kipper's catch

Kipper ties a colorful little lure onto the end of his line, and puts on a few little pieces of fish egg to boot. By the time he’s done fiddling with his fishing pole he’s incredibly confident that today, he will catch a fish big and nice enough to put up his ‘catch of the day’ special menu.

The sun is just beginning to crest over the horizon, the clouds puffing overhead in a soft gradient of blues and pinks and yellows. The water of his favored little lake is beginning to stir with fish as the light draws them out of their nocturnal stillness, hungry for food. 

Kipper rears his fishing pole back and lets it fly, the hook, line, and sinker plopping into the water gracefully, and he makes a pleased brrr. Patient and thoughtful, he stares straight ahead over the water and listens to the chirps of crickets as they make their way to their hidey holes for the day, and the birds begin to sing. 

Kipper brrr-hums idly to himself as he waits for a bite, his tail occasionally swaying on the short wooden pier with a damp noise. 

It takes some time, but eventually there’s a tug. He jerks out of his daydream of a new recipe involving deep fried lotus root filled with minced fish and starts frantically reeling the line in. It’s a bit of a struggle, and he has to strain a bit to keep from getting dragged into the water himself at one point. It takes considerable time and effort, but eventually, he sees the glimmer of twisting scales in the water below the little pier. 

Excited by both the size and pretty flash of the tiger-striped orange fish, he makes the final haul to yank it out of the lake. It slaps onto the pier and starts flopping around, and though the fish is nearly as big as Kipper himself, he makes short work of getting it prepped to use at the diner that day. 

He puts his tackle box away, feeling very proud of himself! At least until it comes time to carry the huge fish and his tackle box and pole back home…. It’s a labor of love, but he does it without complaint.