Nice smile nice fish (how situations used to be resolved)

A colleague at work told this fish story today.

"My Dad and I were out on Lida spearing one winter. Dad had set a gill net about twenty feet from the house to try for tullibee while we speared in the darkhouse. After a while Dad went out to tend the net. Soon he called back to the house for me to come help. There was a large Northern Pike in the gill net. It is not allowed to take game fish in a gill net. By the time we had extricated the fish it was dead. Dad told me to take the fish over to the house and spear it. I knew it was wrong to do this and did not obey. We kept the fish inside the house for a while in case the Game Warden was to stop by. Finally, Dad grabbed the spear and jabbed it into the back to the pike's head.

"Open the door for me so I can throw him outside."

Just as I swung the door open who should appear at the door than none other than Mac McArdle, the Game Warden. Here my Dad was with a dried off fish on the spear.

"Nice fish! You just get him?"
"Yup, just got him."

I sat there scared stiff. Mac was going to nab us.

"When you guys leave the ice, throw that pike back down the hole," Mac said. "Remember, all fish caught in the net, dead or alive are to be returned to the water."
"Yes sir, we'll be sure to do that."

We did."

My colleague is seventy years old. The incident he retold today happened about sixty years ago.

The photo to the left was in this week's Pelican Press. The fish was speared on January 2, 2006. The photo is such a Minnesota Classic. In my eyes it is a timeless portrait. With all the rapid change in our lives is it not refreshing that some things remain...like photos of nice fish in the newspaper held proudly by men in plaid shirts and belt buckles with upside down grins? Gotta love it.