The Whitefish Nets We Brought Back

Friday

We lifted Friday morning, starting at five.

I will never forget it. It was a perfect June morning, clear and bright, Madeline Island green as a garden across the water, and the lake that same deep blue it gets in summer.

The first gang came over the lifter heavy. I knew it before I saw the fish, by the way the wheel slowed. And then they came, silver whitefish hanging in the mesh, one after another after another.

Pete whooped. Toivo did not whoop, but he grinned so wide I could see his back teeth.

We picked them as they came. Into the totes, onto the ice. The second gang was as good. The third gang, the one we had mended hole by hole, came up just as full as the others.

The fourth gang, the one with Arne’s float on it, was the best of the lot.

By ten we had nine totes of whitefish on the deck and we were running in. I stood at the wheel and Toivo stood beside me and neither of us said anything at all.

We tied up at the wooden dock in front of the fish house just before eleven. Ingvald came out with his scale cart.

I was still in my yellow bibs and my navy cap, standing at the rail pulling one last stretch of net full of fish over the gunwale into a tote on the dock. Toivo was behind me coiling the line.

That was when I looked up and saw Lyle’s pickup pull into the lot.