The Thousand Dollar Fish by Paul Hutchens

Author:Paul Hutchens [Hutchens, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-57567-749-1
Publisher: Moody Publishers
Published: 1998-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

7

Well, you aren’t supposed to yell like a lot of wild men on the warpath when you start catching a lot of fish, because you might scare the fish away. So almost right away we all shushed each other and only made some noise when we caught a fish, which was just about as fast as we could bait our hooks and get our lines into the water again.

We quick anchored right close to where the balloon was, and the other boat carrying the rest of the gang came rowing over as quietly as they could and anchored close by.

Talk about excitement! We’d never had so much fishing fun in our whole lives as we were having right that minute. And then, just like Sugar Creek School getting out and the kids tumbling out the door and all going away from the red brick schoolhouse, our school of walleyes moved on, and we stopped getting bites.

I knew something was going to happen the minute I saw the yellow balloon start moving fast out toward deeper water.

“Look!” Dragonfly, who saw it first, said. “Wally acts like he’s scared. Look at him go!”

Everybody looked. The balloon was bobbing up and down and even diving all the way under. Then it stayed under for a long time before bouncing back up and shooting almost a foot into the air and landing ker-smack on the water again.

But we had enough fish for one day, so Big Jim said, “Let’s go back to camp and get supper,” which was a good idea. We would come back tomorrow.

“What’ll we do with Wally?” Poetry asked.

“He’s been a good friend,” Dragonfly said. “He ought to have some kind of appreciation.”

Then Little Jim piped up good and loud, saying, “Let’s give him his liberty!”

Well, we had enough larger fish, and Wally really deserved some kind of a reward for helping us catch so many fish to take home to Sugar Creek. So we pulled anchor and rowed out toward where Wally was making the balloon fish bob around in such a lively style.

As soon as the boat had eased alongside, I reached down my hand, caught hold of the balloon, and started to haul Wally in toward the boat. But then my line went tight as though it was fastened onto a snag down on the bottom of the lake.

I gave a tug but not too hard, because I didn’t want the line to scale off any scales from Wally’s tail. It is as hard on a fish to lose some of its scales as on a barefoot boy to stub his toe and knock the skin off.

“He’s tangled up on something,” I said and gave another small pull. And then—wham! There was a fierce wild lunge down there somewhere, and I felt a scared feeling race up and down my spine. I knew Wally didn’t have that much strength. Whatever it was felt as big as an excited pig running in our barnyard back at Sugar Creek.

I had hold of the line as well as the balloon, and the line was cutting into my hands.

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