Pike on a Stick

Hello and welcome to the first Saturday in September. Today is September 5th and Labor Day weekend. Hurrah!

This week, the younger kids headed back to the classroom, College Kid 3.0 finished up his final exams, and College Kid 2.0 set up his desk to work remotely at his new job as a college graduate. But the real story this week was about fishing.

With his older brother's fishing gear at his disposal, plus a river and fishing buddies right in the neighborhood, fishing has been the Youngest's top priority.

Hello! This is the kid writer-in-training and I was the one who caught the Pike on a stick. 

Well, I didn't actually catch the pike on a stick. I caught it the normal way with a rod and reel. I was using a little blue lure. I caught three fish with that lure. We didn't bring the other two home because they only got the lure slightly in their mouths, making it pretty easy to take it out. We threw those ones back in. However, with the third and final fish that I caught, he gobbled the lure. It was already a couple inches past his gills when we reeled him up. We tried our best to be careful. We did something that my friend calls "burping" - it's where you squeeze the fish, but not too hard, then put it back in the water and it swims away. So, we burped him and put him in the water. He swam for a little bit, then he floated to the top. Then he swam a little bit; then he floated to the top again. Then he stopped moving and he floated right to the bank where we were fishing. We were working on him for thirty minutes straight. But by then the fish was already long gone.

And then I thought to myself, "I caught a pike. The pike is dead. We don't have a net. So I should bring it home and eat it." My parents are always talking about catching fish to eat. 

One of the kids in our little group found a stick on the ground. He picked it up and put it through the gills and out the mouth. (My mom says that I looked like I was carrying an Olympic torch, but with a long, dead fish on the end.)

While we were walking home, my friend said, "Dude. There's like a five percent chance that a bear will come and attack us because we have a fish." And for the rest of the walk over, I was thinking to myself, "Do black bears even like pike?"

When I got home, the door was locked! So I was knocking on the door and ringing the doorbell. And when my mom opened the door, she had a look on her face that said: Absolutely not! But nonetheless, she said, "Do I have to filet it now?" And to that, I said, "Did we already have dinner?" And she said, "Well, no. Not really." So she filleted the pike. She did a really good job on one side, and she completely butchered the other side. We coated it in some breadcrumbs that were "New Orleans" style. We gently put the pike into the pan of hot oil and we cooked it. 

We brought the pike downstairs so everyone could have some. And I gotta admit, river pike tastes really good with breadcrumbs "New Orleans" style.