Travel Talk

An Ottawa Fish Story – “Merlin The Muskie”

Greetings,

This fish story from Ottawa took place today and the time was rush hour. Was busy doing things that need not be done online that will surely end in a repetitive stress injury when I had a vision… The vision was of a small pond in downtown Ottawa and it involved a fish twice the length of samurai sword and half as wide as your average lady who wears LuLu Lemon to bikram yoga classes. Vivid visions like such do not occur everyday, when such visions of grandeur strike, one must act…



As it happens the extended family visiting from Boston were running late and decided that if not now, when? Rushed into the car and immediately was stuck in traffic when AC/DC began playing on the radio at a most obnoxious level. It was a run of the mill trip plagued with frustration and anxiety until some lady who I assume was blind and vegetarian made a most egregious turn and narrowly avoided being T-BONED and finely salted by a large white van, the type not allowed within 100M of a public school near you…

After the odd omnivorous incident, pulled into the location. Have fished there before and once had a large pike on the line, regrettably lost it while trying to bring it ashore, probably didn’t need to pull the camera out of my pocket before it was ashore, yes? Suffice to say nothing was biting but something was odd about such said pond, at random times you’d see fish almost jumping as though a monster were near.

Naturally, I placed a large lure with grandiose expectations, nothing was interested. At this point decided to go to “old faithful” which is the worms, moments later a small soon to be regretful sunfish was on the line, while pulling it in slowly a massive swarm of sun fish formed around it trying to pick the remaining worm from the hook.

Then out of nowhere this monster of a fish came right through the entire school of fish and took one out, regrettably not mine. Saw this beast as clear as day. This muskie was massive AND magical, it proves that all visions must be followed as your unconscious may be odd but never wrong. Then began thinking how lucky I was to have this type of world class fishing right at my finger tips. A friend of mine who is an avid angler living in Washington needs to worry about a boating license and so much more. In order to access some world class fishing, they need to venture far from shore, in Ottawa we have it down town!

In all seriousness, have never seen a fresh water fish of that size before and am now convinced that there is a monster muskie of world record proportions living in such said inlet and waiting for a gent like myself known as “Rob” to many, “Mr. Avacado” in Pangani, Tanzania or “Lloyd Lancaster III” in other circles. This muskie has become my Moby Dick and has been named “Merlin the Muskie”, will try and fish there daily until it is mine. That said, no clue how it would get over the fence, part of the reason the Pike was lost.

So you know, the world record muskie was caught in Gananoque, Ontario.

Tips hat,

P.S: RIP Steve Jobs, the world already misses you.

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