The Dog fish

Stories of our lives enrich the minds of our children. 

One such story was the dog fish. I lived on the coast as a child (Pacific). One memory that is as fresh as the moment it occurred was when a girl of 8 or 9 , I caught a dog fish of the pier at Puget Sound. Got a real good view of that this as I reeled up those many feet from the waters surface up to that dock. Seams to me a crowd came round too. We tossed it back. If your not gonna eat it use care and let the hook out my dad taught me. These creatures are very rare in the ocean. Now there are dog faced puffer fish, that is not what I am speaking of however.

Dash asked what the strangest thing I ever caught out of the ocean was. Well this was it. There is only the one image so far on line of it. This is true not a false image. I really did see one of these amazing fish on the end of my line.

It was on a visit to my 'dad' in Washington state. That whole trip was strange for it was the first time that I had gone to a visitation and did not really know him well. My sister and I rode up on a greyhound bus to visit him. She sat in the back with some strangers and I alone in the center or front. It was a long journey from Utah to Washington. A very scary thing for a kid. She was his biological daughter, my elder siblings tell me of my Inuit paternal. My children there are so many stories untold to you.

God had a way though of making a memorable marvel of nature for me.

 

This is not a picture of the one I caught.

It looked just like this. 

 This is my sister 2 years my elder and I as kids.

 Dash and I have a same mind that wild things best left wild. For food it is good to know how to gain but never for a sport. Life is too precious. I have not fished now a many a year.

I told him of a time when fishing in an upper lake in Woods Canyon Arizona. As I cast line (hook and worm) a German Brown Trout

JUMPED up out of the water 

in plain view of all the fishers standing round the small lake. It Jumped onto my hook. To the applause of all. That was one of the coolest moments of my young adult life. Steve and I were center lake in a rental boat.

Steve always would marvel when he saw me clean a fish. It was second nature to me. Suppose that's why to this day meat prep is no big deal to me. It is a part of sustaining life.

The water ways here are non to supportive of clean life that I might want to partake of. Had some fresh caught cat fish given to me once. The last fish I ever gutted. They would not die. Some thing in me did though for that fight those fish gave for life stopped me from ever fishing again.