Chapter 12

The next week continued Emily’s learning. Kat taught her how to reload and more on lure making. Mark started teaching her how to weld and had gotten her, her welding helmet when she showed a natural aptitude for welding. That wasn’t surprising, being that she was a surgeon. Emily continued to get stronger through the farm chores. With her eating better and getting a lot more exercise, she started to lose the weight that she gained when she had let herself go. In addition, her ass started to build muscle making it firmer and more round much to Mark’s enjoyment. Their lovemaking continued to get even better as they continued to figure out each other’s buttons. Emily was determined to make the most of this week because she was due to go back to work the next Monday and Kat started back to school.

Friday when Mark got home from work, he hooked up the johnboat. This meant river fishing was on the agenda and Kat quickly figured out where they were as soon as she read the DNR’s fishing report. The Skamania steelhead were running, plus catfish, smallmouth, and walleye were being caught. Mark confirmed Kat’s deduction as soon as he walked through the door.

“One of the guys at work took yesterday off and limited out in an hour,” Mark said. Kat was now really excited. She loved fishing for steelhead especially with her fly rod. Kat was giddy all through dinner and as soon as she was done, she ran out and started trying up some flies that she knew in the past and under similar conditions had done well. As Kat was running out the door Mark called after her:

“Can you tie a few for me please?”

“Yep, sure thing.” Called back Kat over her shoulder.

“I don’t think that I’ve ever seen Kat this excited” stated Emily.

“Yep, every time salmon or steelhead are running that’s about all that’s on her mind.” Chuckled Mark as he did the dishes.

“Have you ever given some thought to getting a dishwasher?”

“Why bother? If you wash them right after you eat then they are easier to clean, and doing them by hand does a better job. Plus, you don’t want to put cast iron pans or handmade knives in a dishwasher and all the knives in this house are handmade by either Kat or me. That’s usually a wintertime thing for us, making knives.

“Oh. Why winter?”

“The forge runs at over 2000 degrees and it’s much more comfortable to forge when it’s below freezing outside.

“That makes sense.”

After Mark got the dishes done, they went out to make sure all the gear was ready to go and all of Emily’s gear was rigged correctly. After they checked that, they went out to the barn to see what all Kat was working on. Emily was still blown away at just how beautiful some of the flies were that Kat had tied. Some of them were works of art. This evening though she was working on simpler flies for not only steelhead but smallmouth bass as well. By nine everyone was tired. They would have an early start in the morning so they all needed their sleep.

The next morning was hectic, to say the least. The farm chores still needed to be done before they could leave and Kat was in a particular hurry. She wanted to make sure that she got as much fishing time as possible for once she started school the amount of time that she would have for fishing went down to almost nothing. By 4:30 AM, the three of them were on their way to the river and by 5:30 they were on the water. Kat and Emily started getting the gear ready to fish as Mark drove to where he knew the steelhead liked to gather. When he anchored, they were downstream of a large dam that completely blocked the steelhead. Almost right away they knew that they would have a busy day when Kat hooked a decent fish on her fly rod. Emily quickly followed suit by throwing a jerk bait. Of course, Emily then had to tease Kat about her fish being bigger. This made Mark smile because he knew that this would get Kat fired up. Mark in the meantime was targeting walleyes. He figured that even targeting walleyes he would catch a steelhead or two. Within two hours Emily had limited out in steelhead and had switched to fishing for catfish. Mark had caught all the fish that he wanted and was just goofing off with random lures. Poor Kat in the meantime was having a bad day. She was stuck on three fish and had been getting hung up constantly. After catching her fourth fish she was ready for a break. Mark pulled up the anchors and they drifted downstream to a stretch that was good for swimming. Both girls stripped down to their bikinis and jumped off. Mark and Kat had both warned Emily to be extra careful about river swimming and to never jump off headfirst. Mark had seen too many people do that and end up paralyzed or dead. While the girls were swimming, Mark stayed on the boat and worked on catching some panfish while keeping an eye on the girls and the position of the boat. In years past some people had been shot in this area by gang members that thought they owned that part of the river. Granted during the day the threat was really low, but Mark never would let up vigilance in this area and he always had his handgun and AR-15 within reach. Another reason for him to stay in the boat was that he could watch Emily better and this was quickly becoming his favorite activity.

The girls ended up swimming for about an hour before they climbed back on the boat and dried off. Mark took the boat to a long stretch of rocks, perfect smallmouth habitat. Kat had her fly rod out and Mark gave Emily a crash course on jig fishing. It didn’t take Emily too long to get the hang of it and between the three of them, they caught and released thirty plus smallmouth bass and a few largemouth bass as well. Kat even caught a small northern pike which wasn’t big enough to keep. Emily got an important lesson here, don’t put anything into the mouth of a pike. Kat used a leather glove to demonstrate and the pike shredded it. Eventually, it was time for lunch, so Mark anchored near to the bank in front of a city park. This allowed everyone to take turns using the restroom while someone else minded the boat and the food cooking on a camp stove the Mark kept in the boat. He kept a camp stove in both boats for this very reason. Today’s lunch was a bit of surf and turf with 8 oz. ribeye steaks and a baked potato smothered in mushrooms and he cleaned one of the smaller steelhead for the surf part. Mark and Emily also had a beer while Kat had to be satisfied with a mountain dew. Mark would let her have a beer when they got home. After their lunch was eaten and they had cleaned up; Emily decided to stretch out on the bottom of the boat and take a nap. Kat and Mark meanwhile continued to fish. After an hour, Mark woke Emily up, just as she had asked. By this time, both Kat and Emily were starting to turn red so the decision was had to head in. The entire time Emily was excited. Not only had she been the only one in the boat to limit out but she had learned several new techniques that also worked well for lakes. On the trip home, it was Kat’s turn to take a nap. She had put a pillow and light blanket in the truck for this very purpose. Mark and Emily talked quietly the entire trip home. They decided that since their wedding was only two months away that they needed to figure everything out and Emily wanted to visit her parents to show Mark and Kat off.

“Well, you might want to call them Emi. After all, you haven’t seen them for how many years?”

“Ya, I probably should. I’ll do that when we get home, I don’t want to wake Kat up.”

After they got home, the boat was put up, and the fish were cleaned; Emily called her parents.

“Hi mom, it’s Emily.”

“Hello dearie, how are you?”

“I’m doing much better now than I was a year ago.”

“And why is that?”

“Well, you’re not going to believe this but I met a wonderful man, truly the best one that I’ve ever met, and we are going to get married on October 20^th.”