Long Cold Spring Day.

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.