A Cod Fishing Story

A story told me by Doug, a native Newfoundlander


My brother, Ches, and I were out cod fishing one day.  Lucky was in the boat with us as usual.  She’s good about being around fish but when whales come around she starts barking at them.  She doesn’t like the whales coming too close.  So, this time we was fishing and she starts to growl and her lips go all back on her face like I’d never seen before.  It made me nervous she was not right, was maybe going to come at me and bite.  But just then we looked down in the water and could see a whale coming under the boat.  It was a minke, sliding slow under the boat, just bumped it once.  Where its head came by we could see its eye, looked straight into its eye.  Seemed like it was going to take forever for it to pass under.  We didn’t say a word, couldn’t take a breath until it was passed by.  One little flick of its tail would have spilled us over into the sea.  And then it was gone.  Lucky, she knew it was there before we could see it.  She could feel it, the vibration.  A dog knows a lot we don’t know.