All of the rain this weekend had me thinking of times that I got stuck in the rain. And as I rambled down that path of various memories, I remembered a whopper of a fish tale. People love to tell stories about the fish they’ve caught, exaggeration always included. This tale is not about a fish I caught, but definitely about a fish that got away, and I promise it was a big one.

It starts on the Hillsborough River back in the late 90s. Kim and I were on an afternoon adventure paddling the river when rain clouds started to build up in the sky. We were a long way from where we had launched the canoe, so we dug in to try to paddle faster and get back before the rain and storms started.

We weren’t out to fish, we were just paddling the river and enjoying some time together. I was in the back of the canoe and Kim was in the front. We were both pulling our paddles as hard and as fast as we could, when suddenly Kim’s paddle hit something and before we even realized what had happened, her paddle launched an enormous gar out of the water. It flopped against the rail of the canoe and then smacked across my chest before quickly returning to the water. The whole event happened so fast that we were sort of in shock. Its sharp fins scratched my chest a little, but that was the only evidence that anything out of the ordinary had occurred. In a bit of disbelief, we returned to paddling and managed to find a covered area at the canoe launch to wait out the rest of the rainstorm.

The fish in my mind has become an enormous beast, but I’m sure it was just a little guy to have been flung up by a paddle stroke. But like all fish stories, it has grown over the years. Garden stories can be like fish tales sometimes too. How many times have you heard a fellow gardener boast about the size of the tomatoes or cucumbers just harvested from the garden? Plenty of times, I’m sure. With the start of the summer rainy season here, I hope you are creating some great garden stories of your own that will get bigger and better each year.