I had received a strict fishing ban from my wife, no more graylings! The beginning of summer had been very favorable for me. Almost every day, I had brought home one or two graylings for eating. I had smoked the graylings I caught with a gentle alder smoke, and some other graylings I had fried in plenty of butter and onions, with a splash of cream on top. I had even flambéed fish with rum, a bit of onion, white pepper, and salt. The flambéed grayling is served with mashed potatoes. Cured grayling with cranberry-cognac syrup was also delicious, but too much is too much, and now I had been sentenced to a fishing ban. That day I sulked and decided to test the waters by asking if my wife's imposed fishing ban had ended. My lovely partner promised to let me go fly fishing if I didn't bring back grayling, but she would be happy with whitefish.
Sitting down on a chair by the sauna shore, I tied a new Winnie the Pooh fly to the end of the leader. As I sat there, the liveliness of the fish and the constant splashing tickled my nerves. Mayflies were everywhere, crawling on my shirt, flying up and down in swarms, the river practically bubbled with fish feeding on mayflies. I walked to the shore with my fishing rod and settled into the fishing chair that I had brought down to the water's edge earlier in the summer. It was a lazy man's paradise, sitting comfortably in the chair and casting the fly above where a fish had made a rise.
Maybe it was the third or fourth cast when a splash on the water's surface indicated the fish had taken the fly I presented. I lifted the rod, simultaneously securing the line with my left hand, hoping the fish would stay on. The weighty sensation in the rod confirmed the fish was hooked, and after the initial frantic runs, the fish's movements calmed. The fish's movements were slow and deliberate, at the end of the line was a big fish, but what kind? After a brief pause near the bottom, the fish rose to the surface, leaping and revealing its flank.
A whitefish, a big whitefish! Now I had all the time in the world to tire the fish by keeping the line taut but not too tight, as whitefish have delicate mouths and the hook easily comes loose. Time passed, and the fish tired, it was time to net it. I took the landing net and slid it towards the trout's tail as it kicked one last time and came off the hook. I scooped up where I imagined the fish to be, and when the fishing gods are kind, they are truly kind. Drifting downstream into the net was the whitefish, which turned out to be quite the chunk: 2120g.
My wife possesses incredible supernatural abilities!
