My plan was: help Sarah set
up at Tukwila mural,
then ride changing tide up and back in kayak
borrowed from oldtimer neighbor Bob, who also
lent rod and reel for me to try my luck but it
was too late to get up to speed on license,
tackle, and bait so I left it behind. But as
fate decreed, I went home with a fish anyway,
iced down in black plastic garbage bag.
I put in around 3, clamped timelapse camera to
cockpit rim hoping to catch a salmon mid-leap,
based on how high they were breaching. As I
pushed off grassy bank a fisherman joked, "Way
they're jumping one might land in your boat!" I
said I'd been thinking the same thing, even
wrote a story about it a while
back. Hadn't
gotten far, paused to try reviving
inoperative camera BAM! a large scaly mass of
flashing muscular flesh broke the surface with
an aerial pirouette inches from my bow; another
one that got away. I took it easy, no goal, no
hurry, let the last nudge of rising tide carry
me inward a few beats closer to the heart of the
continent, paddling, drifting, sampling
blackberries from an
unpicked riverbank abundance, so forlorn
they were starting to ferment. Fishers were
evenly spaced on the high footbridge and I
paddled softly, skirted their lines by hugging
far left side. The tide went slack and so did I,
locomoted in slow
motion
up past the community center,
where I saw the death
grin of a salmon, ghostly beneath the surface.
After all that
effort to struggle upstream it was now being
gently tugged back to sea, along with me.
The tide had turned.
Bob reckons the drought
dried up some of the salmon home runs, so
they're stuck circling lower river, easy
pickings for raptors, legit fishers, and
poachers alike. Lazily paddling downstream,
re-approaching the
footbridge, again I went left, closer this
time to some lines and I heard a shout from
above as I passed under. I thought I was getting
yelled at, but it was a plea and I turned back
and grabbed his line to try to free a bottom
snag. I pulled myself along it until it pointed
straight down, then worked it in all directions.
Something gave way. "Well, either I just broke
it or it's coming up..." And there it was, a
flashy pink wiggler! "I buy you a beer!""That's
alright," I replied, meaning I didn't ever want
to drink again, but how could he know that? The
fish kept jumping
all around me, more
than ever as twilight
approached. Tried my best to catch them with a
quick shutter finger but the camera was too
slow to freeze them mid-air.
I watched a guy net one into his boat and he
humble-bragged about how tricky it was using underrated
test. When I pulled onto the bank where I'd put in,
the same fisherman was still at it and his
friend Fred offered me a fish. I gladly
accepted. *v*
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