Roly-poly fish heads!

Read Time:6 Minute, 22 Second
STRANGE WOMAN:
It is a most elusive fish!
STRANGE MAN:
And it went wherever I did go.
STRANGE WOMAN:
Ooooh, fishy, fishy, fishy fish!
STRANGE MAN:
A-fish, a-fish, a-fish, a-fishy, ooooh.
STRANGE WOMAN:
Ooooh, fishy, fishy, fishy fish!
STRANGE MAN:
That went wherever I did go.
MAN IN AUDIENCE:
Look up his trunk!
MAN IN AUDIENCE:
Yeah, it’s hidden in his trousers!

(From Monty Python’s Meaning of Life, for all you Philistines out there)

The family fishing trip is about to commence.

I will stay home alone, 1) because I don’t have a license; 2) because I have been here with both kids all summer, with enough suffocatingly intense heat that they both eschew the pool to stay  inside, and  3) I am philosophically opposed to killing things for fun.

Now I should clarify- they are doubtless going to be catching and releasing. If, by some miracle I can only see being granted by some lakeshore equivalent of Poseidon*, they should actually catch anything and bring it home to eat, then I will at least not have to clean it.

My 11 year-old daughter would clean it for me, if the men wouldn’t step up to the plate.

She has a long history with fish- starting with our stay at a trout camp.

Take me to the river; drop me in the water

The first trip was to beautiful Roaring River Missouri- a freezing cold aquifer-fed stream stocked with hatchery trout. We only camped there, and footled about in the crawdad holes. As you can no doubt see from the photo, our daughter was a wee bit on the chunky side. She weighed 27 pounds when this picture was taken. While this did make for good crawdad bait, it didn’t help that she wasn’t mobile enough to entertain herself. She had just learned to sit upright, and couldn’t crawl yet, so we had to keep her happy within the limited reach of her stubby arms.

One of her favorite things was a suck ‘n’ squirt pool toy. It was a hideously realistic muskellunge, and she refused to be without it. Other babies clung to their paci, their blanket, their cuddly toys; our little freak of nature clung to a fake squishy fish. She teethed on it, slept with it, and screeched like a cat in blender if she dropped it out of reach.

When it was lost, as all toys thrown carelessly from strollers must inevitably be, it had to be replaced only with other fishlike “squishimals”. She wanted nothing to do with dolls. The closest thing to “cute” that she ever bonded with was a Beanie Baby Seahorse.

You may be thinking this was due to having older brothers, but as the only little girl, she was showered with frilly and pink opportunities to be normal. All of these she rejected. She always knew exactly what she wanted, and would settle for nothing less.

Fish heads, fish heads, roly-poly fish heads

Fish heads, fish heads, eat them  up, yum!

As we got older and my back got worse (what do you expect from lugging little lardball around everywhere? ) we still longed to escape our tiny house by camping amid “River Runs Through It” type scenery.  The only difference was this time we’d spring for a cabin rather than wake up crippled and cramped.  For some reason every trout stream known to man has a bazillion tiny pebbles all vying for the privilege of being the one to nest in the small of your back all night.

But it was important to get away from it all. By “all” I mean the city, not the water. We were “outdoorsy” types, and our house had a tiny yard with a freeway within earshot. The clear water and peacefulness of trout camps appealed to us, with the harmony of nature of camping being more important than sports or fishing.  At least for everyone but my daughter.

Any person who walked by with a fish caught her eye. At the tender age of 3 1/2, she followed a pre-teen boy, who had about 7 trout on a stringer, through the camp to the cleaning station. All the while she pointed at the one fish with some life left in it, saying “I want to eat the wiggly one!”

The boy thoughtfully asked, as he removed its head and tail, which end did she want?

“I want the tail!

He obligingly gave it to her.

Before I could stop her, she put it in her mouth (I removed it immediately, of course).

Then she brandished the trout head, carrying it around like a finger puppet and making it talk.

There she was, a beautiful, chubby-cheeked kewpie doll with silky blonde hair and enormous blue eyes, gory with blood running down her arm and trout ichor on her chin. Look close you can see it in the photo! (Ironically, now that she is older she won’t even try sushi.)

Fortunately, I had the camera, and someday her future prom date will see these pictures. It would just be our luck if  he turned out to be a mouth-breathing, mulleted bohunk who goes noodling on weekends- thus finding this photo enchanting!

Catfish,catfish, swimmin’ upstream; catfish, catfish, where you been?

Grabbed a catfish by its snout; turned that catfish inside out!

Later Krell chartered a fishing boat with a guide, mostly so he would get to fish. Usually all he got to do was bait poles and untangle lines.  If he hired a minion to do this for our daughter ( and for me since I refuse to handle anything other than rubber bait) he may actually get to put a hook in the water himself.

The guide kept two poles baited at all times, pausing only long enough to hand our daughter a freshly baited one. This pole relay lasted a couple of hours, during which she caught over the legal limit of fish for the lake that day. This set an unfortunate precedent, and now her expectations run unusually high.

At the outset of this trip, Krell made the suggestion that perhaps she should try to catch an enormous catfish like the one at the aquarium (a specimen that never fails to induce shudders of horror and disgust in us all). He figured we should keep its head, mount the jaws, and rig up a remote-controlled servo mechanism that would enable it to move and speak- not unlike a skeletal Billy Bob Bass. We were bandying about clever things for it to say-  and our daughter made me proud.

Her suggestion? Phn’glui wha’gnagl f’tagn!                     drawing by our daughter below


Fishing update!

They are back from the trip, and despite my daughter’s prophetic words, neither Cthulhu or Dagon sent any luck their way. They came home and went directly to bed (and right to sleep- perchance to dream of sunken cities with non-Euclidean geometry) in a dejected state.  There is some talk of trying again tomorrow at a lake that is closer to our house- actually within biking distance. I am quite certain that neither Cthulhu or Dagon has any jurisdiction there either.

* Oklahoma has no natural lakes- they are all manufactured and maintained by the corps of engineers. I guess once white settlers established themselves here and realized what a Godforsaken hellhole they were in, some brilliant mind decided to dam the rivers and make an assload of lakes. Fake lakes are better than no lakes at all. And we have more fake lakes than any other state.

About Post Author

Carol Bell

Carol is a graduate of the University of Alabama. Her passion is journalism and it shows. Carol is our unpaid, but very efficient, administrative secretary.
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13 years ago

My, that child has a future as a Cantonese chef! I hear fish-head soup is all the rage there!

Admin
13 years ago

What a marvelous post. You have a beautiful family Mother Hen except maybe for David 🙂

Reply to  Professor Mike
13 years ago

It is disheartening when I actually write a “post from the heart” and it gets fewer comments or views than a review of an artificial scrotum. I wonder if I wrote about a drunken bender or bad LSD trip if it would be more entertaining. Of course, it kind of messes up my ID as the “Motherly type…”

And the little fatty-bred is a spitting image of David. With my personality though.

Reply to  Mother Hen
13 years ago

Comments are not reflective of value. This was one of the best posts ever. So that’s all I gots to say about that 🙂

13 years ago

Nothing like waking up from sleeping in the tent, rolling out of the sleeping bag, looking over at the tent entrance, and suddenly seeing a talking trout head.

Reply to  Krell
13 years ago

ROFLMAO!!!!!!!

13 years ago

When the stars are right, Cthulhu has jurisdiction everywhere! Though I’d wager the fishers have a better chance of hooking a loony politician than anything with scales.

13 years ago

I heard somewhere, don’t quote me on this, that Oklahoma has more shoreline than California. Fun read.

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