Forum: The day’s catch from the dock for a grandson and buddies
Published 1:30 am Saturday, February 28, 2026
By Tim White / Herald Forum
I took my grandson and a handful of his buddies down to his favorite fishing spot the other morning.
Winter fishing. Cold, bright, honest. We were after squid, though none of us truly wanted to catch one. We’d heard they might bite our noses. Still, we treasured the pier, watching life around us move fast and loud while the water at our feet did neither.
The crowd on the seagull-stained dock didn’t know each other and didn’t need to. Something was going on here; deeper than sentiment. We were bound by salt air, lazy casts and a few honest minutes lived at the water’s speed. Everyone was following the old rules. No bananas. Not anywhere near the dock. And everyone wore a fishing hat; going bareheaded just makes the water nervous. These things matter. The sea notices.
The sun was sharp. The air clean enough to sting. While the boys laughed and tangled lines, river otters worked the water near the dock: slick heads, whiskered grins, quick dives, play stitched into their very bones. They live here. Everyone knows that. Normal, you might say. But nothing feels ordinary to a grandfather who has loved the outdoors, wildlife and knocking about his entire life.
My grandson answers to “Ottie.” He earned that nickname a few years ago. He moves like those otters: fearless, curious, all joy and motion. His buddies were no different. At that age, boys wrestle their way into laughter, giggle at nothing and wear smiles that haven’t learned restraint.
I peeled an orange to go with our steaming tea. One of his buddies told me, “Mister, you sure know how to peel an orange.” Something I am still oddly proud of.
We didn’t catch a single squid that brisk, sunny morning. What we did catch was better.
One of the freckle-faced boys lost his goofy fishing hat, which tipped once in the breeze, thought better of it, and went over the edge. It fell clean into the water, way down there, drifting long gone. The boys came apart howling. Suddenly every cast was aimed not at the fish, but at that floating prize. They laughed harder than they would have if we’d hauled up some dead, smelly fish that needed cleaning.
Ottie snagged it.
He brought it in slow and crooked, stretching the moment. And in that small victory, the dock became something older than itself; like a bonfire cracking and hissing in the frigid morning, drawing everyone in without asking their names. A Coast Salish family. An old-timer who looked borrowed from another century. Three young women dressed like they’d stepped off a New England trawler. A pack of Asian teens, just good kids. A handful of old codgers, pipes glowing, a flask making the rounds.
When the hat cleared the rail, the spell broke in laughter. Applause. In fact, one might call it a Kingdome wave of cheer. Grins passed between people who didn’t know each other and didn’t need to. No talk of politics. No religion. No money. No scorekeeping at all. Just people on a cold Saturday morning, bound by the old pleasure of standing near water and waiting together.
The catch of the day.
No squid. No trophies. Just a small beginning; joy, a winter morning, a boy named Ottie, and the rare feeling that the world, if only briefly, remembered how to breathe.
Tim White is the retired lead pastor of Washington Cathedral in Redmond, where he served for 42 years. He and his wife have lived in Marysville for the past five and a half years. He is the author of four books, including the recent literary novel “The Original Human Beings.”
