Assisi: An Online Journal of Arts & Letters Volume 4, Issues 1 & 2 | Page 47

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Then his brain shut off and he wasn’t thinking of anything. His mind had
been blank for a minute or two when he noticed the tip of his rod bending and
straightening, bending and straightening. Heart pounding, he grabbed for it and
set his hand on the handle of the reel. It was the ultimate thrill, knowing that
something mysterious was on the other end of your line, it was miraculous even,
like stumbling on a hidden treasure.
He’d been taught as well by his old man to yank sharply on the line when
you think you’ve got a bite, but not too hard, in order to set the hook. The
objective was to make sure that the fish didn’t escape, but not pull so hard that
you ripped the hook out of its soft mouth.
But he didn’t have to do anything now. Whatever it was down there in the
depths tugged back, fighting for its life. Mack reeled and jerked, reeled and
jerked, until he maneuvered the flailing creature onto the grass.
He knew exactly what it was from the photos he’d seen in the outdoors
magazines: a rainbow trout, one stunningly beautiful fish. The crimson streak
slashed across the center of its body was the giveaway, and besides, he’d never
caught a fish like it before. There was nothing else it could be except for a
rainbow.
Mack swelled with pride while the magnificent animal flopped around on
the grass. It needed desperately to find its way back into the water, but it
couldn’t. Mack felt a pang of guilt that the trout’s life was in his hands. It was
helpless, and he had no desire to inflict more pain and torture. But fish were
caught for a reason, weren’t they? Weren’t they to be kept after you’d gone
through all the trouble to capture them? He’d never heard of anyone tossing a
trout back into the water, even if it was as small as this one. At five or six inches
long, it might even be too small to keep.
What he would do, he decided, was take the fish home, show it to his folks.
They couldn’t help but be impressed. Maybe it would even get them talking again.
Or maybe they would do something with it -– like cook it. Trout were for eating,
that much he knew. On the other hand, in the past he’d offered them other

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