It worked out to about $10 a fish. And that was just for the fishing license -- I did not have to pay, personally, for the boat, the captain, the bait and other such essentials to a day-long bass fishing trip. That was all supplied by my friend Don, who hosts about 10 of us on such an outing, on Long Point Bay, every summer.
Now, when I say he does this every summer, I am being more presumptuous than I should be. Don keeps careful minutes, each trip, and the minutes always point out that each and every one of us, with the exception of mine host himself, is on probation.
It's not completely clear what we would have to do in order to lose our probationary rights, but none of us are eager to test the boundaries, at the risk of finding out. So, for example, we agree that Don always catches the biggest fish, and that it would be foolish to actually measure the bass, since Don's catch is demonstrably larger.
This is the only time, all year, that I fish. One day. Actually, by the time we made the trek to Port Rowan, and then took the two-hour boat ride to where the fish were allegedly biting, we probably got no more than about four hours of genuine fishing in.
In that time, I caught three fish, and watched several others escape my line. It's a thoughtful moment, when you realize a bass is smarter than you are. But I did triumph over our finned foes, three times in a day.
While this sounds less than stellar, I actually wound up in the middle of the pack, when it came to production this year. Everyone caught at least one fish, but for some, that was their total. No one caught their personal limit; Dave, our "sleeper" this year, caught nothing for about two and a half hours, and then landed (boated?) five in the last hour and a half to take the title.
This may not be exactly how it appears in the minutes of the meeting, however. Don has a way of massaging the facts, and may, in fact, wind up as the superior fisherman of record. Who are we probationers to argue?
All in all, this is an unusual day. It's always on a weekday, so except for two or three of the assembled multitude who are retired, for the rest of us it carries that special sense of playing hooky. We should be working; instead, to quote an ancient phrase, we have "gone fishin".
We all take along some edibles, which are served starting around 8 a.m. -- and comprise a most unusual breakfast. Venison summer sausage, for example, pickled eggs, limburger cheese with sweet onions; cheese curds (cheese is big with these guys), suicide pepperoni. Not your standard healthy breakfast, but it seems just right, when you are skimming (well, in this boat, perhaps "ploughing" is the more apt phrase) across the waters of Lake Erie.
We get to the area where the fish are hanging out, today - how the captain knows, we don't ask... it would be like asking a Mason to reveal secrets of the order -- and we fish.
Actually, we cast out our lines, and reel them in. Pretty much everything else, except for the eating and drinking part, is handled by the captain. He puts the bait on the hooks, he replaces lost hooks and sinkers, he nets the fish. We take the credit... or give it to Don.
On the way home, we stop at a place where the owners have built a niche businesses, cleaning fish for the likes of us.
Then we finish the homeward trip (this year in a borrowed 1977 camper van with a designated driver), knowing the feast that awaits us once Don fires up the barbecue and concocts his secret bass seasoning.
One bit of that fresh-caught fish, and there is no doubt in anyone's mind that Don caught the most, the biggest, perhaps the only fish of the day! Let the record show it.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Evening is for the birds
It's a remarkable sight.
Every evening, between 7:30 and 8 p.m., starlings congregate in the giant, old poplar in the field behind our home. They arrive singly, or in small groups, or in flocks of a hundred or more.
The first to come settle on the top, leafless branches of the dying tree. They are soon joined by others, and the noise begins... not singing, because these are starlings, after all, but their best efforts at chirping.
The first large flock to arrive is an amazing sight, as a hundred or more birds glide across the sky, and then swoop to their chosen perches. Then another flock, and another, until the tree contains more than a thousand loud birds, at a conservative estimate.
Sometimes, they spill over into other nearby trees, including our spruces, but if we clap our hands, they soar up out of the spruce trees and elbow their way into spaces on the poplar.
We try to imagine what they are doing in this nightly gathering. Reporting in? Sharing information about the best places to find edible insects? Or is it a singles bar for starlings?
They arrive over the course of a half hour or so; by the end of the exercise, the tree is quivering like a wet Labrador, even though no other tree nearby shows any movement at all.
The noise hits maximum level, everyone is chattering at once, and suddenly, on some signal that you know humans are never going to figure out, they are off, again. This tree is not their night-time perch... it's their after-work pub. They spend anything from forty minutes to 30 seconds, for the latest-comers, and then they are off to destinations we know not of.
It is not rare to see a lone starling or two soar in just as the crowd is departing. These tail-end Charlies never land, they simply tag along at the rear of one of the new flocks heading off to -- to what? A better bar, or a starling restaurant, now that they have had their pre-dinner cocktail?
It's a fascinating phenomenon, all the more so because it lends itself to no easy explanation. Anything we try to figure out smacks of blatant anthropomorphism, so it's probably better to go all the way and call the popular tree Cheers for the Birds.
Whatever the inspiration, it's loud, it's fraught with danger for human observers under the flight paths of these thousand-plus birds, and its absolutely intriguing.
Plenty of people don't have any affection for starlings... I'm thinking they might change their minds if they saw them in this unusual behaviour. Or, they might simply have a dry cleaning bill of major proportions.
Every evening, between 7:30 and 8 p.m., starlings congregate in the giant, old poplar in the field behind our home. They arrive singly, or in small groups, or in flocks of a hundred or more.
The first to come settle on the top, leafless branches of the dying tree. They are soon joined by others, and the noise begins... not singing, because these are starlings, after all, but their best efforts at chirping.
The first large flock to arrive is an amazing sight, as a hundred or more birds glide across the sky, and then swoop to their chosen perches. Then another flock, and another, until the tree contains more than a thousand loud birds, at a conservative estimate.
Sometimes, they spill over into other nearby trees, including our spruces, but if we clap our hands, they soar up out of the spruce trees and elbow their way into spaces on the poplar.
We try to imagine what they are doing in this nightly gathering. Reporting in? Sharing information about the best places to find edible insects? Or is it a singles bar for starlings?
They arrive over the course of a half hour or so; by the end of the exercise, the tree is quivering like a wet Labrador, even though no other tree nearby shows any movement at all.
The noise hits maximum level, everyone is chattering at once, and suddenly, on some signal that you know humans are never going to figure out, they are off, again. This tree is not their night-time perch... it's their after-work pub. They spend anything from forty minutes to 30 seconds, for the latest-comers, and then they are off to destinations we know not of.
It is not rare to see a lone starling or two soar in just as the crowd is departing. These tail-end Charlies never land, they simply tag along at the rear of one of the new flocks heading off to -- to what? A better bar, or a starling restaurant, now that they have had their pre-dinner cocktail?
It's a fascinating phenomenon, all the more so because it lends itself to no easy explanation. Anything we try to figure out smacks of blatant anthropomorphism, so it's probably better to go all the way and call the popular tree Cheers for the Birds.
Whatever the inspiration, it's loud, it's fraught with danger for human observers under the flight paths of these thousand-plus birds, and its absolutely intriguing.
Plenty of people don't have any affection for starlings... I'm thinking they might change their minds if they saw them in this unusual behaviour. Or, they might simply have a dry cleaning bill of major proportions.
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