227

Bernard Robbins
2001
Tiverton, Nova Scotia, Canada

228

Bernard Robbins
Well one time I run out on top of a whale. Now that was something. I was alone the only thing and I didn't say too much about it. I got a shock that time. I was going down the buoy for a high water slack and I had a little boat she was only 35 feet long. She moved along a pretty good click and I had a car engine in her you know sliding right along headed for the buoy and I was watching a whale. I seen this whale above me kind of going up and laying on the water and fooling around and I just kept my eye on it I wasn't paying too much attention to where I was going. It was a fine day, beautiful and smooth day and I was about 3 miles off the shore and all at once the boat started to slow up and it was just about like running on a sand bar. As you can imagine me, I just froze there. Nothing you could do I just froze there and I glanced out over the side of the boat and all I could see was this great mass of blue and white, looked like a pleated skirt under the boat you know. And just then a bang, something banged the boat and the boat settled back and I kept right on going. I kept looking astern and I never seen any sigh of the whale. I don't know where it went. I must have scared it have to death. I got quite a shock, well I said I'll tell it because they're going to see something on the bottom of that boat. Well I grounded that boat and there wasn't a mark on it to be seen anywhere. No, of course she was a well built boat...
Then again I was off of Flour cove one day jigging for cod fish about the last year I was fishing but nice fine day that was. And just at that moment there wasn't any boats around ... every once in a while he would come up and blow and then disappear and I was only in 20 fathom of water. There I was jigging and the first thing I know this line took a going out of my hand and man it took a going out of my hand so fast that I couldn't hang onto it. I let go of the line and that was just a zinging out over the side of the boat and you know how you unroll your reel and when the reel made a jump toward me I grabbed it and stuck it under the ribbon of the boat. And when I did I noticed that the line seemed to be cutting down across under the stern. I looked over on the other side of the stern. (laugh) And this whale blowed about here from acrossed the road from me. That knew it was hooked too 'cause he came right on top of the water and took right of on top of the water. Just then the line parted. You know I got thinkin' afterwards that 200 pound test line if that had grabbed me around the wrist I don't know I probably would have went overboard with that but it didn't do that. So that reel's still got my jigger I imagine. (Laughing) But I said to myself, oh yeah those sort of things, they're just the things that happen you know.

Passages interview conducted by Lavenna Crocker