I ate everything I ever kept in saltwater, even when I found out that Rainbow Perch was most plentiful around the sewage outlets in San Francisco Bay.

They were plentiful and I was determined to exploit them, never thinking about the estrogen and grey water, and had I known it wouldn’t have mattered – Big City girls thought fish were born in Saran wrap and got the price sticker in adulthood, I was on the outs with the cheerleaders already.

I ate everything I ever kept in freshwater too – except for that Largemouth Bass from Lake Merced. I’d commissioned a couple of ne’er-do-wells to row me around the gray-green water while I flung a monstrous Purple spinnerbait. That snag turned out to be a six pound largemouth, and my youthful delight at confirming the Loch Ness monster of the lower lake tempted me to keep it.

Pop made tracings of the corpse and Ma dutifully cooked it, but nothing could make the jaw move after the first forkful entered. It was if you’d licked the glass of an aquarium …

… completely committed, like one of Ma’s chocolate icing spoons.

Now that the Winnemem Wintu tribal dancers are enroute to New Zealand to apologize to the salmon, in hopes of restoring them to California, a fellow has to look at the carnage and snelled hooks in his wake to see whether apologies are in order.

In a lifetime of fishing I’ve never toed my opponent into the brush, never tossed a stringer full of sunwarmed fish back into the depths, nor mutilated or mangled the vanquished for my amusement or for those with me. I’ve killed plenty, but made it as quick and painless as possible.

One moment of weakness on my sixteenth birthday, where I told Pop I could pass for fifteen for a couple years more, and his ethics made my path plain, “you’re the biggest fishkillingest SOB in the family, and you’ll buy a license like everyone else.”

There is one sodden red check mark near the blank pages yet to be written. I made sport of a Fillet O’ Fish, took it’s name in vain, and sprayed it across Ronald McDonald’s midsection enroute to the trash …

It’s not sport unless you can see your quarry’s eyes – and while I’m sure there are dozens of pairs within that ground, unnaturally pasty flesh, our meeting was chance – and not on the field of battle.

I’ll apologize to it them – when Ronald McDonald apologizes to me.

Tags: Ronald McDonald, Fillet O’ Fish, Winnemem Wintu, apologize to salmon, fishing humor, rainbow perch, San Francisco bay, big city girls, fishing, Saranwrap