Never underestimate how closely you are being watched.
That warning is especially true if kids are around. Sure, they might not LOOK like they are paying attention, but you had better quickly drop any misguided illusions that they aren’t.
If you’re doubtful, try this little experiment: Say something derogatory about something like a particular brand of product when the kids are within earshot and then go shopping with them.
Deliberately put the aforementioned item in your shopping cart and watch what happens.
You are being watched.
Now, the upshot to this is that through careful mentoring and guidance, you can instill your love of the outdoors and fishing and such into those same malleable kids who would unwittingly pass along any disparaging remarks you made about the neighbor during dinner one night to that very same neighbor during your annual summer block party.
Since you are being watched, I say – use it to your advantage
Case in point: our God-daughter has heard me talk long and lovingly about fishing since she was old enough to understand the meaning of the word. By carefully encouraging her and coaching her on the virtues of fishing (there are some!) she naturally now wants to go fishing with her Uncle Dan. I have even given her a pink Barbie pole and tackle box just to let her know that fishing can be chic and stylish. I carefully and deliberately model my behavior and speak enthusiastically about the “benefits” of things like hooking yourself, and getting spined and stepping in duck droppings and using porta-potties that are long overdue for emptying and…well, you get the picture and, as far as my God-daughter is concerned, all those things are part of fishing and are somehow part of the fun – though sometimes she is not quite sure if I truly understand the definition of “fun”.
Nevertheless, she likes fishing and always wants to know if I still like fishing even after a fishless expedition.
I know I am being watched.
So a couple of weekends ago, I had an opportunity to once again expand my God-daughter’s idea of what constitutes “fun” when it comes to fishing.
Through a series of convoluted scheduling changes I was able to spend the afternoon at Downey Wilderness Park with her and our fishing gear. I hadn’t read of any recent fish plants so I knew the odds of actually catching anything there were already pretty slim but it was the place with the easiest access within the time frame we had.
With this information already in the back of my mind, I decided to put the emphasis on technique and style. I rigged her pole with a fairly heavy egg sinker and I let her pick the color of Power Bait (despite my dislike of bait-fishing). We settled on neon green which I dubbed “booger bait” much to my protégé’s delight. I baited her hook, pretended to lick the leftover “booger bait” from my fingers, again to her delight and disgust, then reviewed proper casting technique and finally just let her go for it.
Sure enough her first cast sailed halfway across the narrow section of the pond I had deliberately chosen and her confidence level soared. Anyone within earshot surely heard how amazing that first cast was. Then, after untangling the ensuing birds-nest and re-reviewing the intricacies of spinning reels in kidspeak, I set up shop next to her.
I intentionally choose the fly reel with yellow floating line and tied on a big, gaudy dry fly despite the slim chances of anything actually making a surface hit. I then made sure to make my first cast near to her line so that she could immediately brag that her casts were farther and better than mine.
Everything was going pretty much according to plan…then the mosquito fish showed up.
Now, I should have remembered from previous trips that in the eyes of a seven-year old, fish of any size are likely targets. So when a swarm of mosquito fish hustled up to the bank in front of us in the hopes of picking up some scraps of our lunch, suddenly the objects of our pursuit seemed all the more real and attainable – so real, in fact that the bait on the end of a certain Barbie pole rig lost some of its appeal and catching mosquito fish grew in importance.
So much so, that a certain young fisher-girl raced excitedly up and down the bank shouting out questions about mosquito fish as they alternately fled and followed her.
I answered a multitude of questions about mosquito fish. More questions than I knew I could be asked about mosquito fish. I made mosquito fish sound like the absolute best harbingers of big fish that one could come across.
And then it happened.
In the excitement of the moment, a certain young fisher-girl misjudged the uneven terrain between grass and concrete and within a split second was suddenly sitting in six inches of lake water.
The look that followed was a mixture of shock, mild fear, a little pain and embarrassment. I knew that I had to think up a positive spin on the situation and I had to think one up quick.
I knew that she wasn’t hurt and I knew from the way she was sitting that she wasn’t in any danger but I also knew that I only had one chance to save seven years of careful and deliberate work.
“Oh my gosh!” I blurted out. “ You did it. You actually did it. And year’s ahead of schedule even.”
The change in facial expression from near tears to puzzlement told me my ploy was working.
“You have accomplished in one afternoon what it takes some fisher-folk decades to do.”
“What did I do?” She asked with a slight whine and a little tremble in her voice while climbing slowly out of the water.
“You have learned the all-time greatest secret of fishing.”
“I fell in the water and got my shoes wet and my pants are dirty and …”
“Shhh.” I hissed, with a silencing wave of my arms and furtive glances about, “Don’t say another word or you’ll reverse everything. This is great! This is newsworthy. This is a proud day in fishing history. Come over here and I’ll take off your shoes in the special way so we don’t waste what just happened.”
Intrigued, my soggy fishing buddy dutifully squished her way over to me. Kneeling down, I gently removed one shoe, held it up ceremoniously and poured out the collected water from inside. I then did the same with the other shoe and also with each sock.
“You have now entered the Society of Tried and True Fisher-folk. Fish will forevermore fear you and your trusty Fishing Pole of Victory. You came to the park today thinking we were just going to have some fun, but you leave a full-fledged fisher-women. Congratulations.”
The smile on her face spoke volumes. Her posture straightened, her head lifted, her eyes sparkled. Her soggy pants didn’t seem to matter quite so much.
“Can we tell Mama? Can we tell Papa?”
“Oh, absolutely. In fact, we must tell them and we must document this great day with pictures. Go stand by your tackle box.”
And just as quickly as it began, the crisis was averted and we ended up spending another hour pleasantly moving around the lake chasing the ever elusive “monster fish that lurks in every pond where mosquito fish are found”.
Yes, you are being watched and if there is any lesson at all to this little story it is that we veteran fisher-folk can model positive behaviors and help the next generation (one that is generally becoming less and less attuned to the realm of nature that we so much enjoy) develop a keener, finer sense of the great outdoors…and maybe a sense of humor to boot.
However, should you doubt the conclusions drawn from this episode, Let me offer you a little proof from the other day: Just two weeks after the great “splash down”, my God-daughter enthusiastically invited herself to accompany me and my fishin’ buddy, Sean on an impromptu afternoon getaway at a local lake.
Once we arrived at our chosen lake, she happily cast away between us as we worked our way around the perimeter, never once shying away from the water’s edge. She even agreed to pose for a picture while lipping one of the small Bass Sean managed to pull out with one of his custom shrimp flies.
The three of us had a great summer afternoon enjoying the sun, the sounds of ducks and kids, the sparkle of the water and the occasional zing of a tightening line.
Yeah, I am being watched and hopefully I am making it clear that I love this addiction called urban fly fishin’.
Most of our regular readers know I have a deep and abiding interest in all things related to fish — which partially explains my love of fishing, the ocean and aquatic things in general. (The other reasons would undoubtedly fill chapters in psychology textbooks, but have little bearing on this discussion, so we will ignore those for now.)
As you can already surmise, I am fascinated by fish behavior, anatomy, biology and so on and so forth. This life-long fascination has led to a degree in marine biology as well as further certificates in wildlife management, forestry, conservation, aquaculture and even study in aquatic medicine.
(I don’t tell you these things to brag, but rather to give you some insight into where I am coming from.)
By the time I was in Jr. High, I had firmly made up my mind that I would study science and particularly marine biology.
Then the movie, Jaws, came out.
I vividly remember sitting in the theater, mesmerized yet scared out of my mind, watching the drama of that story unfold.
I remember the famous scene where Quint says, “You go in the cage? Cage goes in the water?… Shark’s in the water”…(then begins to sing) “Farewell and adieu me fair Spanish ladies, farewell and adieu, me ladies of Spain….”
Ironically, I saw the movie on a Friday night and the next Monday we were scheduled to take a two-week summer vacation trip up the coast to Vancouver. All along the way, my family planned to camp at the many wonderful beaches of the West Coast – right in the heart of the Red Triangle, the section of the U.S. coastline where the most cases of documented White Shark attacks had occurred over the last 100 years or so.
Needless to say, I did very little swimming, but a whole lot of watching.
But, besides giving me nightmares for a month, the other thing that movie did was transform my morbid curiosity about sharks (remember I was transitioning from Jr. High to High School) into a life long and sincere interest in them. If I had made up my mind prior to the movie to study marine bio., there was no doubt after the movie that I would study marine bio.
All that to say, that even today sharks hold a huge interest for me. I have two, possibly three whole bookshelves devoted solely to books on sharks. “Shark Week” is almost a reason in and of itself to get cable.
I like sharks.
Perhaps a better term would be respect and fascination with sharks. I look upon them as design perfection in action.
But, getting back to the movie. If you recall it at all, (I admit, I watch it every July 4th) there is a scene where the characters, having gotten drunk during dinner, are comparing scars acquired over their respective lives.
Hopper points to a bleached out spot on Quint’s arm where a tattoo used to be and says, “Let me guess….Mother.”
Quint gets serious and says, “That, Mr. Hopper, is the U.S.S. Indianapolis”.
Hopper quickly gets serious and we, along with Chief Brody get a quick, graphic history lesson about the U.S.S. Indianapolis and one of the most terrifying and tragic incidents in U.S. Naval history.
It is a riveting scene and based in reality.
I firmly believe that, as I went off to college and began working with professors and grad students who were studying sharks, every one of them had been affected by the story depicted in that scene (we all knew about it) and what it represented. I also believe that many were driven, in part, to study what they did because of that story. For many of us going to school in that time period, marine biology was synonomous with the study of sharks.
Now, as many of you may already be aware, one of the hottest trends in saltwater fly fishing right now, at least on the “Left Coast”, is kayak fishing for Mako sharks. And there is arguably no more knowledgeable or skillful shark flyfisherman than Conway Bowman. He has introduced countless individuals to the excitement, thrill and challenge of catching sharks on the fly.
He has systematically built a solid reputation as a fly fishing guide, shark expert, and conservationists and he has renewed public awareness of sharks.
Sharks are once again, hot ticket items – charismatic megafauna, as we say in the Zoo and Aquarium trade and they are spawning a whole slew of techniques, equipment and related travel categories centered around catching them.
Everybody seems to be talking about shark fishing.
So imagine my surprise the other day when I turned on the radio and came in on the middle of an interview with one of the survivors of the U.S.S. Indianapolis.
Suddenly all of the giddy delight about sharks and shark fishing and catalogs with new gear and package deals and such all fell by the wayside and I was taken back to that long forgotten Friday night in the crowded theater watching Quint tell the story of the U.S.S. Indianapolis and the fate of the men who served on her.
In the interview, Edgar Harrell, USMC related that out of the approximately 900 men that went into the water (out of a crew of 1196) at 1204 am August 1, 1945 he was one of ultimately just 317 survivors.
Just like Quint, he described the many horrors of being lost at sea. Only, when he recalled the terror of sharks attacking and killing scores of men during the four days that they drifted, helplessly at sea, you knew it was from the perspective of eyes that would never forget and that could still see those moments even if tightly shut.
After listening to his interview, I knew I had to get his book, Out of the Depths.
I did and I just finished reading it. It will make you proud of and grateful to the men and women who gave and are still giving their all for this country.
It is an unashamedly Christian book. If this bothers you, don’t read it. However, you must know that you will be missing out on one of the greatest stories of hope and survival you may ever have the privilege of reading.
Yes, it is a book about sharks, but it has a much, much greater message to tell and I can’t recommend it too highly.
Oh, and later this week, when July 31 and Aug 1 pop up on the calendar, take a moment to count your blessings and know that because of guys like Edgar Harrel and his shipmates and many, many others we have the freedom to engage in our favorite pastimes in one of the greatest countries on the planet.
A few days ago my fishin’ buddy, Sean handed me a DVD entitled Bass – The Movie.
I told him it would be a few days before I could watch it but I would check it out and get back to him.
Last night, I finally sat down and watched it.
The official run time is one hour and forty minutes but it took me about three hours to get to the end because I keep stopping and rewinding and re-watching and making notes and slow-motioning the action and such. In other words, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie but I also found it to be a great teaching aid which, I hope, will make me a better Bass fisherman.
Sure, half the folks we encounter out there on the urban waters see our fly rods and assume we must be only after trout but the truth of the matter is that we both pull in a surprising number of Bass all season long. I like catching Bass. Everyone I know likes catching Bass. I suspect that even the purists who say otherwise secretly relish hooking into a big ol’ bucketmouth every now and then given the chance. Catching a Bass on the fly is a sure fire way to get your heart pounding and to make the day just a tad better. This film is all about that and more.
Admittedly, I probably don’t have the time or resources to pursue Bass with the same passion as the guys in the film, but I do think I will now be able to better maximize what time I do have on the water using the info I gleaned from this pleasant little movie.
And since much of the action took place in SoCal, I felt like the movie gave me just a bit more of a “home court advantage” then, say some of the programs I might catch on cable or some of the articles I’ve read lately in the the national magazines.
Having guys with both conventional and fly gear in the same boat also made things interesting. You never know what revelation or insight might pop up when you step outside the box.
The section on fishing the weeds, for example, was something I can put to use immediately since we encounter very similar situations in the urban lakes we fish as the summer progresses.
I might even try my hand at tying up a few knockoff “swampmasters” now that I have a better handle on fishing in the slop.
Likewise, though much of the fishing was boat based, and virtually all of our urban fly ventures are shore-based, I felt like I gained a better feel for reading the water and can immediately apply some of the things I watched.
All in all, I would highly recommend this movie. “Just be careful”, as Bill Cosby used to say, “‘cuz you might learn somethin’ while your havin’ so much fun”.
There is often a very fine line between what something is called and what it actually is.
We call ourselves “urban” fly fishermen, for example, but that moniker is highly flexible and probably denotes a mindset rather than one hundred percent reality. The truth of the matter is that both Sean and I will readily explore a likely looking fishery whether it be urban, suburban, rural, wilderness, freshwater, saltwater or even perhaps runoff.
To be an “urban” fly fisherperson is more about opportunity than image.
Not that we are without a code of conduct. We won’t steal, trespass on private property or lie about what we caught – life is too short for that stuff and at the end of the day we will have to answer to a Higher Power and the Ultimate Fisher of Men.
That’s not to say we aren’t having a blast along the way though.
Case in point: This past week my beautiful bride and I found ourselves in the lower end of Connecticut in honor of my nephew’s high school graduation.
If you know anything at all about the geography of lower Connecticut, you know that it is a convoluted, ragged, hodge podge of coastline, rivers, inlets, streams, ponds and islands all covered in intense, temperate-climate greenery that boggles the mind of a SoCal native more used to landscapes composed of subtle shades of brown and yellow (and concrete and garish multi-hued graffiti). Water is virtually everywhere and much of that water is filled with fish. In other words, I got off the plane and walked into a fishing paradise.
And, if you know anything about me from following this blog you might recall that I vowed after the Hawaii Trip that I would not travel to a fishing paradise ever again without some kind of fly rig stashed in the luggage.
So it should come as no surprise when I tell you that since Hawaii I have spent a considerable amount of time researching and planning and modifying and practicing and I did indeed have a little trick up my sleeve which I planned on using in that extremely narrow window of opportunity between family events, pre-arranged side trips and the plane ride home.
My secret weapon was/is a carefully modified collapsible PenRod Extreme fishing rod with a matching fly reel and 00-weight Sage floating line.
Google PenRod Extreme and you’ll get a better idea of what I’m talking about. In its original format the tip top of this little rod is too small in diameter to handle even 00 weight fly line so with a gulp and a decisive snip of the side cutters, I cut off the end and replaced it with a suitable fly rod tip top that I picked up at Bob Marriotts.
The disadvantage to this was that it slightly shortened the end section, voided the warranty in a heartbeat and no longer allowed the protective “pen cap” cover to fit properly. Undaunted, I modified an old plastic tackle pack to carry both rod and reel and a few basics and thus created an instant travel kit which easily fit into my luggage.
So naturally it wasn’t very long after making the cross country flight, then navigating the twisting, turning , horse-carriage width roads leading to my sister’s new house ‘til I convinced her that we needed to pick up some supplies from Trader Joe’s… which just happens to be conveniently located next to an Orvisstore.
Now as much as I like TJ’s mango salsa and blue corn tortilla chips, I like new flies even better and the guys at the Orvis store were only too happy to oblige. However, lest you think them as purely mercenary, let it go on the record that they were quite helpful in dispensing vital local fly fishing info (one of the sales reps was president of the local TU chapter) as well as assisting me with a selection of weighted nymphs suitable for the local rivers.
When we returned from our little “supply run”, I dutifully went online to the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection and purchased a three-day license. Then armed with the info from the Orvis boys, I google-mapped the region, looking for promising target sites and plotted my strategy. I even printed out the appropriate maps and a satellite view of the area…hmmm, maybe I am more urban than I thought.
In any event and despite all my high-tech prep the one thing I failed to take into account was the weather. Sure enough, just as I was set to go out the door a fearsome thunderstorm broke out.
I hate thunderstorms. I’ve seen what lightning does to fishing rods and the folks on the other end of them.
Optimistically, I decided to drive over to the river anyway.
The rain fell harder, the thunder clapped louder, the river turned browner, my prospects looked slimmer…
An hour passed and all I had succeeded in doing was muddying up the rental car and soaking myself.
With family events pressing ever closer, I called it and headed back to my sister’s house.
You already know where this is headed.
One block from her house, the clouds broke, the rain stopped and the sun started to show. I pulled into her driveway and there was even a slight breeze blowing.
I put the car in park and thumped my head on the steering wheel. As I glanced in the rearview mirror to assess the size of the horizontal forehead bruise I had just given myself, I instead noticed that the breeze was actually pushing the thick scum layer toward the opposite end of the little pond (the little private pond)across the street from her house.
Dashing up the stairs and into the family room, I quickly ascertained that she did, in fact, have property rights and access rights to that same pond. Her “yes” still hung in the air in the time it took me to run back down the stairs, grab my gear and high-tail it across the road. I’m sure my entire family thought I lost my mind.
I quickly tied on one of my new nymphs and cast out only about twenty feet. Bam! Fish on. I landed a Bluegill. I cast again. Bam, another Bluegill. For the next hour, every cast brought in a Bluegill save one. The only fish I did not land was a small but respectable Bass that shook my fly in that classic way that Bass tail walk and shake their heads.
Like I said…a fishing paradise. And my little experimental, collapsible rod? It performed admirably.
Am I disappointed that I never made it to the river? Nah, my niece graduates in a couple of years and we’ll be back.
I am always amazed at the so-called coincidences and subtle interwoven interactions of life. Toss in a connection with fishing, and I am not just amazed, I am also amused.
Consider, for example, the following thread of events from this past week:
I spoke to my sister on the phone last Monday and during the course of the conversation, we reminisced briefly about the tiny flat she and her husband used to rent in London.
It was literally on the banks of the mighty Thames, and seriously within a stone’s throw of the London Bridge and Tower.
I could actually sit out on the balcony sipping my morning coffee and casually converse with guys who were flyfishing from the muddy banks below – all in the virtual center of one of the greatest cities on earth. I loved that little place.
So then last Tuesday, while heading to our next appointment, my wife and I were cruising down one of the major thoroughfares that knit the various communities of Orange county together when we crossed over one of a thousand small drainage channels that spider all over SoCal.
From my elevated vantage at the helm of our rolling veterinary hospital I caught a quick glimpse of the mild flow of water coursing between the rip-rap lined and concrete reinforced banks.
In the milli-seconds that I had to capture the entire scene – something which I am convinced is a by-product of growing up in the car culture of SoCal – I made the assessment that that little waterway would be a great place to practice fly casting and line mending techniques. The only thing lacking would be fish.
That, of course, started me thinking about the previous day’s conversation with my sister, those barely remembered conversations with retired stockbrokers on the banks of the Thames and…
…that led me on a whole other tangent of thought with regard to loss of native fish species, the wonders of civil engineering, the re-establishment of salmon in the Thames River, urban renewal and so on and so on
Thus, with those thoughts swimming around in my head, once we finally settled in for the evening, I feverishly tuned my attention to the info super highway and typed away into the wee hours of the morning tracking down useful information which just might possibly lead to a new, untapped or long forgotten spot to fish. I am singular in purpose, if nothing else.
I did not turn up any secret “honey hole” that I’m willing to share but I did stumble upon some fascinating info nonetheless. It turns out there are something like a hundred miles of those open channels all across the greater L.A. Basin. They in turn connect to some 1500 miles of underground pipes and tunnels and eventually it all feeds into sixty or so outflows that pour into the ocean. Seems that that little phrase from the movie, Finding Nemo, does have a basis in truth (at least in SoCal) — “all (storm) drains lead to the Ocean”.
Folks who get paid to calculate such things, tell us that roughly 100 million gallons of water flows through this network on any given dry day. Toss in some rain and the flow jumps to an astounding 10 billion (yeah, with a “B”) gallons per day! That’s a lot of water.
One only has to look at a map of these channels and such and it isn’t too hard to surmise that SoCal was once a magical place of meandering creeks and small streams and living, breathing rivers.
As coincidence would have it, the very same day I was pondering these things, our fellow bloggers over at L.A. Creek Freak posted a great story (excerpted from a Press-Enterprise story of a year ago) about the re-appearance of the Santa Ana Speckled Dace in the City Creek portion of that waterway.
Dace are smallish and minnow-like and probably wouldn’t put up much of a fight except maybe on a 00 weight rig. The bigger battle would be trying to convince the judge that you were actually fishing for a legal to catch species.
Nevertheless, the story by Creek Freak directed me toward additional sites and eventually I came across some pretty interesting articles documenting the fact that at least until the 1930’s, honest-to-goodness Steelhead used to swim very close to the present day location of Los Angeles City Hall.
So…in a little more than twenty-four hours I had come full circle. From a brief snippet of conversation which stirred a memory about flyfishing on the heavily urbanized Thames to a study on the drainage system of SoCal to copies of historical documents indicating that Steelhead swam the L.A River to my fishin’ buddy, Sean and I crawling through a hole in a fence to fish a section of urban channel we had never fished before… Like I said, what an amazing and amusing series of interactions…
My beautiful bride caught her first fish on a fly.
Life is good.
We hadn’t planned on going flyfishing. In fact, we were just coming off a rather difficult week of appointments, surgeries and hard-to-manage cases and were both of the mind set that Sunday afternoon ought to be a little more on the mellow side.
However, as we were driving home from church, I casually mentioned that it was such a beautiful day that we ought not waste it by being indoors. I also casually mentioned that Craig Regional Park was a very peaceful and relaxing place with lots of trees and open spaces…and a wonderful little lake and stream.
I also casually mentioned that the new Sonic drive-in restaurant was nearby.
Ka-ching – done deal.
So, we ended up in Craig park and, wouldn’t you know it, I just happened to have not one but two fly rods in the back of the car.
The wind was a little too stiff for the novice fly-caster so we headed over to the little creek which is flanked by trees and is more protected.
Now, I’m only mildly bragging but the little Mrs. picked up the fundamentals of roll casting like the proverbial duck on a June bug. Before too long I moved several dozen yards upstream and essentially left her to her own devices so that she could develop her technique.
Before long, she yelped and, sure enough, there was the tell-tale twitching of the rod tip signaling a fish on. After a short battle, she landed the little Bluegilland lipped it like she’d done it a hundred times.
When I asked her how she knew to do that she said she learned it from all of the pictures on our web site.
Oh! I guess somebody is paying attention.
Anyway, she went on to land two more little ‘gills before things started to slow done.
We moved up and down the bank but could not find the fish anymore.
I fished a little more but she decided to call it a day and laid down in the grass to mull over her success and enjoy the long, warm rays of the afternoon sun.
Now, I am not exaggerating when I say there was the picture of heaven right there in that park that day; My bride, stretched out on the fresh green grass of Spring alongside a quaint babbling creek, highlighted by the golden rays of the sun, with her fly rod next to her…
Social obligations have stacked up one after the other like jetliners flying into LAX on a Friday night: Mother’s day, birthdays, anniversaries, speaking engagements, business-related trips and professional continuing education courses… all have merged into a perfect storm to keep me away from my fly rod.
Not that the celebrations of life are less important than fishing. In fact, if anything, this month has clearly demonstrated the width and breadth and depth of my blessings. Still in those reflective moments between and betwixt the hustle and bustle — while speeding past one of my favorite urban lakes or flying over the San Bernardino mountains on approach to John Wayne airport or quickly flipping through the stack of fishing magazines piled up on the counter – well, then is when I am most acutely aware that it has been a good month for the social graces and strengthening family bonds but a lousy month for fishing.
Mind you, there have been plenty of enticements. There have been tournaments and classes and competitions galore. Everybody seems to be sponsoring some sort of something or other with valuable prizes and untold amounts of prestige available for the taking – all for a nominal entry fee, of course. And there have been the phone calls and offers from fishin’ buddies but alas, it just didn’t happen. The fly rod sat untouched…or rather, unused. I’ve carted it around in the back of the car hoping to squeeze in a half hour or so here and there. I’ve washed the line and prepped it for the season. I’ve changed the leader and restocked my fly boxes – typically in the deep hours of night but I just haven’t fished.
One bright spot did occur last weekend when my wife and I made a quick overnighter to Big Bear. Over a relatively laid back cup of morning coffee the love of my life actually suggested we go fishing.
Once I picked myself up off the floor, we readied up and soon were at the lake with rods in hand. Naturally, since it was our only free day up there, the weather was less than cooperative and the wind howled across the water strong enough to form whitecaps.
Now, my bride has gone out with me on about half a dozen ventures and has yet to land a fish. She has hooked up on a fish, played a fish and had a fish break off just feet from the shore but she has yet to actually land a fish so, needless to say, I too really wanted her to catch a fish.
So the fly rods went back into the car and out came the spinning rods.
We also opted to head over to Grout Bay which is more sheltered and therefore less windy.
When we arrived at Grout Bay the water indeed lacked the white caps seen on the rest of the lake but it still rippled and splashed and roiled. Carpwere everywhere and they were…busy.
It didn’t look good for fishing but then I glanced over at my wife and she had the “Look”. You know what I’m talking about. The fixed gaze, the shaking hands, the raised pitch in the voice… She beat me down to the water.
We fished hard for about an hour and a half but, alas, some things trump even food (if you know what I mean) and we could not entice a strike.
By the time we decided to call it quits for the day we had tossed a whole lot of hardware and cleared a whole lot of weeds from our rigs but had not landed a fish. Still, we had spent a very pleasant morning in a very pleasant place doing something I already love and something I am happy to say my wife is growing to love.
Comments (3) 
Never underestimate how closely you are being watched.
A few days ago my fishin’ buddy, Sean handed me a DVD entitled Bass – The Movie.
I am always amazed at the so-called coincidences and subtle interwoven interactions of life. Toss in a connection with fishing, and I am not just amazed, I am also amused.
Themocracy