How not to catch a fish

Here in Tununak we have a river that weaves through town. I live on one end of town, and where we fish is near the bridge crossing the river on the other side of town. A week ago now I planned on getting a bit of fishing in with some of the other teachers. We were going to eat dinner and then gather our things and make the ten minute walk to the bridge. Midway through dinner we were interrupted by the knocking of children on the kitchen window.

This has come to be a common occurrence for we, the teachers, apparently, are objects of great interest to the local inhabitants under four feet in height. And we, being teachers, all know that if you give a mouse a cookie they will never go away...but, really, how can you ignore the sweet requests of children when all they want is to know what we are doing? And so we cave and we open the window and we begin talking to these miniature humans. And as we do we let slip that we are going down to the river and they quickly ask if they can come and we already know that this question is not really a question but merely a statement and that we will have a small escort of three children. Okay, we think, no big deal.

So we clean up dinner and our escort is awaiting at the front door. Only it has grown to about six children in the short time we were washing dishes. Alright, five fisherpeople and six local experts under four feet. Still not a big deal.

Our journey to the river begins. But as we walk, children with eyes of eagles and ears of owls, notice our journey and our escort becomes an entourage. Not only have they grown in number, but size as well. We have now acquired the junior and senior high. As our number grows, so does the noise, and as the noise builds more and more children are attracted. I believe we have reached critical mass. It's only a matter of time now. By the time we got to the bridge we are approaching thirty. Let me remind you that the entire school only has 120 students. So here we are with nearly a quarter of the school, none of which happened to bring fishing rods. Now some may be already making predictions as to how our fishing trip panned out. Let me mention a few more things to solidify those predictions.

First is that everyone of these children has more experience fishing in a single finger than our entire teacher party had combined. Second is that when someone, anyone, is near water without a fishing rod but with an ample number of pebbles and rocks, they are prone to throwing those pebbles and rocks into the water. And last is that fish are shy, skittish creatures by nature and don't respond well to loud, splash inducing children.

And so our night of fishing turned into a night of casting poorly to the chagrin of laughing natives only to reel in, repeatedly, an empty hook due in part to our inexperience catching fish and helped along being ensured that none of us got lucky and snagged a fish because all of the fish were far away from us after the onslaught of rocks and pebbles. And so we did not catch any fish (unless you count the the measly devilfish), but the weather was great, the moon was full, the sunset over the Bering beautiful, and the children, while unable to bring us any fish, did bring a night of smiles and laughter. Not too bad for a Friday night in Tununak.