In Search of Lost Fish

I spent my summer on a Quebec lake, trying to imagine my first catch into existence.

- Marni Jackson

I don’t normally fish, but for the past two years I have been trying my hand at it on a small lake in Quebec. Around this privately owned body of water are a deep band of forest and only three habitable structures, including the two-room cabin that my husband, Brian, and I rent for a month each summer. I’ve seen local fishermen drop their lines in Lac Catherine and leave with one, two or even three small trout. I knew that, technically, there were fish in the lake—fish that other people caught. So I was happy when a friend of our son, an experienced angler, showed up at our cabin one day. I would learn his secrets, I schemed, and catch a fish at last.

Roberto was in his early 30s, a lifelong fisherman from Brazil, where, he tells me, they sometimes fish with worms called minhocuçu that are three feet long. He arrived at our cabin with his partner, Madeleine, their three-month-old baby, Celeste, and a large, heavy tackle box that appeared to come a very close second to the baby in its significance for Roberto.

That day, the sky was doing its usual fandango, swinging between scowling grey and abrupt sunshine. The weather had been dynamic for days, with great piles of creamy cumulus clouds chased by angry dark thunderclouds. It rained often, and the rains came suddenly, tropically, as if a trap door had opened in the sky. Then the sun would reappear and shine with single-minded intensity. During one calm interlude, Roberto and I took our chances in the canoe.