The fishing poles, three of them in total, rest in the corner of the office. They have been there for some time, but not for so much time that the bend from end to end, floor to wall, won’t relax once they are moved from the corner of this office and into the back of a car and finally into a fiberglass boat. I put them there in that corner not too long ago, a move that took them from a back room- a dirtier room- in the same building and brought them up front, to this office where they were yesterday and where they are today. Along their journey, they rested for an afternoon on this desk, their tips sticking out into the other room, the office room adjacent to this office, with their reels removed and their seats washed clean. The rods were taken apart at their seam, and with two pieces in two hands I washed them under the sink that is back in that back room. The dirty one.
Two of the three rods had visited saltwater from the time when they lasted tasted water that was fresh. Those rods were washed more diligently than was the third, but they were all baptized that day. And they were dried, and then there was some contemplation about how worn their cork handles had become from spending last summer either on rod holders under the gunwales of the boat or perched high above, rattling with the motion of the waves back and forth and back again in the aluminum rocket launchers that someone long ago welded to the aluminum t-top. I decided there wouldn’t be anything done to the cork handles, and they would just have to make it through another year of rocking back and forth in those metal holders.
When the reels were off they were hand over hand stripped of their line. One day towards the later end of the last summer I had hooked a mighty fish on the eastern side of Cedar Point. I was trolling as is my predictable tendency, and I was in a predictable spot. Last spring I promised to explore the other end of the lake, the eastern end. But I didn’t and instead I patrolled the same waters that I have patrolled my entire life. The seven mile stretch of water remains the entirety and I remain willingly confined to the western four miles, but this is the way it always has been and likely the way that it always will be.
When the fish took my trolled bait in that deep clear water to the lee side of that point it wasn’t unexpected. I have caught many fish there, but not so many that I grow tired of doing so again and again. When the drag sang and the line peeled and the fish jumped, my steady pressure was applied. And when the line broke under such a slight strain, it was obvious then that the line had sufficiently decayed on those reels that rested on the rods that rocked back and forth in those aluminum rocket launchers through the hottest and sunniest of summer days. That line, the line that broke unnecessarily, was stripped onto my office floor a few weeks ago, and with snow flakes filling the air outside, the floor inside was thick with that fishing line that betrayed me on that sunny day last September. It will not have a chance to betray me again.
With the line puddled on the floor, three reels were washed, and oiled, and when I cranked the reels each at a time they were smooth and ready. I fed the line onto each spool the way I always do. The spool of line on the floor and a loop of line coiled around my pant leg, continually feeding from spool to spool, burning around my pant leg leaving a slight mark that I could see but I doubted anyone else could. The reels were loaded- two with 12 pound test and one with 6- and they were seated back on their respective rods and tightened down. I fed the line through the eyes, each one smaller than the next, and tied on three lures. Two larger lures onto the 12 pound test and a smaller one onto the 6 pound line. The larger lures will wait until the water is warm, the small lure will be thrown immediately this spring. I believe its stunning silver will match the emerald shiners that swim the open waters of Geneva in such great living clouds.
Those rods today are ready. They know what they have to do and when they have to do it, and they have no choice in the matter. When spring comes later this month in full force and the boat is backed down the ridged ramp on the northern end of Williams Bay those rods will be in their places. And later, just 76 days from today when summer arrives, they’ll rock and swivel back and forth in their summer home aboard that floating boat. They’ll be ready for this summer and they’ll see everything that is to be seen during a Lake Geneva summer- sunsets and sunrises numbering more than anyone would have the patience to count- which might just mean those fishing poles are going to thoroughly enjoy the summer that some might find a way to miss.