Why do I love to fish, I sometimes ask myself that question. Why do golfer's golf or walkers walk? Why do runners run Why do bird hunters shoot a twelve instead of a twenty? Why do some guys like dogs but other guys like cats. Why do guys fish for walleye and spend thousands on deep hull boats to go backwards in big waves? Why do guys spend days pitching lures bigger than their kid's arms just to see a flash of a following musky and call it a good day. Why do some wade in chest deep water in a snow melt rushing river dangling a hook with some yarn on it? Why do guys brave sub zero weather to sit on an overturned five gallon pail at sunset on a frozen lake trying to coax a six inch crappie to bite?
Why do guys circle the dates on a calendar for their next fishing trip when their boots are not dry yet from the one they just returned from. Why do guys keep journals and jot down everything about the day they just had while others write down nothing but instead just go out and do it again. Fishing starts off as something to do with an old rod and a coffee can of fresh dug worms. You walk the bank of the local pond or creek and drown worms trying to catch something that swims. Maybe you are lucky enough to find a frog or even a crayfish to go for the big one. Sometimes you are lucky enough to be friend a fishing buddy and the two of you grow up together and keep fishing. One of you gets a beater truck or car and now you can travel to fishing spot's afar.
You get better and fish start coming home with you but then you discover girls and fishing is not as great. Time marches on and if you are lucky you and your friend hook up again. Bigger boats and shinny trucks you now go fishing when you can. But as you get older things change some, now you bring your son or daughter along and they remind you of things. The boat sits on the trailer all dry as you walk the banks with a glass jar. Your daughter turns over rocks and things looking for frogs and other squirming things. Feet dangle shoeless off old wood docks and bobbers float calmly just off the rocks. Backs rest against well-worn planks as you look up and see lions and tigers and princess in the clouds that float lazily high overhead.
Time has a way of marching on but I have spent many a moment in a boat or walking the banks of a stream and it seems like I was just there yesterday. I have some places that I been fishing for fifty years but they never seem to change. I think of the big round rock just off the shore at the lake. Does not look any different even though it has seen fifty winters and fifty summers since I first fished from it. Millions of waves and who knows how many bare feet have stood on it and casting out into the lake. The only thing that has changed is me I guess, as getting up on that rock is not as easy as it once was. When I was a kid I had to wade through the water to climb up on the rock. As I got older I could just jump to it with ease from the shore and now that I am getting old I have to once again wade out to the rock again. But once I am there it is the same, when the water is low it is warm under my toes and I cast out into the lake because that is where the big ones are at, so I was once told.
Why do I love fishing, because it just never grows old.
A Quote from the Perfect Storm
The fog's just lifting. You throw off your bow line, throw off your stern. Head out the south channel past Rocky Neck and Tenpound Island, past Niles Pond, where I skated as a kid. Blow your airhorn, and you throw a wave to the lighthouse keeper's kid on Thatcher Island. Then the birds show up, blackbacks and herring gulls, big dump ducks. The sun hits you. You head north, open up to 12. Steaming now. The guys are busy, you're in charge. And you know what? You're a goddamn swordboat captain. Is there anything better in the world?