This is a sort of waking dream that I just had.
The words flowed out through my fingers with no effort.
Maybe if I thought I would remember it I might develop it better.
IT is all dreams after all. bits and pieces of memories and desires mixed together into a swirl that makes it hard to tell the real from the imagined.
Read on and get a glimpse into a tired mind.
For now it is time for me to sleep.
In my dreams perhapse the elusive fish will call to me and I will remember how to catch.
.....
it starts..
All the cash I have dropped on gear that I cant work makes
it hard to justify any more money for lures that I dont know
where to throw.
I am now thinking hard about why I am not catching fish.
It comes down to a few things
- less fish than 25yrs ago
- I dont know where they are
- I dont know what they want.
- I forgot how to think like a fish
- I am too grown up
As a kid I used to sit on the town pier watching the boats come in while I fished with whatever I could find or catch as bait. earthworms, minnows, mussels, periwincles..
Sometimes I would ask the fishstore guys for dead/broken clams that they couldnt sell. Sometimes I would win the lottery. Finding a bait box with a live seaworm still in it that someone left behind from the day before.
Sometimes the first fish would be let loose "to tell the other fish the food was free" or it would get cut up and used for bait.
Somehow I always managed to come home with a stringer of pollock or a pail of smelts. some lucky days I would have a few mackerel too. on lazy days I would target flounder. use a simple spreader, two snelled hooks with a little chunk on each. a 1oz bank sinker in the middle.
drop it to the bottom just off the pier, reel it up so the crabs couldnt reach the bait and wait.
Sure, they were all small. Now that I know about thesethings they must have been under legal size. But at 10 years old you dont know or care about these things. You are goin fishing!
Now I am trying for the bigger fish.
I have bought flashy lures here and there.
I have new rods and reels.
I have hip boots.
I catch nothing.
I am trying to think like the fish.
I look at my eels as I cast them out.
I watch them in the water. Trying to picture as they swim.
I imagine there must be fish there looking at my bait and laughing.
The little boy in me cries a silent tear with each non-productive day. More notes as to what didnt work.
Eels. Mackerel chunks. Bucktails with or without black trailers. Storms, grubs, gags lures, slow retrieve. fast retrieve. no retrieve. random retrieve. slow then fast then wait then fast... any combination I can think of.
The fish simply must not be there.
So, if they are not there, then where are they and how can I find them?
I go to tackle shops and linger around the gear waiting for someone to come in and tell their success stories. I strain to hear the little details that I have missed. What should I do that I dont already do?
Where were the fish? what did they like? when did they bite? Will they be there again? Where do I go that sounds like this spot/ What do I have that might be close to what they liked? How will it feel when they finally bite?
Nothing biting but still I fish.
In the rain. In the fog. In the clear sunlight. In the starrfilled darkness. Nothing bites yet still I fish.
What draws me there? Why must I stop and stare wistfully at every expanse of water. My eyes cast a wide net hoping to catch a glimpse of a fish making a rise. Maybe some birds chasing the bait. Maybe the bait jumping away from some unseen danger. A danger that I know is my quarry. The "big one". The elusive fish that fills my dreams.
I joined the MSBA. I listen closely trying to find that elusive bit of knowledge that will guide me to the fish.
I try hard to think like the fish...
habitat. Does she like warm or cool water? What is warm? What is cool? Does he like clear water or cloudy? near rocks or gravel or sand? Live bait that swims? or Dead bait that drifts?
As a boy I always caught fish. Sometimes I didnt even usr any bait. Just a simple hook found on the ground and tied to some untangled old line. dropped over the side and in a few minutes a fish. My folks say I used to talk them onto the hook.
I have grown now.
I do not remember the language of the fish.
That naive little boy who so bravely went out with the lobstermen he had watched so many days baiting their traps. Not knowing the possible dangers going offshore with unknown people could bring. Still the water called to me and so I went. 5 miles out. The pots went off the boat faster then I had ever imagined.
The hum of the motor. The smell of the sea all around. The rythmic splash of the traps going over the transom. The captain making jokes with his mate. Jokes that to a 10yr old made no sense but I laughed with them anyway because they made me happy.
I was out on a real fishermans boat!
I was with the lobstermen!
I was one of them!
25 years later I stand at the shore. My rod in hand. Hooks in my pocket. Lures in my bag. eels, mackerel, clams... no fish.
I have a little boat now. Too small for my grown up fears to allow me to take it outside of my little harbor.
I remember the fish so thick in the water. Looking down over the pier waiting for the schools to swim past. knowing that the returning fishermen would bring them following in chasing after the insides of the freshly caught prize.
Watching as they unloaded their catch. Hoping that I might be so lucky to take home one of their fish...
Now. still I stand at the pier. I know I am not one of them and feel less accepted now as ever before. I watch in silence. My hands are soft now. They are not the hands of a fisherman. My days are spent at a keyboard sitting at a desk. My porthole is a square screen.
And still the water calls to me.
The fish are there beneath the surface.
I know they are. For as I have grown older so have they.
Somewhere there is a very big fish and when I am ready...
When I have remembered how to talk to the fish..
Then maybe she will come to me.