The Lunker

Sweney gave us a good push off from the dock and we moved forward into Long Pond. Sweney, now retired, used to be one of the best teachers at Colby, a scholar of Melville. My boy Zach was in the bow. He’s a scholar of pizza.

I was at the helm. It was a perfect summer morning in Maine, and we were off to do a little fishing.

We had a thermos of coffee, some sunscreen, a dozen suckers in a mayonaisse jar, and a very large net. I had a big floppy hat. Sweney and Zach had well worn tackle boxes, filled with things like snelled hooks and plastic frogs and “Dr. Juice’s Fish Pheromones.”

We had all that we would ever need.

We headed south, passed below the Castle Island bridge. For ten minutes or so, the three of us just looked at the horizon, at the Kennebec Highlands, covered with white pines, at the early morning sun reflecting off the water.

At last we eased our way into Frenchman’s Cove, what some people call “The Graveyard,” since the large number of rocks provides plenty of opportunities to send your propeller to the afterworld. But we managed to avoid these, and soon enough the engine was cut and we drifted in total silence through the tannic water.

Zach managed to get a sucker on his hook without any adult supervision, which struck me as a mark of progress. I was concerned about Zach’s lack of patience, a fairly typical personality trait for a middle schooler, but not of much help in fishing.

He’d announced last summer that he no longer had any interest in bluegills or perch—that these were the pursuits of men much younger than his twelve year old self-- and that from here on out it was bass, or pike, or nothing.

Sweney sat at the other end of the boat, casting out with his never ending trove of ridiculous lures, his hulapoppers and smelly jellies and rapalas. He doesn’t talk much when we fish, which suits me fine. I know what he’s thinking. Every once in a while, as he’s changing lures, Sweney will look around at the sparkling water and say something like, “This is pretty good.”

And I agree.

Zach stood up in the bow and threw out his first cast. Line unspooled from the baler and for a while my boy stood there watching the water, with an expression not so unlike that of John Sweney.

And then it happened. The end of his line bowed, and I thought, oh what a shame, he’s snagged his line on the very first cast.

But it wasn’t a snag. It was a sixteen inch largemouth, nearly three pounds, and it leaped out of the water with a sound, in that quiet early morning, that seemed like the crashing of cymbals.

Zach fought with it for a while, and then got it near enough the boat for me to reach in with that ridiculous, giant net, and haul it out.

The beautiful fish wriggled there in the morning light. We could see the red feathering of the gills, the mottled green scales, the fins moving wildly.

And my son looked at me with amazement and pride.”I caught it,” he said. “A monster.”

Sweney nodded and said, “That’s a good one.”

When we got back to the dock, nearly three hours later, Sweney had caught, and released, a half a dozen nice bass. It was the day before my birthday, and I couldn’t imagine a greater gift than being out there with my good friend and my son, the sun on our faces.

Zach looked out at the water, an expression of pride on his face, and for a moment I had a vision of him fishing this same lake, many years from now, after I’m long gone. Maybe he’ll watch some day as his own son--or grandson--casts out his line.

As for me, I hadn’t caught a thing, which was fine. I’m not really in it for the fish.