come on Meghan can’t you catch at least one fish? Jeez.”

They started to get on my nerves, but I would just shrug it off with some type of snide comment, and I kept my mind on my goal, to catch a single fish.

I cast my line, keeping my rhythm, 10 o’clock and 2, the line placed perfectly into the current, watching the fly float down the river. Then, plop, the fly had disappeared.

With a quick reaction, I jerked my rod just a little bit, and there on the end of the line was a tug. I screamed with joy: I had set the hook. I lifted my rod just a little and started reeling in slowly.

Every now and then I was getting instructions from my dad: “Reel in slower … Keep your rod tip up … Let the fish get tired …”

All of the things my dad said and my Aunt Dee cheering in the background were going through my mind, but I was trying to concentrate on not losing the fish.

As I was reeling in, the fish got closer and I saw its magnificent colors glimmering in the water. I had my dad in the corner of my eye, with this huge grin on his face, and I was psyched.

It got closer and closer to me. I reached into the water to get my hands wet and grabbed the fish and lifted it above the boat. The fish’s scales felt smooth and cold. I saw in my hands an animal so much smaller than me, but yet so cool.

When I was trying to take out the hook, I started feeling bad pulling it out of the fish’s mouth, but my dad assured me the fish would be fine.

Before I could let it go I had to do something. I had to kiss it. I remembered I had promised my brother that one day, I would kiss a fish, and this felt like the perfect moment. So I did, and it fell really strange.

With one more grin I released the fish and said, “Thank you fish, go forth and multiply,” words my dad had said so many times in his life.

I watched it swim away and I never saw it again.

I looked at my dad and my cousin and I just grinned. I was truly happy at that moment and couldn’t wait until I caught my next fish.

I cast my line back into the water again, but then I couldn’t wait to get back to the campsite and tell everybody that I had set the hook, landed, caught, kissed and released my first fish on a fly rod all by myself.