Bear N Mom - "I Got Fish!"

As we got comfortable in our surroundings at the Lake, actually never referred to as Canadohta Lake just the Lake, the children started to run around our little area of the world to their hearts content. They were always within hearing distance of my call and I mostly had an eye on them at all times.

The oldest boy loved to fish and would go happily down to the dock with his string and hook to sit and wait for some unsuspecting fish to grab on and he would haul it in. This boy had patience and would spend hours on the dock just idly waiting to bring in a fish.

This was the first year after we had bought the cottage and it was still in need of repairs. My first husband and I would spend the weekends working on what needed to be done to make our little piece of heaven fit to be lived in.

With that said, we had four children, three boys and a girl. You have already heard about Bobby who disappeared on our first day at the lake with me alone with the children. Dave, the middle boy did not have the patience of Billy our oldest and the fishing enthusiast. Dave would follow Billy to the dock day after day and come home forlorn at being too young to fish. Until one weekend, my husband in his infinite unthinking, bought Dave his very own string with a hook on the end.

So off to the dock rushed a very excited little boy with his very own fishing string to conquer the lake and its abundance of fish. Now to give you a background on this lake, it was well stocked with big mouth and small mouth bass, not to mention the Northern Pike and Wall-eye. These were by no means fish you would want a five year old tangling with.

As it turned out a very excited five year old came bounding up the the road, screaming at the top of his lungs. "I GOT FISH, I GOT FISH!!!" Low and behold, there clutched in his little hand was a very live catfish wiggling to beat the band trying to get away.

Dave had not caught anything on his little string and became impatient so the story goes. He reached down in the water saying, "I get fish," and came up with this catfish. God protects his children and to this day, I can't figure out how Dave got that fish without getting stung by the fish with the barbels (similar to cat whiskers) around it's mouth. That little boy picked it out of the water perfectly without being in reach of the whiskers.

It was still alive so we set it free in a drainage ditch behind one of our neighbors cottages that ran back into the lake to be caught another day.