Minnie’s likely to tell you one of my favourite things to do in the whole world is to go fishin’. And that would be completely true – goin’ fishin’ is right up near the top of my list. But see, the thing is, Minnie thinks my favourite part of goin’ fishin’ is the fishin’, when really my favourite part of goin’ fishin’ is the goin’.
And if you ask Minnie, she’d probably say I’m a pretty good fisherman. She’d tell ya 
every time I go out with Timmy and Tommy and Cyril I come back with two or three or even half a dozen fish. And that would also be completely true – I always come back with fish. But see, the thing is, Minnie thinks I’m the fella that catches them fish, when really I’m just the fella that brings ‘em home.
Now on a typical fishin’ trip, Me and Cyril drive out to Tommy’s cabin out in the middle of nowhere, and Timmy and Tommy are already there. Now, Tommy’s real, real serious about fishin’ and he got all the gear and all the lures and rods and lines and cripes knows what else all in these big tackle boxes. And he’s so serious about it, he got different tackle boxes that he’ll take with him dependin’ on the kind of fish he wants to try to catch.
So anyways, it wasn’t too long before the rest of us realized that as long as we each took along a bit more beer for Tommy, he’d give us each two or three of the fish he caught while we were there and we could take them home to the wife and say look what we done. That way, see, Minnie and the other wives would think to themselves, These fellas must be serious about fishin’ since they come home with fish every time.
After we got that worked amongst ourselves, me and Cyril would get out to the cabin, and we’d reach over the rods and boxes and rubber boots and stuff we brought to go “fishin’” and the only thing we’d take out of the truck at all would be the cooler with all the beer in it. There’s some fishin’ trips where the four of us would sit in the cabin and play about a hundred hands of tarabish, workin’ our way through the two-fours and wake up Sunday morning and have to send Tommy off for an hour or two to catch us some fish so we didn’t get into trouble with the wives when we got back home.
Anyways, you probably remember my cousin Brad married Minnie’s sister Betty I told yis about a while back (he’s the great big fella that looks like a walrus, and she’s the gangly one that looks like a giraffe, god love them). Anyways, Brad and his sister Mary are right big on fishin’ and sometimes I’d go out with them. Because, to tell ya the truth, while the fishin’ trips with the guys are just excuses to drink, I actually do like the fishin’ part of it too – gettin’ out on the water, castin’ the line, the peace and quiet of it all.
Now, Mary, like I think I told yis before, is a real sturdy woman. She’s a little taller than I am and built like a good two-way defenseman. And that’s not even a dig at the fact that she’s lived with her girlfriend for about twenty years or so. She’s got a big laugh and a big heart and she’s a helluva fisherman.
So we run into Mary downtown the other day and after a few hellos, her and Minnie have it all set that we’re all goin’ fishin’ this weekend. Now if you’d asked me whether Minnie would ever be remotely interested in goin’ fishin’, I would have said not a chance. But of course, she jumped at it and now I gotta deal with that.
Great, Mary says. Me and Brad and Betty will pick yis up in my mini-van!
I know there’s no way in hell I’m gonna catch any fish this weekend, and if Minnie sees I can’t fish she’s gonna want to know what I do on all these fishin’ trips. So I decided what to do. I went to the grocery store last night and got a package of frozen fish – you know how you see two or three of them lined up with the heads and tails and everything still on? Well I got them thawin’ out in the baby barn, and I figure what I’ll do is, I’ll hook one of them onto my line before I put it in the water and then I’ll pretend to catch it.
Minnie will be some impressed, as long as Mary don’t look too close and see that the fish I caught somehow came out of the water already gutted. Wish me luck!
John McNeil 