Salmon and Sea

12" x 36" x 1.5"

Acrylic on Canvas

As a kid growing up on a mountain, my dad did a lot of hiking, hunting, and fishing. But, during the time I knew him, he never did any of those things… except one summer when I was ten. My younger brother and I had been pestering our dad for months, maybe even years, to take us fishing. That July he finally gave in and agreed to take us.

We only had one fishing pole, so my dad made some out of long, slender willow branches. He cut, trimmed, and sanded them, then tied a line and hook onto the narrow end of the rustic poles. Now we were ready to fish.

In the days leading up to this once in a lifetime event (I did go one other time), my brother and I talked about the giant salmon we were going to catch, and how many each other would pull out of the river. We were going to be big fishermen!

One crisp early morning, the big day finally came. We gathered up our fishing gear and picnic lunch and loaded up the family station wagon. The five us piled in, our mother and little sister came too, and headed out of town. We drove up the river about 18 miles and parked the car up the hill from the river’s edge.

My brother and I eagerly put worms on our hooks and dropped our lines into the water. After waiting for what seemed like hours, I got a bite. I pulled it in, and to my dismay, I found a scraggly little sculpin dangling on the end of the line. My dad miscalled it a sunfish; said they were not good eaten and too small anyway. I threw it back. Throughout the morning, my brother and I pulled several of those ugly things out of the river, only to throw them back. No big salmon, no big number, no big fishermen. With our one real fishing pole, our mother caught a nice trout. A consolation prize for an expedition that fell short of great expectations.

I often think about that fishing trip and the salmon we didn’t catch. In some ways, this fish painting brings me solace knowing the big one never really got away, it was just reeled in on a different kind of hook.