The Fish Never Had A Chance By Mike Freeman and Hannah Freeman

 The Fish Never Had A Chance

By Mike Freeman and Hannah Freeman

The ferry bow slaps the crest of each wave as the boat slices through the open water. The dads of our tribe gather around an inside bar to share a drink. Our daughters run excitedly around the deck. We are on our way to our favorite camping trip at Camp Fox on Catalina Island. It is a long weekend adventure of hiking, kayaking, fishing, and roasting marshmallows under the brilliant stars.

Sipping my beer, I listen as the conversation turns to everyone's excitement to bond with their daughters while fishing off the pier. Looking over at the piles of luggage, I noticed, to my dismay, the abundance of fishing poles and tackle boxes. I am far from a fisherman. I have little interest in a sport where winning results in cleaning out fish and entrails.

"We'll be fine, there are plenty of other things to do with Hannah." I think as I bring my glass to my lips again.

We dock and unload our bags in the weathered plywood huts we will call home for the next few days. The other dads in my tribe immediately grab their fishing gear and daughters and head out to the pier that juts out over the water.

I am left standing alone with my daughter. The silence holds for a beat. Then she looks at me with expectant and wide-eyed curiosity and says, "Are we going fishing too?"

"Yes!" I quickly add lib, hiding my panic behind bluster. I scramble to improvise my next move.

"We will start by walking along the seashore," I say to her.

We set out for the pier. My daughter trots excitedly beside me, oblivious to the chaos that is unfolding behind my Adventure Dad veneer.

"Where do I find a fishing pole?" I ask myself as Hannah beams with blithe anticipation. There are no fishing pole stores on this island. What am I going to do?

"Let's walk along the beach and talk about what kind of fish we will catch," I tell Hannah.

I need to buy time and, hopefully, create a miracle. Panic-driven thoughts machine gun their way into my brain. I can distract her by looking for shells. We can spot a porpoise or whale swimming by. A colorful dead fish could wash up on shore.

"Oh dear God, please let something happen." I pray

Hand-in-hand, we walk along the beach looking for something. Anything. After several quiet minutes, the miracle happens! A 7-foot-long bamboo pole lies in the seaweed along the shore. I pick it up and show it to Hannah.

"Here we are! The perfect fishing pole." I say to her with false courage.

I pull out my Swiss Army knife with great flourish and hollow out two small holes at the thinnest end of the bamboo pole. Fishing line will run through the newly created channel.

Hannah is exuberant. We are going fishing!

We march back to the pier. The fishing poles of the other dads and daughters are dangling dolefully over the water. Despondency permeates the pungent ocean air. Mother Nature has failed to produce the anticipated shining memories of a glorious fishing trip. Father-daughter life bonding is low. The fish are not biting. The daughters are getting impatient.

I move from father to father, asking if anyone has some spare fishing line. Glad to be doing something useful, one of the dads clips about 25 feet of line from his spool and hands it to us. Another dad volunteers some weights, and a third chips in with a spare hook. I quickly assemble a Tom Sawyer-esque fishing pole. We are ready. Hannah is the only girl on the pier who is thrilled about fishing.

We are only missing one critical component: bait. We continue to improvise. Hannah remembers the single portion box of Cheerios still in her backpack from breakfast. The professional-grade lures around us have failed to yield results. I am privately skeptical, but we have nothing to lose. I shrug as I slip a Cheerio onto the cheap hook. Hannah throws the line and baited hook over the pier edge while hanging onto the bamboo pole. The other dads give me a quizzical look. I don't care. I am fishing with my daughter now. MacGyver Dad saves the day!

Quiet settles over the dock. There is a growing resignation from the other girls and unwavering enthusiasm from my daughter. She is the only one not utterly shocked when a sharp tug threatens to yank the pole from her grip. She yelps excitedly as I scramble to help her bring the line in. The other dads gape at us in total befuddlement.

Unaware of the gravity of her words, one of the other daughters turns to her father and sweetly says, "Daddy, she caught one."

Her dad's eyes narrow a bit as he continues watching our improbable victory. With Hannah's gracious permission, I grab the fish, unhook it, and throw it back into the ocean. I do not want to clean fish guts this evening, and blessedly, neither does she.

Hannah restrings a Cheerio on the hook, wraps the spare line around her hand, and casts the line back into the water. Silence again settles over the pier. The air pulsates with a tension that was not present a moment before. Whatever happens next, I rest comfortably that I have defended my honor as a father. I have defied all odds to produce the mythical core fishing memory, which is eluding all the better-prepared fathers around us. I see my Dad of the Year trophy in my mind.

"My work here is done. Time for a beer!" I think.

My self-satisfied reverie gets shattered when Hannah lets out another whooping cheer. She has another fish! I do not know who is more shocked by this: me, the other dads, or the fish. She tugs the line up one tiny arm's length at a time. I take in the astonished looks on the faces of all the dads around us. I quickly grab our prize and remove the hook from its lip. Before throwing it back in the ocean, I check and make sure it's not the same fish caught twice. It's not.

"Daddy, she caught another fish!" The same girl says. Her sweetness is starting to sour as Hannah's success proves not to be contagious. The girl's dad's eyes narrow further as he fiddles with his high-end lure.

People inch closer to Hannah as she sends another Cheerio-laden hook into the water. A few minutes pass uneventfully.

"This is enough fishing for me," I think. "We seem to be hogging all the magic of this experience."

I sense the other dads' growing desire to nab a single fish, declare victory, and join me in our cabin for a beer. A fellow father approaches us. His chipper demeanor slumps further into despondency with each forlorn minute. He delicately requests to temporarily trade his brand-new fishing pole for Hannah's bamboo pole. He is straining to present the offer as a favor he's giving us instead of the other way around. Before I can say a word, my daughter hoists her bamboo pole high into the air. Another fish is dangling from the line.

Stunned, exasperated murmurs echo down the pier. I throw our third trophy back into the water almost apologetically. My sense of triumph competes with commiseration for the other dads. They and their daughters are a few feet away from us, inexplicably fishless. So far, the score is Hannah three and the rest of the world zero.

"Daddy, she's catching all the fish!" A growing chorus of girls complains. A few dads lower their heads. I hear some soft cursing under their breath as they try to puzzle out the hidden strategic genius of our driftwood stick and breakfast cereal configuration.

One of the dads comes to me pleading, "I will give you 20 bucks if you let us use the pole until we catch a fish."

Another dad, or hearing the offer, chimes in, "Hell, I'll give you 30 bucks for the pole!"

The auction is on.

My Greedy Dad side starts to emerge. Maybe I can bribe Hannah with a few ice cream cones, get a beer, and still have money left over? The dollar signs in my vision melt away as Hannah looks at me and asks, "Can I please keep fishing?"

"Yes, of course," I quickly say as I bury my Greedy Dad side somewhere in my back pocket. The other dad in my tribe walks back to his daughter, dejected but understanding my position.

Once again, the hook at the end of the magical bamboo fishing pole in my daughter's hand goes into the water. The anticipation ripping through the crowd, fishing around my daughter, is undeniable this time. They are hopeful that proximity to Hannah's golden Cheerio bait will provide them with the honor of catching at least one fish. I am as incredulous as the rest of our audience, as my daughter's luck holds. As the afternoon progresses, Hannah brings in a truly absurd total of seven fish. The rest of the dock does not get as much as a nibble.

The peal of the dinner bell from our campsite reaches us from further inland. A last-minute desperation prompts a resurgence and interest in buying us out of our magic bamboo pole. The bidding war resumes. My Greedy Dad side reappears. Dads are desperate and convinced I have the answer. Hannah settles the deal by saying, "Daddy, I can't wait to go fishing again tomorrow!"

Though I hide it, I am just as disappointed as the throng of dejected dads. We all leave the pier and go to dinner. Afterwards, there is a brief round of Bat-O-Matic. Followed by a campfire featuring scrumptious, chocolate, marshmallow graham cracker sandwiches. The dads converse about Hannah's day fishing as we get ready to sleep in our hut. As we settle in, fathers and daughters alike are a buzz in their bunks rehashing Hannah's implausible success at the pier. A dad asks me where I found the bamboo pole on the beach. I get the sense he would prefer precise coordinates or a very detailed map. He and his daughter want to head out in the early morning and scour the beach for their lucky fishing pole.

As I sit back, I puzzle over the day. What are the odds of this happening? I ask myself this over and over. Whatever they are, calculating them is beyond my ability. I am just grateful for the experience-Greedy Dad be damned!

The next morning, a dad in our tribe announces he is taking some of the girls fishing in a small boat and asks if Hannah wants to come along with her magic fishing pole. I encourage her to go, but I try to manage her expectations of a miracle happening two days in a row.

The small boat drifts out to deeper water as I stand on the beach watching what happens. I am confident that any magic in the pole has now evaporated.

Dad and daughters fishing off the pier take notice of Hannah out in the boat. They hope the fish will now bite on their fishing lines since Hannah is far away.

Hannah lets out a delighted shriek. I can hear it standing on the shore. The other girls in the boat excitedly watch her reel in another fish. Looks of horror flash across the faces of the dad standing along the pier.

"She caught another one!" One of the daughters cries out.

I am starting to enjoy the show.

"This can't be true. How on earth is this happening again?" I think.

Hannah throws her fishing line back into the ocean. Everything quiets down. I sense a commingling spirit of anticipation and dread. The dads and daughter standing on the pier are watching Hannah more than their fishing lines.

"I don't believe it," says one of the dads on the pier.

Hannah is reeling in another fish. Dads and daughters begin abandoning their positions to look for boats to go fishing in. I am enjoying the show more and more. Greedy Dad is still in the back pocket, but Arrogant Dad is making a guest appearance. Feels like the score is Hannah half a kabillion fish to the world's zero. All accomplished using a fishing pole I made!

One of the other girls in the boat lets out an excited yell. She caught a fish! Dads and daughters hope the curse is over. Fish are now available to other human beings.

One daughter on the pier screams with delight as she catches a fish. Her dad is exuberant!

Hannah is belly laughing as she reels in her fourth catch of the day. Another girl on her boat brings in yet another.

"This is turning into a fish slaughter!" I think.

After a while, the fishing activity gradually starts calming down. Maybe the sun is too high, the water is the wrong temperature, or the fish are sleeping.

The lunch bell rings, and everyone comes to shore, ready to eat and move on to another activity besides fishing. We do kayaking, hiking, and relaxing the rest of the day. And so goes the rest of the week. Hannah's fishing pole and all of its magic feats slowly recede from the daily conversation.

We prepare to leave on Sunday. As we gather our bags, I glance at Hannah's pole in the corner of our hut. It will be awkward to carry along with the rest of our gear. Lazy Dad whispers into my ear to leave it behind.

"Daddy, don't forget my fishing pole!" Hannah calls out. Begrudgingly, I pick up the pole and move our gear to the ferry boat. The pole makes it all the way back to our garage. It is stored in a corner and forgotten as lives move on.

A year passes. We are getting ready to return to Catalina for another long weekend. I have almost forgotten about the fishing pole in the corner of the garage for the past 360 days. Hannah has not.

"Daddy, please don't forget the fishing pole," she grins.

I later stand on the beach in Catalina, watching a few dads comb the beach, looking for bamboo poles. They noticed Hannah brought hers. So do their daughters.

"What are the odds of the magic happening again?" I think.

To keep a long story short, it did! But I never clean a fish, and the miracle fishing pole now resides in a ceremonial place of honor, buried in the corner of our garage.