Fishing, A Few Good Men

Fishing.
Sadly, the family, and our friends Tom and Gale and family had to return to Findlay. So, I was left with the big complex, an empty beach, house, garages, yard, more room than any man should have. More room than I deserve. I contemplated my options, work more on the house and yard, go trout fishing, or try to launch the boat alone and go lake fishing. The struggle between work and play was easy. I quickly ruled out more carpentry, and focused on the fishing. I resolved to go trout fishing. However, as I put my fly fishing gear together and looked at my waders, the temperature of the day began to rise and the sun came out in its greatest glory. In one view I saw myself walking thru the brush of the river in the 70 degree plus heat (yeah, that’s heat for me now)---and then a comparative view came to me. This second view was of me tooling around the lake with the big mercury quietly propelling me thru the waves, wind on my scalp (used to be wind in my hair), an ice cold diet vernors in my hand, etc., and that vision eventually won out. We had company next door that day, and as I hitched up the boat to the truck my neighbor asked if I needed help. I think he was kind of asking if he could go. Now, I like my neighbors a lot, even though they are here for a long time, about 3 weeks out of the year. But I really wanted to see how I would do launching and landing the boat alone, and I just needed some time alone, so I declined his offer for “help”. I quickly hitched up the boat and drove the 7 miles to Lake Millicoquins. This time I remembered to put in the drain plug before launching. This time I backed up expertly and easily launched the boat. I pulled it off the trailer and moved it aside and parked the truck. Too bad some grizzled Yoopers weren’t watching me this day. Usually they see me crashing the trailer into the dock, or stand there watching and laughing as the boat starts to sink because I forgot the drain plug. Anyway, as usual, the new Mercury Outboard started on the first key stroke and I was off. I hadn’t had the boat up to 34 mph in a while, impossible to do while tubing or with company in the boat, but it came easy to her with just me in the boat. I know that’s not very fast by today’s bass boat standards, but it’s plenty fast for me now. After doing multiple figure eights and traversing the entire lake twice with the oldies but goodies station on the radio I settled down to fishing. I fished along the edge of the weedbeds that Eddy and I did so well in for pike last year, but this time without success. I fished for an hour by spin-casting without a fish, even though I saw many jumping. I took out the 7 weight fly rod on a whim then and put the big mouse pattern on. Still,no success on the edge of the weeds. Fortunately, I threw a very bad cast up into the lilies and was cursing my inadequacy when there was a voracious eruption and the water literally boiled from the weeds strait up at my mouse and it was devoured by a very large, very feisty fish. I thought it was a pike because he sounded to the bottom of the weed beds and I thought I was snagged in the weeds because I couldn’t budge the rod. I was contemplating breaking off when all of a sudden the line loosened and I saw the flash of the fish. After about 5 more minutes I landed the largest small-mouth bass of my life. I don’t know how much he weighed, because I released him without harm while his tail was still in the water. I do know that he was the largest I ever caught, and I thanked him for teaching me how to catch smallies in that lake on a sunny day. The rest of his buddies probably didn’t thank him as they tasted my hook throughout the afternoon. In any case, it’s obvious that it’s called “fishing” instead of “catching” because it’s rare for any technique or method to work the same way twice. You have to adapt, you have to improvise, you have to overcome. I’ve learned this much at least from the best men on earth, the Marines. I’m sure looking forward to taking a Few Good Men with me out there again, and find out what works the next time!!! It’s so good to know I don’t have that kind of struggle to find the best friend on earth. I don’t have to go fishing for a friend. I have the best friends a man could have, such as Eddy, and Ron, and Scott, and on and on, the proud, the few, those U.S. Marines.