Bait

Legends tell of an enormous fish that swallowed a whole fishing boat in one gulp about ten years back. Legends also say that there were almost fifty people on the boat (according to everyone who says they knew someone on it when the fish took it), so there’s a good chance that not all the facts are straight. One thing is for sure; everybody knows the story.

The water was like glass today. Our boat had been sitting for about an hour, I could see down into the swaying weeds. There were plenty of sunnies darting in and out of the strands, and the occasional hunting pike lurking in the shadows. Watching from above felt like seeing a forest from the sky. This must be what eagles feel like.

The fish move slower in the middle of the day, and even though I could see way down to the bottom of the lake, there hadn’t been much activity. Not until now, that is. Something had got into them and they were scattering in every direction. Sometimes the boat’s shadow could do that, but we had been still for long enough that they shouldn’t have minded.

There it was. Racing towards, teeth glittering in the midday sun. It just kept coming up. It had exploded out of the sand in a whirl of silt and dead leaves, the whole lakebed below us seeming to erupt. The boat moved with the rising pressure of the water being driven upwards.

We should have paddled, jumped out, screamed for help—anything—but I was stuck in my set, leaning over the edge of the boat as this yawning mouth pummeled through the water underneath us. The boat raised up and tipped as the beast’s mouth tore through the surface. I fell forward into a mess of enameled knives, water rushing everywhere. We were completely gone by the time the ripples reached the shore.