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Fog sat on the water and didn’t move. The boy couldn’t see the far shore, and when he looked back he couldn’t see the shore they’d come from either. Gray ahead, gray behind. The lake lay flat and black under all of it.

The water came right up to the side of the canoe and the boy could have put his hand in it. He’d done it the day before and his fingers had gone stiff and red. They ached for an hour after. Up here the lakes held the cold into June.

His father paddled in the stern. The boy could hear it without seeing it, the blade going in and the water coming off it when it lifted clear.

He paddled too. He matched what he heard, more or less. The steering came from the stern and so did most of whatever moved them.

His father had woken him while it was still dark out. He’d dressed sitting on his sleeping bag, getting his arms into a flannel that smelled like the tent. They walked down to the canoe in the dark.

The paddle clipped the gunwale and the aluminum rang. His father didn’t say anything. The stroke behind him kept on.

He laid the paddle across his knees. His hands were cold, and now his fingers had an ache in the knuckles. He balled them up and shoved them under his arms.

The boy had watched his father split a winter’s worth of wood one fall, not stopping.

He picked the paddle back up after a while. Dipped it, pulled. The water didn’t seem to give him anything.

A loon went off somewhere out in the fog, that long note that bends in the middle. He waited to hear another one answer it. Nothing did.

“Here,” his father said.

The paddling quit. They slowed and then they were just drifting in the fog. A dark shape stood up out of the fog ahead. Rocks. A point with boulders stacked at the waterline, wet and black.

“Cast toward the rocks.”

His father had rigged the rod the night before by the fire, a steel leader and a silver spoon. His big hands did the little knots. The boy sat up and cast it out there. The spoon went up and came down with a small sound and the rings spread out from it and ran toward the rocks.

He counted to five and started reeling.

He could feel the spoon wobbling, the buzz of it coming up the line into his fingers. Nothing took it. It came back clean and he cast it again.

His father was casting too. The boy heard the lure hit and then the whir of him bringing it in. They didn’t talk.

He cast again. Again. His shoulder was getting tired. He thought about the sleeping bag he’d left warm. He didn’t know what time it was, only that it was early still.

The ninth cast, the line came tight and stayed tight.

“Tip up,” his father said.

The rod bent and the boy hauled back and the water blew open. The fish came up green and white and threw itself sideways and the boy felt the whole weight of it go into his arms.

The fish went down and the drag let out a thin high note. It was strong. He could feel it down there working, and for a stretch he forgot about his hands and the cold. There was just the bend in the rod and the fish running somewhere under the black.

It came up once more, smaller this time, and that was the end of it. He reeled, pumping and winding, the way his father had shown him.

“Bring it back here. I’ll net it.”

He worked it toward the stern with the rod high. He heard his father lean and the net go through the water and the fish hit the mesh and beat against it, and then it stopped.

“Northern,” his father said. “Maybe fifteen inches.”

The hook came out. He heard the stringer clip shut and the fish go over the side. His father got resettled and the canoe rocked slightly.

His father picked up his paddle. “We’ll try the other side.”

They crossed. The fog had gone thinner and the boy could make out the far shore now, dark spruce with a few white birch in among them. The strokes behind him were even. He paddled along with them. His paddle hit the gunwale again.

They came up on a weed bed and drifted the edge of it, green stuff visible down in the water. The cabbage weed stood up out of the bottom and the little fish worked through it.

He cast and brought it back, cast and brought it back. Behind him was the same. The fish weren’t here, or they were down in the weeds where you couldn’t get at them.

The fog kept lifting off. He could see more of the lake by the minute, the open water behind them and back past it the point where he’d hooked the fish. He couldn’t see the sun yet, but over the east shore the gray had gone mostly white.

His father reeled in. The boy heard the rod go down and the paddle come up, and he did the same, and they moved off along the weeds.

The only sounds were the paddles and, now and then, the clang of his blade on the gunwale. He tried to be more careful about it.

Another point. More rock. They drifted it and worked it over, every foot of bottom.

His arm was burning now and his back had stiffened from sitting. He thought about saying he wanted to go back to the campsite. He had the words ready and he’d had them ready for a while. His father would turn the canoe without a word. He cast again.

The fog was about gone. The sun had cleared the trees back behind him. He could see the whole lake at once, small and ringed all the way around with forest. He could see where they’d launched, the dim shapes of the tents. It looked a long way off.

“That’s enough,” his father said.

He reeled in and laid the rod down in the bottom of the canoe and sat with his arms hanging. The fish on the stringer had quit splashing.

His father picked up his paddle. The boy picked up his. They started back.

He dipped and pulled. The blade went down into the black and came up dripping.

He kept at it. They didn’t talk. He faced front. His father sat behind him.

The sun got higher and there was some warmth in it now. The water had turned from black to a deep blue. A pair of mergansers ran along the surface off to the left and got up and flew. Out past them a fish rolled and left a ring. The paddle hit the gunwale. Camp came on slow, the tents firming up, the fire ring going clear.

The boy paddled.