The one that got away

While at home over Thanksgiving break I found a fish. This isn't just an ordinary fish. It's not the scrod that mom was preparing for dinner and it wasn't Kristin’s goldfish. This was my dad's musky. It's about 4 feet long and he's been hanging out in our basement mounted on a plaque for over 20 years.
A few years ago my mom caught a fish. She's caught several since then, but this one was particularly interesting. He was a big fish; almost as big as my dads. Catching him was fun, bringing him in was tiring, and sitting on him so he didn’t thrash around in the boat was difficult. Literally, we had seat cushions on him.
This was the last day of vacation and we had our fill of fish for the trip. He would make a wonderful set of meals. He'd probably last the entire week. However we couldn't take him with us, and we certainly couldn't eat that much over night. The worst part was that we had no camera. Would anyone believe we caught this monster of a fish without the actual proof? Of course we had no cell phone cameras. There was no reception in the middle of the lake, what good were they.
As this 3'+ pike lay gasping in the bottom of the boat, the three of us sat pondering what to do with him. In between wiping fish scales off our brows, and shifting our weight to keep him from thrashing, we came to our conclusion.
To keep him would mean absolute proof. My mom would have a fish mounted on the wall next to my dad, and we would be able to give the fish away to all the neighbors, have our pic taken with him, and a sense of pride.
To throw him back would mean that he'd live and swim about, making more baby pike. We wouldn't waste a fish.


We threw him back. We didn't need the meat; my mom didn't want the plaque. The lake wanted the fish.