fishing

I was fishing with Gary, of all people, and someone else who I knew at the time but now cannot recall. It was in a small deep pond, an infinitely deep puddle really, and we weren't using fishing line; we were using long strips of reeds that grew along the shore. We were catching catfish. I had one but then my reed ripped; it took the worm with it. 'I'll never be able to get one without a worm,' I thought, but I slowly slipped my reed through the water and I felt it jerk in my hand. I tugged it and then pulled it tightly, and to my surprise out came a fish! Gary caught it and put it in the plastic bucket which sat between us. It looked big at first but when I looked at it again it seemed small. I repeated the process and caught another fish. It flopped around a bit but we managed to get it in the bucket. I did it a third time, struggled a little, then pulled out a big fish (fat, about as long as my forearm) and tried to land it. We tried to put it in the bucket but it flared out its gills and got caught on the lip of the bucket. "That's more like it," said Gary. "That's the size we need. Look how small your first one was." He pulled it out of the bucket and showed it to me. The meat was pink; it had already been descaled, the skin pulled back, and somehow miraculously had been filleted. It was pink and clean like fish in the seafood section of the grocery store, except the head was still intact, unblinking. "Too late to throw it back now though," he said.