Free Our Love Will Go the Way of the Salmon by Cameron Pierce Page B

waded out to his thighs. After several minutes, the fish tired out and resigned. My father stood in the water, ready to snatch up the bass of a lifetime. But when the fish finally surfaced, it flashed gold. It was a ten pound carp, not a ten pound bass. A beautiful fish, a hell of a fighter, and my first carp, but to a bass lover like my father, that’s the equivalent of catching a ten pound bag of dog shit.
    “It’s just a big ol’ carp,” my father said.
    “Can we mount it?” I said, hopeful.
    “No, son. You can’t mount a carp.”
    I pleaded. Look at the size of it. Look at the golden scales. Do fish get any prettier?
    He’d always had a hard time telling me no, so he made me a deal.
    “We’ll come out this weekend,” he said. “If you catch a bigger one, we’ll take it to the taxidermist.”
    That sounded like a sweet deal to me, so we let my ten pound carp swim free. My father was a little pissed that he’d taken off his pants and waded out into the lake over a carp, but at least he’d avoided taking one home for the wall.
    A couple days later, we returned with my stepbrother and my dad’s friend Harry, a diabetic with the flowing white hair of Gandalf. This time around, we fished with whole kernel sweet corn. We were getting serious about carp.
    My stepbrother caught the first fish of the day. A five pound goldfish. After that, we caught a couple four to six pound carp, but nothing came close to dethroning the fish from the previous trip. Eventually, my dad grew bored of carp fishing and he and Harry wandered along the back shoreline to throw for bass, leaving my stepbrother and me alone in the pursuit of carp. We drank Pepsi and sat there sweating under the hot Central Valley sun. At some point, my pole popped out of the rod holder and smacked against the rocky shore, half in the water and half out. I ran over and started reeling. Something on the other end pulled back, something heavier than I’d ever felt. A minor population of sturgeon existed in Buena Vista Lakes, but I had never caught one, and I didn’t think they ate corn. All I knew was I had something big on.
    I shouted for my father. He and Harry took their time returning, and by the time they arrived, whatever was on the other end of my line had stopped moving. My father took the rod from me and gave it a short, sharp jerk. “You’re snagged up,” he said.
    “It’s a big one,” I said.
    “Naw, it’s just a snag.” He attempted to free the rig from whatever rock or weed he believed it was caught on, and that’s when the fish made its first big run, burning off fifty yards in mere seconds.
    He couldn’t believe it, and for a moment, neither could I. The fish was already halfway to the island in the middle of the lake. My father handed the rod back to me and rushed to clear the other lines to give me room to fight the goliath. A crowd gathered as the battle stretched beyond five minutes, then ten. A younger kid asked if he could net the fish if I landed it. We’d once again failed to bring a net, so we agreed. He ran off to borrow a net from some other fishermen, returning a short time later.
    “Remember you said we’d get it mounted,” I told my father, confident that I was going to land this fish, and that it was bigger than my last.
    “We’ll see,” he said.
    Finally, twenty minutes after the fight began, we got a first look at what was on the other end.
    A thirty-five pound carp, three and a half feet long.
    The fish was netted and brought ashore. My father, my stepbrother, Harry, and I all took pictures with the big carp. I don’t think we caught another fish that day, but it didn’t matter. I’d gotten the fish I came for, the fish I could mount on the wall.
    As we left the lake that day, a man offered me twenty dollars for the fish. He and his wife and three kids were out fishing for their dinner but they’d caught nothing. My father told him sorry, that I insisted on keeping it. “We’re getting it mounted,”