Getting “Skunked”
Posted on July 2, 2015 by bob in OffTheBeatenPath
“Whoop!,” he said, jerking his arm up swiftly, driving the crankbait’s pair of treble hooks home. “There he is!”
Even on ultralight tackle the fish was boat side in moments. They rarely fished the pond anymore, and the growing pile of small bass flopping in the bottom of the cooler proved it.
“I wish we got down here more,” he said, dropping another 10-incher into the Igloo. “It’s the only way we’ll ever get any size on these bass.”
His father grunted an “uh-huh” in agreement, felt a light tap on his rod, but was unsure of its origin. When the line 
began moving slowly away he set the hook in one smooth motion. In short order he silently added another bass to the cooler.
“You okay, Pop?” his son asked, casting to the edge of the lily pads. “You been pretty quiet.”
Fishing had always been “their thing” and it all started in that very pond. From the boy’s first bream on a Snoopy pole, through those tough teenage years when they fished every weekend, they always came back to fishing, together, even when things were difficult, like the first time he went out for high school baseball but didn’t make the cut.
His mother had asked about tryouts when she picked him up from school, but he didn’t answer, didn’t want to talk about it. He stood waiting in the kitchen for his father when he arrived home from work.
“Dad, we’re going fishing,” he said directly.
His father started to object but noted the serious look on his son’s face. He glanced at his wife, who silently nodded to her husband in support. Pride – even a young man’s – is interwoven with his identity. He put down his briefcase and loosened his tie.
“I’ll get my rods ready,” he said.
Neither said a word during the hour’s ride to the pond. The boy was holding back, but perhaps the fish could coax it out of him, his father thought. A couple of bass into the evening it finally came out.
“I didn’t make the team,” he said, aimlessly dipping his rod tip in the water.
His father looked down at the ripples on the surface, then back at his son, considering the best response. What followed was a lesson neither would forget over the intervening years, about what happens after you don’t catch any fish – after you get “skunked” – and the importance of not giving up.
“Hey, Pop. Are you okay?”
He was still reminiscing on that decades-old conversation, how he’d bass fished in a suit that day, when the sound of his son’s voice brought him back to the present.
“We need to fill this cooler before dark,” his son said, casting to a fallen tree.
Before he could answer his son, he heard the doctor’s words, the ones he had yet to share with anyone. The three feet separating him from his favorite fishing partner might as well have been a thousand miles. His mouth was chalky and the words stalled.
“I um, they um,” he stammered, the lump in his throat growing. “I’m done for today,” he said abruptly, laying down his rod.
After a few moments, he mustered his strength. His son had always appreciated straight talk.
“The tests showed the road’s gonna be a little longer than I thought,” he said.
Everything stopped — the chorus of cicadas, the frogs, the light breeze stirring the trees. Even the cows drinking at pond’s edge stopped and looked up. Had a bare hook been dropped, the echo would’ve been heard for miles.
His son swallowed hard. While his father detailed the options and favorable prognosis, the boy’s thoughts drifted. Over the years, time spent fishing with his father had provided countless opportunities for life’s lessons. He looked at his dad and narrowed his eyes.
“You once told me that what mattered was what I did after I got skunked,” he said. “Dad, you just got skunked.”
Remembering the conversation from years ago, but still struggling for direction, his father responded.
“I just don’t know what comes next,” he said.
A bass broke the surface near the boat, chasing a school of bait, the ripples expanding out over the surface of the waters.
“You can start,” his son said flatly, “by picking up that rod.”
Niko Corley spends his free time on the water or in the woods, and earned his charter boat license in 2012. He can be contacted at cootfootoutfitters@gmail.com.
