My morning actually started last night. It started with the weatherman. He didn’t tell me that it would be warm this morning. He didn’t tell me that it would be sunny, either. If he had told me those things it wouldn’t have mattered, really. He did tell me one thing that started my morning today- he told me it would be calm. I went fishing Sunday morning. It was sunny and it was calm and it was delightful. I caught one fish. The one you see up there. I was planning on fishing Monday morning too, but when my alarm chirped at 4:30 am yesterday I quickly and repeatedly dismissed it. Last night I was thinking about fishing this morning. And that thinking turned to planning when Vince Condella promised me calm winds.
I didn’t require the alarm this morning. This morning, my dog growled at a sound coming from a distant room in my dark house. My phone told me it was 4:04. I battled with reason, providing my own arguments as to why I should sleep and why I should get up. I argued for a minute, and that internal dialog was enough to engage my mind and force me to abandon my bed. I walked out to my car, and as is the case whenever an early morning occurs, I was surprised to hear the sound of traffic coming from a far away highway. I routinely forget that people get up early to work, or that other people are driving home from work, or that others have yet to go to sleep. I live comfortably in my world where the day begins when the sun forces its way through my bedroom windows. I joined the early morning drivers and made my way towards a cup of coffee.
In the same way that I was surprised to hear traffic on the roads, I was surprised to see a line at the coffee shop drive through. It was 4:20 when I pulled up to order my drink, and there were people in line in front of me and people behind me. People that probably weren’t getting up to go fishing. I waited patiently for my turn, my eyes peering into the darkness searching for movement of leaves. The leaves were rustling. The flag was waving. The winds were blowing. The weatherman had lied.
When I drove to the lake, I was pleased to see that the water there had waxed calm. I shoved the dingy into the water the same dingy that turned on me in the ice cold May water- and broke the silence as I rowed towards the boat. The oar was wet with dew, and slimy from a lifetime of resting against the side of a shed or across the bow of a ramp-bound dingy. I rowed, alternating strokes from right to left and back again, twisting the dingy through a very inefficient route. At the boat, the engine fired quickly, choking on smoke that spews from that two-stroke engine to such an embarrassing degree. I sputtered towards Conference Point, passing only one fishing boat along the way, before killing the engine and gliding to a stop on the south side of the point. It was 4:35 am, the earliest I can ever remember being on the water in my entire life.
Just as most accuse me of living a spoiled life, I am too a spoiled fisherman. I have many fishing poles for many purposes, each resting in rod holders beneath the gunwales of the boat or in the rocket launchers affixed to the aluminum t-top. I chose three poles, one with a yellow jig, another with white, and a third with a small slippery crankbait. I made the first cast, angling it towards the shore. The jig splashed softly, the line cascading to the water behind it in a magnificent, if fleeting, arch. I jigged, I reeled, I jigged. No fish paid me, or my jig, any attention. The east wind, the very wind that I was promised would not accompany me on my trip, pushed my boat west, out past the first line of moored sailboats and from 10′ of water into 14′ and finally 40′. I was surrounded by jumping fish, those smallmouth who chase little minnows to the surface and greedily devour them. I was drifting, casting, jigging and the fish were chasing, jumping, and eating. The sun had not yet peaked over the woods of Cedar Point and I was cool, but not cold.
Soon, another fishing boat came to fish by me. I was in deeper water, finely attuned to the fish that were present, while the other boat chose to fish shallow, aiming instead at the fish that they could see resting on the bottom. Fishing is an interesting game, one filled with copycats and mostly unspoken tension. If a boat is fishing deep, and it sees another fishing shallow, both boats fill with insecurity. The shallow boat wonders if it should be deep, while the deep boat questions its depth. This unspoken game grows more intense if one of the boats catches a fish worth remembering. I watched the shallow boat, annoyed by their presence, jigging lazily in the deep. I alternated poles, casting and retrieving, casting and jigging, casting and resting. I could feel the eyes from the shallow boat on me.
After perhaps 50 casts, I hooked a fish. A good one. It jumped and it danced and when it came alongside the boat, the smallmouth was large and fresh and it was beautiful. I hoisted it up, just high enough so I could be sure the other boat saw it, unhooked it, and quietly let it go as I always do. I returned to my bow perch, casting and jigging, pleased with my both my effort and my slippery reward. After a while, the sun came over the wooded point and warmed my face and my arms. The fishing slowed, the wind increased, and though it was only 6 am, my fishing trip was nearing the end. I trolled back to my parents buoy, catching and unhooking several rockbass and a few small smallmouth, all the while wishing my engine would stop spitting out blue smoke that belies my gummed up carburetors.
I often invite clients and friends and friends who are clients to go out fishing with me. They usually decline my invitation. They might think that fishing to me is all about the catching, and that I fish to catch no matter the cost. The reality is that I fish because I enjoy it, yes, but I enjoy it regardless of my production. Fishing to me is as much about the nostalgic sound of a two-stroke outboard than it is the sound of a splashing fish. It’s about the rhythm of the retrieve, even if that isn’t broken by the tug of a determined fish. Fishing is more about the lake than it is the fish, and in the end it amounts to little other than another excuse for me to find way to spend even more time on the lake that I love.