For the last two years that I’ve come up to Kellerman’s I’ve tried to better myself and to leave having developed a new skill. Last year, for example, I learned how to boat. I took my boating safety course, I mastered the route to and from the marina and I figured out how to drive the thing. I ended the summer feeling that I not only helped other people to learn, but that I improved myself as well. This year my project also concerns the water and is motivated by my own efforts to, in the words of The Offspring, “tie my own rope”. In the summer of 2009 I’m aiming to become competent at catching and cleaning my own fish.
To some of you, dear readers, this may seem like a simple task. Go out, throw the hook in the water until le poisson (le poisson, he he he, haw, haw, haw) bites, reel it in, wait for it to die and then cook it. Well, my friends, let me tell you that it is not that easy -- at least not for me.
My first hurdle doesn’t even concern the fish. The worm. It’s all squigly and wrigly and slimy and, well, I feel bad for putting it on a hook. I have to mentally prepare just to pull it our of the styrofoam container in which he/she/it resides. Once I do get him/her/it out and into my hand, getting it fastened on the hook proves to be a special challenge. For some unknown reason, as soon as I pierce it with my “chemically sharpened” Japanese hook it writhes and twists and becomes a ball of worm meat. It’s like somehow the worm doesn’t like what I’m doing to it. This resistance makes it hard for me to initiate the second (and vital) piercing, partly because it is scrunched up but mostly because I’m squealing like the proverbial little girl (note: most of the little girls I know don’t scream as much as I do). After apologizing to the worm for the discomfort I’m causing: “don’t worry. relax. this will all be over soon” and re-focussing myself, I’m usually able to secure monsieur/madame worm. Having done so and with a quick cast (which is remarkably easy if you can hit a forehand or backhand decently) into the water he/she/it goes.
At this point, I can see why so many people like to fish. Standing there on the dock by yourself, staring meditatively into the dark water and watching -- rather feeling -- for any taps on the pole. I like this part of it very much and it is here that fishing and I are quite agreeable. It is also a time when there really is nothing else to do. You stand (or sit), you listen and you watch. I don’t think that I even think. The complexity of this moment -- the paradox between doing nothing yet having great focus and anticipation -- is something that I only realize after the fact. It is being ‘in the zone’ in exactly the same way that I have felt it in sport: heightened sensitivity, effortless focus, un-self-conscious action. It is only in writing about it that I start to notice it. Weird.
Well, eventually this serenity comes to an end. When you feel the tap-tap-tap, it is time to spring into action and to set the hook. Apparently I am weak. My first dozen or so ‘sets’ were terrible and I spent more time feeding the fish than catching them. It’s remarkable how hard to need to flick the rod into the air in order to lodge that razor sharp piece of steel into the roof of the fish’s mouth. It is here that you realize how violent an act fishing really is. You are, with real force, impaling bone and cartilage with metal.
When you do manage to hook a fish it is quite fun bringing it in. You reel, it pulls, you reel some more, you win. Your prize comes up and out of the water and onto the dock beside you. It is here that the horror truly begins...
