Hunting and Fishing

    I have fished for as long as I can remember, but I have never hunted.  It occurred to me the other day, while fishing, why I don’t have much desire to look down the sights at a deer and pull a trigger.  For one thing, I have no desire to kill a large mammal, but there is more to it. 
    I have caught fish by sighting on them and then ‘aiming at them’, but the vast majority of fish that I have caught, I have caught by assuming there would be a fish in a certain place and fishing that place in hopes that my assumption was correct.  There is an important distinction there.
    When you aim at something and shoot it, you have already made the connection.  You have seen the animal.   It may have seen you.  When you find a deep, shady spot where you assume a fish will be and catch one there, there are several things at play.  One, you guessed right.  But perhaps more importantly, you are connected, in a split second, to another world. 
    There is something to this.  When you feel the fish strike and set the hook, the line goes tight and, all of a sudden, you are bound to a world you cannot see and know very little about.  Through the fishing line, you are connected to a fish, who is, in turn, connected to a human who lives in a dry world that the fish knows very little about.  It is a strange bond to say the least. 
    Actually fighting the fish is fun.  But there is nothing like that first burst of adrenaline.  And I think a lot of it has to do with the notion that one second you are floating a lure/bait/etc and the next second there is a live, flopping creature there instead of (or in addition to) said bait or lure. 
    Fishing by sight is hard because you have to get close enough to see them, and that usually means they can see you, too.  There are no fish blinds where you can sit and sip coffee and wait for a big trout to swim by and then shoot a line at it relatively certain that you might be successful. 
    No, fishing by sight is an art of quiet and deception.  All fishing is deception, and I enjoy it all.  But I think I particularly enjoy it when I don’t expect it.  When I am standing with all my attention focused on the line and where it enters the water and the feel of it in my hands and then...BAM…suddenly, I am attached to a creature from the deep. 
    I am not saying that you need to agree with me, and I am not making a play at disparaging hunters.  I am merely trying to convey to you something that I thought about recently, standing thigh deep in water, waiting to see if I’d guessed right or not.  Waiting to see if that connection was about to be made and if, for a brief moment, I might get to attach myself to the world underneath the water.

Princess Fishing

I stood on the bank, eyes hidden behind my polarized lenses, holding a pink and purple “princess” fishing rod as long as my forearm.  Birds chirped happily in the trees, and the sunlight capped the small wind chop.  I was staring intently at a red and white bobber that floated above a tiny piece of chartreuse Powerbait.  The sun was at my back and the breeze felt soft and gentle.  Behind me, I could hear my 19 month old daughter asking for: “More Powerbait please”.  It sounded like: “Ma Palabala plelelelele”.  My wife happily obliged, and my daughter threw handfuls of the bright yellow balls into the water.  I resisted the urge to mention how expensive Powerbait is.  My fly rod and spinning rod lay untouched on a large rock to my left.  I smiled and continued to watch the bobber.  And then the beast struck.

            I have caught my share of decent sized trout.  I have caught enough bass in the 6-8 pound range that I was only slightly jealous watching my Dad pull an 11 pounder out of my fishing hole with my rod right after my girl was born.  I recently went sturgeon fishing for the first time and caught a 70”monster.  I have felt fish adrenaline my whole life, but nothing compared to what was about to happen.

            The bobber dipped and I set the hook gently, less of a hook-set than a coaxing, an invitation.  I turned quickly, shouting to my daughter that she had caught a fish.  She looked absolutely wide-eyed panic stricken, so I had to reel in the 3” bluegill all by myself.  I don’t know if you’ve ever tried it, but reeling in a miniature gill on a two foot rod involves just about as much finesse and skill as falling off a log (a feet I accomplish regularly while fishing).

            When we had the fish in hand my daughter looked at it with some confusion.  I asked her if she wanted to touch the fish.  She declined, pointed at the lake and said, “Wawa”.  So we returned our trophy to the depths.  Then we caught the same fish (or its kin) three more times.  Each time she got a little braver, but the most important thing was still to get the fish back where it belonged.  As a catch and release fisherman, I was more than a little touched.  And I was more excited, and certainly less tired, than when I caught the Sturgeon.

            At this point, you may be asking yourself, “What kind of jackass takes a girl who is less than two years old fishing and expects any kind of awareness or enthusiasm?”  It’s a good question.  I’ll answer it.  That jackass is me.  And you know what,  it wasn’t the first time.  And you know what else, every time I say the word lake my daughter makes casting motions and fish mouths.  And with a stuffed fish tied on, she will cast and reel in our apartment for hours (or at least minutes, which are like toddler hours).

           

I don’t know if this is a unique phenomena.  Maybe it is just another way that I am weird, but I remember as a kid, learning how to fish thinking, “Man, it will be fun to teach my kids how to fish”.  And now it is happening.  I don’t want to push it too hard.  But she really does seem to like it.  And she likes being out at the lake.  She likes the hike in and the lizards/snakes/herons/ospreys/hawks/cormorants/otters, etc.   

            I’m new to this whole parenting thing, and I am still learning a lot.  I work with kids, so that helps some.  I know you can’t force your kid to like the same things you like.  Unless you want them to want to do the exact opposite, that is.  What I truly hope is that, whether she ever likes the actual act of fishing or not, she will like it for the same reason I always liked it when I was a kid: it was something I did with my Dad.  Something filled with weird rituals and camping trips, and rites of passage.  Something to be respected, because, when we fished, we always got along.  The fact that I actually liked the fishing part was just icing on the cake.

            I fished with the princess rod quite a bit that day.  I did a little work with my rods too, no luck.  I even broke my good spinning rod putting it back into the car.  And I didn’t care.  All I could think about was that sweet little face demanding that I put the fish back in the water.  That, and that I needed to buy some more powerbait.  It may have been the best day of fishing I ever had.  My daughter “caught” four gills by the time we left.  I got skunked.