There is a competitive spirit in our house.
Every season my wife Heather and I bicker about the size and amount of fish we will catch.
Heather is usually a few dozen fish up on me by the time the ice comes off, so I pull the “fish per season” card. This usually ends up in a few words and some laughs, and I still lose.
Due to the high number of campers, it had been a few years since we had been to Kusawa Lake. When you show up on a warm weekend it’s easy to see why.
Recently, we arrived with a few families and ended up sharing one site due to the over-full situation.
At 26°C there were few bugs and little wind in the campground. We never need a reason to be on the lake, but that was the best place to be in the scorching heat. There was a slight south breeze rolling through the valley, so we didn’t notice how burnt we were getting.
Since we’ve owned a boat we have never caught a fish on Kusawa Lake. This time was going to change it all.
When we were good to start trolling, I slowed the boat to a crawl, and we dropped our lures hoping for anything. Within minutes I had a bite, and then it was gone. A few seconds later it hit again, setting the hook with a huge jerk of my rod.
Fish on.
When the fish came into sight it was a beautiful two-pound lake trout.
I thought shore lunch would finally be served on Kusawa, but we decided that two-pounder would make for a better midnight snack than a meal.
Nevertheless, we were hungry and headed in to shore to eat.
As soon as dinner was over, Heather was ready to go back on the water – we had proven that there were fish in Kusawa. On our first loop Heather said she thought she had something, she didn’t realize how deep the “deep six” diver actually dove and she hit bottom. Before I could stop to help, the line broke and we lost the lure and the deep six.
We put a new lure on her rod and within a few minutes she thought that she hit bottom again, then a huge pull came, her rod bent like it was going to snap and the fish was on. The fight went on for 15 minutes and Heather was tired-out by the time the fish came into view.
Once she saw it, a new wave of energy came over her and we were able to land it together as I held the net.
We need to get a bigger net because we have never caught a fish this large before. Its head and tail were sticking out of our puny rubber net. The fish weighed in at 15 pounds, only a measly 13 pounds more than mine.
Not only am I way behind in numbers, but I have to find a nice honey hole to pull one in that outweighs hers by enough that the numbers really don’t matter anymore.
