I wonder if they can feel his footsteps above them. I know I can see him when he’s walking down the concrete path to the pier, clutching his fishing pole in one hand and his tackle box of horrors in the other. I just wonder if the rockbass and the perch and the bluegills and the stray bass knows his footsteps from the others. He visits the pier often, with his pole and his hooks and his tangled glob of nightcrawlers, and he’s painfully effective in his pursuit. He’ll lower his wormy bait into the waters, near a ladder or next to a crib, and a fish will eat his offering. The boy will scream with delight, summoning his friends to come watch, and then he’ll reel the fish to the surface and I swear you can see the eyes of the caught fish bulge just a little more when they catch a glimpse of his crooked smile on the pier.
He’ll tease the fish some, raising it from the water once or twice and then lowering it again, before hoisting it onto the pier. The fish will flop some, dancing as best it can to find the end of the pier, but it wouldn’t matter anyway. That hook is lodged deep inside its stomach, or at least so far in as to be caught up in the flesh that signals the end of the mouth and the start of where we presume the stomach to be. There is no escaping that hook, and there is also no escaping what comes next. The boy will scrounge around in his tackle box, pushing aside packs of hooks and big red and white bobbers, until his hand finds what he was looking for- his pliers.
Pliers in hand, fish flopping on the pier nearly dead from the suffocation of it all anyway, the boy will set to rooting around in the small fishes mouth with those big rusty pliers, pushing and prodding and digging in hopes of somehow dislodging the hook. The fish will be held, his or her mouth agape for seconds or minutes, and if the boy is unable to extract the precious hook, along with hunks of interior flesh, then the boy’s grandmother or grandfather will be called over to help. The fish will be lowered into the water for a dunk, and then raised again to be grappled with by another, older set of hands. The pliers will be pushed in, past the teeth and past the tongue, into the flesh and onto the hook. The eye will be twisted until it, and its barb, are free, and then the fish will be tossed back into the water where it will float until a seagull picks it up or until it sinks to the bottom where the crayfish will do some dissecting of their own.
One weekend ago, I watched as a gaggle of youth huddled around a rockbass who had fallen for the old hook and nightcrawler offering. Unable to witness the tragedy that was to unfold, I hustled over to teach the boys a valuable lesson. I asked to have the fish, with the hook firmly embedded in its stomach, and I unceremoniously snipped the line with my teeth and threw the fish back to the water. The boys acted as if I have just slapped each one of them and then kicked their puppy. I told them that there was never any reason to disembowel a fish in hopes of freeing a hook. I told them that the life of a fish, just like all life, is incredibly valuable. I told them that a fish with its insides torn apart is not a fish that can live, even if it swims off for a brief moment before succumbing to its injuries. More over, I told them that hooks are cheap and that knots are easy to tie. I told them that if we’re going to kill a fish that means we’re going to eat it. And then I walked away.
I realized at the moment that I should not have been telling this just to the children on the pier, but to their parents and grandparents. To the ones that buy the fishing equipment and enable the needless slaughter. The most expensive hooks on Gander Mountain’s website cost $2.99 for 6, and as one to never expect financial sacrifice from others for my benefit, I’m happy to offer replacement hooks to anyone who needs them. Teaching kids to appreciate life in every form and stage is an important lesson, and if we all remember to cut the line very near the mouth of any fish that has been deeply hooked, we just might save a few fish in the process.