‘Monster fish’ reminds reader of an earlier catch

 To the editor:
    The spectacular photo, “Catch of the Day,” of Wayne McGary with his huge lake trout, and his much smaller grandson, Jay McGary, and the story, “Swimmers beware: Three-foot ‘monster’ pulled from Nickerson,” by Ben Austin, in the July 31 Pioneer, intrigued me. The story of catching the exceptional fish should have sufficed, but I looked for coincidences as well.
    When I was very young, Bill McGary, his wife Phyllis, and their two children, Janice and Billy, had a cottage near ours at Nickerson Lake. Janice, about the age of my brother, Leonard, played with us in our sand pile.
    A very big fish, a landlocked salmon, was mounted in a glass case above an enclosed bookcase on our front porch. On a plaque were a small photo of Ina, my mother, wearing a heavy plaid wool jacket, and the following: “11 lb., 31 inches long, 18-1/4inch circumference, 5-30-29, Mrs. O.B. Porter.” O.B., my father, or Porter, as we called him, had manned the small motor on the boat, then grabbed the net to help Ina get the salmon into the boat. They had been trolling up by the island at the end of the lake by the Country Club.
    Porter was always proud of Ina’s prowess and enjoyed telling how long it took her to tire out the fish before reeling it in. It held the record for largest landlocked salmon taken from Nickerson Lake. However, Ina said she heard that a man later caught one weighing a bit more, but he never reported it because it was over the weight allowed. The significance of the date on the plaque hit me as I was writing this. May 30, Memorial Day, was my parents’ wedding anniversary. In 1929, they had been married three years; Ina was 29, Porter, 44. I would be born a few years later.
    As for any coincidences, I am indebted to Wayne and his wife, Sharon Ewing McGary, for replies to my questions. Wayne’s father’s name was Billy, but he was not the one I knew. The monster fish was caught in a different location from Ina’s, but Wayne and Sharon stayed in a cottage up near the Country Club.
    So much for coincidences, but their story reminded me of another, and I have enjoyed hearing Ina tell hers — if only in a few moments of memory.
Byrna Porter Weir
Rochester, N.Y.