When fishing is like winning the Stanley Cup!

I am old enough to remember the last time the Toronto Maple Leafs won the Stanley Cup. I was in high school at Oakwood Collegiate, and my buddies Chris Pascucci and Gordie Lawson and I would run out the door at the end of the school day, hop on the streetcar, get off at the St. Clair station and ride the subway down to Maple Leaf Gardens.

We’d get to the Gardens around 4:30, buy standing room-only tickets—I think they cost $2—and wait until 6 o’clock for the doors to open. At that point, we’d run like greyhounds up to the nosebleed section and stand for the next three or four hours watching the game under Foster Hewitt’s gondola.

When the Leafs won the finals that year, I’ll never forget watching Davy Keon, Dick Duff, Tim Horton and Captain George Armstrong receive the Stanley Cup. Ever since then, as an avid hockey player and fan, I’ve wondered what it must feel like to hoist the Cup up over your head and skate around the rink. And what a feeling it must also be to then return to centre ice and pass the trophy to another teammate—someone you would die for—who then goes through the same ritual, until every player, from the standouts to the bench-warmers, gets the chance to celebrate the success of the team.

I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately because the photo below is an extra special image for me. When my grandson Liam was two or three years old, he’d stand on my knees with his hands on the steering wheel and guide the boat. For several years, we’d all laugh, because he never once sat in the passenger chair. And he’d always say, “Grandpa, I am driving the boat, aren’t I?” And I’d always tell him that he was, indeed.

Over the years, Liam has become, in my humble opinion, the best muskie figure-eighter I’ve ever seen. As many of my muskie-fishing friends will tell you, he is magic with a nine-foot muskie stick in his hands.

Anyway, when he spotted the fish pictured here charging in after his bait, he yelled and immediately went into a figure eight. And I watched in astonishment as a wall of white water engulfed his lure, right at the side of the boat. The muskie was so close I could have leaned over and touched it. It was his biggest fish ever at that point, and if my memory is correct, it was also his first muskie caught on a figure eight.

I snapped a couple of quick images of Liam and his catch, then when he went to release it, I asked him to pass it to me for a pic, knowing we could do it quickly without harming the fish. It was my Stanley Cup moment, skating around Maple Leaf Gardens with the Cup held high above my head. And it remains the most precious image in my photo collection today.

Truth be told, when I leave this earth, Liam is going to that same spot on a bright, sunny, warm, calm, summer day to scatter a few of my ashes on the water. The others, he is going to spread around the deer blind we built together, where he shot his first deer, a buck that still had an apple core in its mouth. It was from an apple I had eaten and tossed into the wind only an hour or so earlier when we walked in.

That muskie moment, in a way, represents my fishing philosophy which I know is very different from some other anglers. When I return to the launch ramp, or meet up with friends, and people ask how the fishing has been, I always reply that we caught 10, 20 or whatever number of walleye, bass, crappies or other species. I never say how many fish I alone caught, or how many fish the others I’m fishing with caught. To me, fishing is like hockey, football or baseball—it’s a team sport. If you need to keep track of your personal daily catch, hey, go for it. It’s none of my business, and nor do I care in the least.

Think about teams on the weigh-in stage at tournaments. I’ve never seen the angler who may have had the hot hand that day holding all of the fish, while his or her partner stood nearby empty-handed. Both anglers always hold a fish in each of their hands, smiling broadly, and no one cares who caught which fish. It is a joyous team effort.

The same goes for weighing or measuring fish. Unless I suspect a bass, walleye, lake trout, northern pike or muskie is an all-time personal best—or record—it doesn’t matter to me how much it weighs, or how long it is. That’s why I’ve only bumped maybe two muskies in the last four or five years. But again, if it’s important to you, go for it, so long as you can do it quickly and without harming the fish.

I have three buddies who, like me, rarely figure eight a muskie under 45 inches. They’re just not what we’re looking to catch, but if it’s important to you, or someone else, why in the world would I rain on your parade or impose my values on you? Figure eight like I showed you in earlier posts here, and I hope you catch it.

So, now you know why this muskie photo, and a few others, are so special to me. After watching my grandson go from standing on my knees with his hands wrapped around the steering wheel, to grabbing a quick pic as we safely let a fish go, I now know what it feels like to skate with the Stanley Cup around the rink. I don’t have a lot of opening days left, so no one is going to take that away from me.

Have a great rest of the season, folks.