Another Post About Fishing

In an older SNL episode, Jim Carrey impersonates Jimmy Stewart and delivers a poem entitled, "Little Trout."  Unfortunately, I cannot find a YouTube plagiarism of the video.  You can watch it here on hulu, but if you would prefer not to do so, so you will have to read the transcript of the poem and imagine it is recited in Jimmy Stewart's voice.

Little Trout

I awoke one day with a taste for trout,

So I got in my boat and I headed out.

He spotted my bait, and began to give chase.

When my hooked ripped into his fishy face.

Then he looked at me like I was his friend.

So I let him go, and went out for a good piece of steak.

This poem makes me laugh every time I hear it.  It is almost as entertaining as real fishing, an activity in which I have been able to engage frequently since the beginning of the month.

Having conquered the mighty trout with hook and worm last spring, I have decided to take up a more snobbish variety of fishing.  At Christmas, with gift certificates from Cabelas, I purchased I fly rod.  Not long ago, I began building my collection of flies, and after my first adventure losing several in weeds, trees, and snapping them off of my tippet when casting, I realized that I would need a great many more.  In my earliest attempts at fly fishing, one of the high school boys with whom I occasionally fish, made an erudite observation: "Golfing and fly fishing are a lot alike.  It is hard to do either without swearing."  But, it is all worth it when you finally catch a fish on the fly line and drag him in. 

I have caught several in this more sophisticated manner over the last few weeks.  While only one was sufficiently large to take up residence in my freezer, I count even the small ones as successes.  Next summer I can worry about size.  This spring my only concern is simply catching anything.  Fly fishing is maddening.

Trout are fun, but the adrenaline producing effect of catching larger fish with the capacity to damage the fisherman holds its own sort of attraction.  Thus, last week I found myself aboard a boat on the Missouri River trying to catch Walleye.  Aside from having lost my pole in the river (a complicated story of which there are competing versions) it was a fantastic day.  Three fishermen caught six walleye large enough to keep and several that went back in the water.  The owner of the boat landed a thirty inch Northern Pike after a mighty battle only to lose him off of the stringer a little later.  Apparently fly fishing is not the only variety of fishing capable of producing obscenities.  

Anyway, the long and the short of it is that I really love fishing.  Sun, cigars, the stink of fish, and the exhaustion of a long day in the sun are good medicine.