As early as we were, both in terms of the time of the season and in time of the day, we were not the first guys out there, not by a long shot. We got a crummy spot. It was crummy for Scott because he couldn't catch any fish from there. It was crummy for me because I could catch too many trees. I hadn't cast a fishing rod in 20 years or more and the cramped, tree-chocked clearing that we were allotted in the un-official pecking order of The Lake was just not a good place for my antique terminal tackle to be. I lost several lures to the grabby branches of the lake guardians. "How can this be"? you ask, "you were using Power Eggs".
Well I was. To me though, that wasn't fishing. From what little I remember from my childhood, and every thing that I saw on T.V. fishing involved casting and retrieving. A constant motion of flinging and winding. A desperate attempt to keep the lure from snagging on any hidden obstecel. Sitting quietly waiting for a "hit" was foreign to me. Furthermore, since the biggest fish that I have ever caught in the past was a blue gill, I wasn't sure what constituted a hit.
From the behavior of the guys around me I figures that it must be a pretty big thing! All the veteran guys were sitting in their trucks trying to keep warm and watching their rods from across the parking lot. Yet, every so often, they would sprint out into the cold, in the waddling, wobbling way that people who spend too much time sitting in trucks and too little time standing outdoors do and set the hook into a fish that was on the line. Fascinating. If they can do it from the car surely I can do it at the side of the lake. Nope. I got cold. I got tires. I got frustrated. I got determined. I got no fish. My buddy gave up and left. I stayed. I got no fish. The sun gave up and left. I stayed. I got no fish.
I suck.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Sunday, May 11, 2008
I'm outdoors!
This, in and of itself, might not seem like such a big thing to most people. To me it's HUGE. You see, between reading and gaming and going to school and then working in a field where 24 hours a week of overtime is considered "normal" there never really was much time in my life for "outdoors". Until this year. For some reason I was out the door and running as soon as the street lights started staying on until after supper. Earlier, actually.
Now, 55 degrees has always been my motorcycling threshold and I suppose that riding my bike in weather over 55 degrees might qualify me as something of an outdoors man, and looking back on it I am pretty sure that taking to motorcycling was my first step to outdoorsmanship. This year it was different though. Winter was worse than normal and even thought I have never considered myself to have SAD, I was more than happy when the first thaw came. I started looking up mountain bike and enduro sites on the web and planning my two wheeled assault on Mother Nature, but it was still too cold and wet and icy. That would have to wait. I still had the bug, the drive though and for whatever reason I decided that this year I was going to take up fishing.
This wasn't exactly a crazy thought. I had a bunch of my fishing stuff from when I was a kid and ALL of my Dad's stuff. I'd been hauling it all around from move to move over the last 14 years of my life. I thought that it was time to put it back to use and in the first weeks of April my partner at work (an avid fisherman) showed me how to tie a couple of knots and off we went to the local pond to "catch fish".
He went to the pond I went to the bait shop for minnows. WTF I was supposed to do with minnow I'm not antierly sure but it didn't matter. I got a call.
"Get Powereggs and the minnows".
"What's a Poweregg"?
"Just ask the guy".
"Hey, you got Powereggs"?
(Chuckling)"Sure do!"
Thirty dollars or so later I had a a collection of Powereggs in every color of the rainbow, some minnows that were big enough to be "keepers' as far as I was concerned and a pile of other terminal tackle including a small hand full of egg sinkers that were on the house. WHat the hell did the tackle store guy care if he ate 40¢ worth of sinkers? He knew that he had me hooked for life, or at leas the first part of the season. Now we had a purpose: a plan. We were fishing for Trout!
My partner Scott is a very gregarious person. Unlike me, who is afraid that other men will think that I am gay if I strike up a random conversation with them, Scott, who just might be gay in the end, will talk to any one. He's like a three yea old child like that. Every one is his next best friend. Any way, while I was shaggin coffee and "bait" he was talking to the other anglers at the pond and found out that they has just stocked the pond with Trout and that Trout ate Powereggs. I was suspect at his avidness since he didn't know about these Trout things or the Power-food which we were supposed to use to catch them. He reassured me that his normal quarry were Stripped Bass, that I shouldn't worry and that every thing was going to be all right. Every thing was all right. If you were a Trout.
Now, 55 degrees has always been my motorcycling threshold and I suppose that riding my bike in weather over 55 degrees might qualify me as something of an outdoors man, and looking back on it I am pretty sure that taking to motorcycling was my first step to outdoorsmanship. This year it was different though. Winter was worse than normal and even thought I have never considered myself to have SAD, I was more than happy when the first thaw came. I started looking up mountain bike and enduro sites on the web and planning my two wheeled assault on Mother Nature, but it was still too cold and wet and icy. That would have to wait. I still had the bug, the drive though and for whatever reason I decided that this year I was going to take up fishing.
This wasn't exactly a crazy thought. I had a bunch of my fishing stuff from when I was a kid and ALL of my Dad's stuff. I'd been hauling it all around from move to move over the last 14 years of my life. I thought that it was time to put it back to use and in the first weeks of April my partner at work (an avid fisherman) showed me how to tie a couple of knots and off we went to the local pond to "catch fish".
He went to the pond I went to the bait shop for minnows. WTF I was supposed to do with minnow I'm not antierly sure but it didn't matter. I got a call.
"Get Powereggs and the minnows".
"What's a Poweregg"?
"Just ask the guy".
"Hey, you got Powereggs"?
(Chuckling)"Sure do!"
Thirty dollars or so later I had a a collection of Powereggs in every color of the rainbow, some minnows that were big enough to be "keepers' as far as I was concerned and a pile of other terminal tackle including a small hand full of egg sinkers that were on the house. WHat the hell did the tackle store guy care if he ate 40¢ worth of sinkers? He knew that he had me hooked for life, or at leas the first part of the season. Now we had a purpose: a plan. We were fishing for Trout!
My partner Scott is a very gregarious person. Unlike me, who is afraid that other men will think that I am gay if I strike up a random conversation with them, Scott, who just might be gay in the end, will talk to any one. He's like a three yea old child like that. Every one is his next best friend. Any way, while I was shaggin coffee and "bait" he was talking to the other anglers at the pond and found out that they has just stocked the pond with Trout and that Trout ate Powereggs. I was suspect at his avidness since he didn't know about these Trout things or the Power-food which we were supposed to use to catch them. He reassured me that his normal quarry were Stripped Bass, that I shouldn't worry and that every thing was going to be all right. Every thing was all right. If you were a Trout.
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