My fish below, has retuned summer after summer to be touched and fed.

Yes Fish have memories  and can understand simple signals.

 

 Ready for a miracle? Ready for a real fish story?

Strange as this may sound, one of my fish friends returned to meet me down at our designated place on Jean Drapeau Island in Montreal, today on the second day of the opening of the "beach". This is a man-made swimming pond in the middle of a man-made island that was land-filled for Montreal's Expo '67. 

You pay $36 and you can swim here every day for two months, and I love it and have been a loyal client for he last ten years. There is a series of canals near the pond, and I have become friends with the wild fish that live there. Feeding them practically on a daily basis and getting them to allow me full contact such as to touch them under their chins and rub the underside of their bellies. I trained them to give a sign of approval of they want more food. We settled on little bites with which they tickle my fingertip and for which they get more sausage (they like only the premium, all-pork breakfast sausages).

Last summer my index finger was raw from that game, especially since I used to get bitten if I didn't bring enough sausage, particularly for the larger fish, one of which, a bass, became my personal pet. It was also fun to see how the biggest of the wild fish became the friendliest allowing amazing touch in order to get lots of my food. Some kind of morphic resonance must be at work, because the same situation has followed me all over the globe, including the beaches of Greece and Turkey and India, and most rewardingly in the Laurentian lakes north of Montreal.

I have developed a special way of summoning fish to me, which is to bang rocks together in a very specific beat, sort of like the rhythm of the TV-intro to hockey games . 

Yesterday on the opening day of this inner-city Montreal beach, there were no fish when I got to my special spot. I got down on my perch, which is a big boulder on the edge of the canal, and banged the signal for about one minute. Nothing happened and I left soon after. Today I returned to the spot, excited to see if my summoning would have a pay-off. 

So I arrived and saw some smaller fish around. I thought "a good sign", but hey, wait a minute: there it was! My foot long Fish friend, from last year. I couldn't believe it at first but the bass made eye contact with me. We held eyes for a minute, it no more than 25 inches away. I talked to it with surprise and joy as I have been doing all these years, and I put my hand in the water to watch it sidle over. I am so very pleased to be reunited, but I am also sad to notice that Fish has a bruise on its right cheek and a tear in its mouth. It has obviously been fished (illegally) and mercifully released to return here yet again to me. I feel so sorry for the fish and wonder if it is permanently scared by what happened to him. I then hear the beach control-person calling out to me and to come away from the canal, which is a restricted area (to avoid children from wandering there and falling in). I explain that the large bass is my friend and how he got that big because of the sausage I've ben feeding him over the last several summers. The control-person appreciates my story and she allows me to stay a few seconds longer, as I promise my friend sausage for tomorrow and try to feed him before the control-person has to stop me.

The fish comes over and touches my extended finger, as if to say goodbye-see-you-tomorrow.

I also want to mention that after last summer I had about 6 to 8 large fish of a few varieties. Two of the biggest were carp. I wonder if they will return this summer as well. Anyway I wasn't the only person to have seen the fish. Last year, when the Beach closed for the season in the fall, I went back to feed them and instead of fish I found two avid fishermen their hooks and sinkers in the canal. I told them my story and they did not fish while I was there and if they did afterwards I am so glad to see that the fish were put back.

The  video below is one I that I made last summer about the fish.