I grew up in Kentucky. My family moved to Duluth, Minn. after my sophomore year of high school, and two years ago, my parents and my older brother and his wife moved to Sacramento, Calif. So when people ask me where I'm from, I'm not sure what to say.
It seems silly to say I'm from Kentucky, since none of my immediate family lives there now, and I've lost touch with all my friends in the Bluegrass state. And I lived in Duluth for only two years, and haven't been back there since my parents moved. I hesitate to say I'm from Sacramento, too, since I've spent perhaps six weeks there total, and know next to nothing about the city. I think in part it's been hard for me to feel like I have roots there because my family is still developing theirs. When I visit, their lingering unfamiliarity with the area intensifies my general disorientation.
But that's starting to change. Charley, my brother, caught a fish.
When we lived in Kentucky, my dad and my brother and I fished Lake Elderly. Its real name was Lake Ellerslie, but most of the people who fished it were old men, hence the nickname. One of my earliest fishing memories is when my dad took me there on my seventh birthday.
The boat had slipped down the bank in the previous week's heavy rains. My dad bailed water and found a crawdad the storm had swept into the boat. He took off his baseball cap and kept the crawdad in it while we motored across the lake. After rigging the crawdad under a bobber, he pointed to a fallen tree hanging into the water. I cast, and caught a two-pound catfish before I even knew what was happening. It was my first real fish.
When we moved to Duluth, my dad and I decided to try for the monster rainbow trout that cruised the shore before making their spring spawning run. It was a different style of fishing than we were used to, with hours, days or even weeks between fish. We fished through late February and a bitterly cold March, trying different baits and riggings, all to no avail.
It was late April when I caught one. A 12 pounder. My dad netted it, and the other anglers came over to see the catch. \Ya,"" they said. ""Nice one."" The lake had meaning for us then, a memory to connect with the place.
Fall through late winter in Sacramento is salmon season. They're big fish, running up to 20 pounds in the fall, and even bigger in winter. The rig of choice is a Kwikfish, a six-inch hard plastic lure, with a fresh split sardine wrapped around it. It's only slightly more disgusting than you're imagining.
My dad and I fished some last fall, when I went out for Thanksgiving break, but we didn't really know what we were doing. It was the same feeling as those first outings in Duluth; why the hell do people even try for these fish? The river was swift and muddy, and we had trouble anchoring upstream from the deep holes where salmon school. We went out intending to fish for salmon, but frustration got the better of us, and we started fishing for the more familiar largemouth bass in the sloughs and slackwater.
But now, when I go home for break and we fish together, there'll be a spot on the river that's ours, where my brother fought a 20-lb. salmon for 45 minutes before my dad netted it.
There's a picture on my wall of my dad and brother together in the front yard. My brother's holding the salmon, nearly as long as his leg, and my dad has his arm around Charley's shoulders. They look happy. They look at home.
chunkkicke@yahoo.com.
