Magic

By Neal Creasy

This was the day I woke up knowing I wasn’t going to catch anything. The unexpected rain all week was not going to help my luck in the river, but I still had to go fishing with my dad. Although I am a big fisherman, whenever my dad doesn’t tell me where we are going, it usually doesn’t end nicely. On the other hand, I knew my dad was happy from the huge smile on his face when he picked me up. I knew that he was hiding something.

As we got to the Staunton River, I didn’t even think we were going to be able to get the boat on the water. It was almost like a windy day at the beach when the tide starts to pick up and bring in waves. After barely loading the boat down the ramp, I saw three abnormally large fishing rods in the bottom of the boat. I asked my dad what those huge salt-water beasts were doing down below, but he only told me to wait. For a second I thought he was crazy because there were no fish in the river that would even have a chance having a go at that rod, but then my father told me about the monster fish that lurk beneath us in this small river. He told me a story about when he hooked a catfish that could have swallowed him whole. This story gave me a special connection to the unknown world at the bottom of the river. This new magical idea that started to make me very curious. All of a sudden, I wasn’t so gloomy after all, but rather very excited and ready to reel in one of those monsters.

            Once an hour had gone by, I felt as if it had been a full day. The hype of my dad’s story had floated on downstream, away from my imagination. I was already getting tired of cutting up shad and chumming the water. I couldn’t get that awful smell out of my mind until I looked back and thought about the stories my dad told me. I knew I couldn’t let the awful bloody fish smell get to my head, so I just kept on imagining that big fish swimming below us in the deeps, ready to strike.

            After four hours had passed, my patience had almost come to an end. I couldn’t believe I had even made it this far without getting seasick. He kept on telling me that the time would come, but then I actually started to believe him. I had quick brain freeze that only let me move my eyes. I was then scanning the water very carefully. Suddenly, I felt this sharp feeling in the back of my mind. I couldn’t tell if it was real or not but I knew something had appeared. I had started to daze off and follow the sound through my detailed imagination until I came back to reality. What I really was hearing was the line of one of the rods being taken out deep into the river by a mysterious beast. I finally got my act together and realized the unique magical connection between the fish and me. The fight had just started to begin. I could see the line dwindling by the second until it was almost on its last strand. I knew at that moment I needed to put my scrawny little muscles to work. After a constant pulling up reeling, pulling up reeling, I got the beast close to the boat. I could see the large shark like dorsal fin rising higher through the water.  At that moment, I had really gotten a taste of my dad’s magical powers.

            In the end, all of my dad’s stories were worth listening to. It was my dad’s words and stories that made this magical experience happen. The fierceness and power of the river got me thinking of what fish could actually survive here. After all of this thinking, I started to get these tingling feelings that led to me hooking a big one. It was the magic that kept me on the water.