Gone Fishing

Home & Family, Outdoors
on April 8, 2001

With summer just over the hill, and daylight lingering into evening again, one may find no better way to spend a quiet afternoon than fishing.

Angling has long been one of America’s favorite pastimes. It’s best done outdoors, requires no expertise, costs little or nothing, and enables one to talk, ponder, relax, escape, and spend some time with those we care about—all while engaged in something useful. Well, okay, not useful maybe, but worthwhile. It can recharge the spirit and refill empty emotional gas tanks.

Done properly, in fact, fishing has little to do with fish. In my case that’s because I seldom catch any—so few people outside my immediate family will fish with me. I have streams to myself because word is out that my mere presence causes most game fish to lose their appetite for days.

Still, few anglers who go fishing and come home skunked consider the time ill-spent.

When the sign on the door of our remembered youth said, “Gone Fishing,” it announced not only the condition of business (closed) but that of its owner (healthy).

Those who haven’t done it in a while should try it again, and those who have never tried it might consider it now. Bring a spouse, child, parent, grandparent, or friend; somebody whose company and conversation you relish. All you need is a farm pond, lake, a river, creek, or such; a few hooks, bait, or lures. And a rod. An old rod might be in your attic. Fishing rods seldom wear out; they get forgotten—for example, when you drive home forgetting you left yours leaning against the back of the car.

A fishing license can be found at your local sporting goods store. If you wonder what sort of fish to look for locally, the booklet of regulations that often comes with your license will probably tell you that. Or, the fellow at the store will be glad to help. Anglers love to talk and once in a while have been known to tell the truth.

Fishing is generally best in the morning and evening, but then again it needn’t have much to do with fish. It has to do with getting away, serenity, and moments of silence. Bring a snack and something to drink. Don’t bring a radio.

What you’ll experience then should be something like what I recall from earlier years when we lived one hayfield and a patch of woods away from a good-sized stream. The water was clear and fresh, teeming with life and mystery. It also had trout, and it didn’t take much skill to catch them. I know this because we caught some.

My brother and I went together usually, outfitted with fishing tackle that ranked only a step above bamboo pole and safety pins. We each had a packet of Eagle Claw hooks which had to be cut out of our back pockets when we got home. We had rods and shiny black thread for fishing line—at least it looked like black thread—and a spool reel. I don’t remember the reel. I think I lost it.

On Saturday morning we’d head out at the crack of dawn, or maybe a few hours later, and go fishing. But first we had to search for bait—which we never did the day before because we didn’t think ahead. Thinking ahead wasn’t for us.

Now, many things qualify as bait to a 9-year-old, but frogs, salamanders, crickets, worms, and crawfish were the most fun to find and catch, so they ranked well above garden slugs and toasted marshmallow sandwiches. The rule was that if it could crawl or jump out of your pocket, or pinch you, or frighten your mother, it was good bait.

Boys aren’t made of patience, so if we didn’t catch a big fish pretty soon after the first or second cast, we’d take a break, usually for the rest of the day, chasing eels and water snakes through the big, flat pools, or looking for even neater bait. Now and then we’d walk through the field behind the barn, searching out big black and yellow garden spiders to see how close we could get without scaring ourselves to death.

Only once do I remember catching a fish in that stream (though we no doubt frightened some to death).

My father—Angler Hero of the World—was still asleep one Saturday morning, and I left home early, well before breakfast, well before running water noises, heading to a bend in the river far downstream, far past the territorial limits of our normal fishing expeditions. Here the stream had been carving out the bank for eons, leaving behind a deep quiet pool under some trees. We never went swimming in that pool. It was so deep you didn’t know what was down there. We seldom fished there for the same reason.

I dropped a line in the pool. Memory of the next few moments is foggy, but I recall trying to land and subdue the biggest rainbow trout I’d ever seen, about 18 inches long (really) and tucking it under my arm, half running now through the meadow grass, and garden spiders, and prickers, and thickets, and branches and up the road until I reached the house and clambered through the kitchen door, letting the screen bang shut behind with great authority, to see everyone gathered around wondering where I’d been. They looked at the fish. Then at me. Then at the fish.

The Hero Angler had never caught such a fish. He was proud. We had a rainbow for breakfast.

If nothing else important ever happened in childhood, that would have sufficed. (My youngest daughter, Hart, had a similar experience on her first fishing trip to a mountain lake. I was proud. Her fish was a bass, but we had a rainbow for breakfast over the campfire.)

I still go fishing every year unless something more important comes up, which it hasn’t. But one year I invested in a fancy new fly rod, then a spinning rod, and tackle to match. The reel wanted lightweight line as fine as a cobweb, and then came the creel, tackle box, swivels, and colorful new flies and lures from places with names I couldn’t pronounce. Along came wading boots, a boat, and enough equipment to make me look like a 30-horsepower yard sale. I needed the world’s best mosquito repellent to survive my fishing trips. I don’t think they had mosquito repellents when I was a boy. I don’t think they had mosquitoes.

Somewhere along the line things changed—became more complex. It got to where I was refining techniques, adding equipment, trying to catch more and larger fish than ever before. On many trout streams and rivers I’d even find myself occasionally breathing hard and wearing myself out from hurrying upstream to the next pool.

Most anyone who gets uncomfortably hot or tired while fishing is going about it wrong. Freshwater fish in summer tend to be lethargic and difficult to locate. They have discriminating appetites, dislike being disturbed, and prefer to spend the day in deep, cool waters. They’re much like a youngster with a fishing pole.

My wife, Janet, lived by a lake as a child and recalls a threadbare fellow of little means coming to the house once, young and respectful, asking permission to fish from their dock, their land. He came early after that, arriving before the morning mists, and he made no noise. He moved without noise, she recalls. And he caught fish to feed his family, every time—more fish and larger than anyone else on the lake.

In fishing quietly, one can become a part of nature and see wonders seldom seen any other time. It might be a hatch of tiny brown moths on a trout stream, the sight of an osprey’s nest, or baby snapping turtles waddling their way to water for the first time through some preposterous directional mechanism one can hardly imagine. It will be the sight of a kingfisher fishing his own particular way, or a certain sense that air pressure is dropping and a storm is on its way.

Most anything can happen. Not long ago, while fishing upstream on Jack Creek near Ennis, Mont., I came across a sign warning that beyond that sign lay grizzly bear country. Assuming the bears couldn’t read, and therefore didn’t know which side of the sign was theirs, I decided the fishing would be better downstream.

For nature, dawn and twilight are generally the busiest times, but fishing needn’t be restricted to then. We moved last year, and when my son, Will, came home from college, we canoed across a lake we’d never seen before. No other anglers were there, and certain that my reputation could not have reached the locals so soon, we figured the lake was not ideal for fish. Indeed, the water was shallow, the sun was high, and the day was hot. Indeed, we didn’t catch a thing.

But it didn’t matter. We talked, and we were home.