Catching a fish tale hook, line and sinker

It’s not uncommon to find 11-year-old Superior resident Jake Lapinski casting his line off of the bridge in Superior on a summer’s day alongside his mother Michelle.

I ran into the Lapinskis the other day at Jackie’s Home Cooking and Jake had the usual grin on his face as he approached me to say hello. Since I saw him the day previous in his usual spot on the bridge casting his line into the Clark Fork River, I asked him if he had any fishing stories to tell.

“Can I sit down for a minute,” Jake said with an even bigger grin on his face as he prepared to tell me a fishing story.

He didn’t tell me when it happened. Didn’t tell me the weather or what sort of bait he was using as he spotted what appeared to be a 15-inch fish in the river and cast his line.

“I let my line out about 400-feet and hooked something,” Jake said. “But it was just a big trash fish so I threw it back.”

Scoping out the water again Jake said he couldn’t believe his eyes as the shadow of something big swam down river.

He cast his line.

Boom. The fish was hooked and the fight was on.

As he told me about landing the fish there was a sparkle in his eyes and a grin on his face.

“It was a 26-inch trout,” Jake said excitedly. “It was just amazing. I couldn’t believe I caught something so big.”

As Jake joined Michelle and his older brother at their booth he told his mom the tale he had just spun for me.

Her grin told the whole story.

Maybe the fish was 26-inches. Maybe it wasn’t. That wasn’t the point.

The point was the story I had just heard. The time I had spent with Jake talking about fishing. About something he obviously loves.

Jake’s story brought me back to my own youth. To summers spent in the Sierra Mountains of California at Silver Lake.

It was during those summers I fell for a girl for the first time, gained an appreciation for the enormity of nature and learned how to fish. Along with learning how to fish came learning how to tell a proper fish story.

….

In the Cousins’ family there is one dedicated fisherman. Someone who needs to be prodded and bugged to leave the side of the lake. Someone who will fish using only a flashlight and whatever stars are out shining.

That elite fish-slayer of my family isn’t a fisherman at all, rather a fisherwoman – my mother Sheryl Cousins.

Evening after evening it was the exact same story. My father would take myself and my siblings back to our rented cabin.

“I’ll be right there,” my mom would say. “Just a couple more casts.”

The sun would set. Dad would cook dinner. We would eat dinner and over the walkie talkies we always brought would come the familiar “just one more cast” from my mother.

When she would finally return to the cabin sometimes she would have a fish or two on her stringer. Most of the time she would return with a story and a good amount of mosquito bites.

The stories were always similar. How right when we left she felt a “big strike” but didn’t hook the fish. So she just had to keep trying and keep trying. Even when it meant using a flashlight to bait her hook.

We would all roll our eyes and a chorus of “yeah, yeah, yeah” echoed through the cabin followed shortly by laughter and my mother trying hard to stick to her story without cracking a smile.

….

I learned quickly from my mother by watching her tell those stories. My brother and sister did too because as soon as we were old enough to strike out on our own either on Rush Creek or Silver Lake we followed her lead.

It was always a big strike on the line and then every now and again the monster fish would come just close enough to shore where you could see it.

“It was about this big,” I would say – hands slowly inching wider and wider and wider.

The laughs and ribbing would soon follow. Sometimes we were able to prove the stories with a stringer full of fish. Other times we just had stories to tell.

….

Summertime in Mineral County is a time to thaw out. A time to hit the rivers and streams and lakes for adventure and recreation with friends and family.

For people like Jake and many others it is also a time to cast a line and hope for the big one.

The grins of fisherman as they tell a story from their day of fishing is often the same whether they have something to show for it or not. If it was easy it wouldn’t be called fishing, it would be called catching but there is a reason for that grin. At the very least you always have a story to tell.