Alan S. Oser

What is a fisherman without rods, poles, line, tackle box, knives, lures, hooks, net, scraper, pail, sunglasses and sloppy hat?

I have all of these at my camp in Maine. In fact I have eight rods standing up against the cabin wall. Two of them are possibly usable. The others are in various states of disrepair. Most of them have a complicated spinning mechanism that is beyond my skill or understanding. I am not sure how I acquired these rods, but I have never used them. The single rod that is usable by me is small and simple, and probably meant for children.

It hardly matters how much equipment I have because I stopped fishing in our supposedly bass-infested lake many years ago. I caught my last fish in 1978. It was a sunfish, modest in size. A true fisherman would have flung it back immediately into the lake, or “pond” as Maine people call smaller lakes. I might have thrown it back too if I had been able to extract it live from the hook. I tried but failed.

All this is background to my report on the resurrection of my fishing ambitions in the lovely summer of 2008. I feel a need to explain how it came about, what it produced in the way of fish, and what it all meant in a deeper sense. The deeper meaning would have been different if I had caught a fish of substantial size. I might then be able to boast, and would feel compelled to find a deeper meaning in boasting. This has not turned out to be the issue.

The Essayist-fisherman contemplates a hook
that somehow got entangled in his fishing net.

What led me back to fishing was a sense of shame. Too long have I looked at all those unused rods standing in the corner as a perpetual rebuke. I can’t complain that I am too busy to fish. I’m really fairly idle now that my pleasure in the normal outdoor activities of Maine summers – swimming, boating, tennis, hiking – has palled. Reading, eating and drinking have replaced them. Disgusting!

So it’s heigh-ho to the pond with rod and pail late in the afternoon. The water is calm. On its surface water bugs buzz happily. For some reason I am convinced that fish are swimming in profusion close offshore, among them a whopper that is starving for nourishment. I have baited my fishhook carefully with a wiggly night crawler purchased at Audette’s, the local hardware store, and stored for three days in our refrigerator in its cardboard container. The container was confused once or twice with a package of Philadelphia cream cheese, but fortunately no disaster occurred.

Working to free the hook. It will just take some
patience–something the Essayist notably lacks.

The line is cast. It makes a beautiful arc, and plops down twenty yards from shore. A metal sinker, laboriously applied to the line, pulls the baited hook down into the water slowly. I seat myself comfortably in my folding chair and wait expectantly. Nothing happens in a minute or so, so I slowly reel in the line. I reel and reel and still the hook never surfaces. I stand up and continue to reel.

It is sometimes a virtue and sometimes a fault that I am easily bored. In this case it is a virtue because it causes me to inspect the line before too many minutes have passed. Good Lord, there is no line. I am turning an empty spool! What happened to my line? It is gone, hook, line and sinker. I don’t know how. I do know where, however, and recovery is impossible.

We have a problem. How hard can it be to get
a fishing hook disentangled from a fishing net?

Fortunately, I was not using the child’s-sized rod of past successes. I turn now to the nerve-wracking task of getting that rod and line into casting condition. This involves much disentangling, a few nips of my fingers from a fish hook, and some nasty expletives. Eventually I manage to bait the hook with another night crawler and loose yet another magnificent arc high above the water to a point 30 yards from shore. With such a lovely cast I expect an early bite, but this is not forthcoming. Nor is it forthcoming after several additional casts, and I will admit to feeling a bit discouraged. Twenty minutes later I call it a day.

In that much time on a fishing television show I sometimes watch, two grinning and amiably chatting sportsmen aboard a nifty motor launch have already caught half a dozen 16-pounders, and are displaying them before the camera for couch potatoes like me to admire. Not that this is particularly relevant to my efforts in Maine. It is also not relevant to recall that I once went deep-sea fishing off Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn. Half the customers in the boat got seasick and the other half drank beer, while the only two fishermen who caught fish – hefty bluefish, I think – were members of the crew.

But back to my Maine pond. Several more fine casts produced no sign of aquatic life, so I decided to turn to other pursuits in my few remaining weeks in Maine, my $50 all-summer fishing license notwithstanding. Four days later an unexpected incident changed my mind.

Fishing at last, or at least sitting happily on the
dock, the rod cast and the hook in the water.

“What kind of bait did you use?” I called out.

“A jitterbug and a hoolahopper,” he called back. Actually, I heard the word as, approximately, “hoolshlopflaggughrrr,” but at Audette’s later in the day the salesman clarified matters.

Against the front wall in the store, Audette’s displays jitterbugs, hoolahoppers and probably 20 other varieties of lures, some of which I subsequently discovered in my tackle box, never used. By then I had purchased a white jitterbug for $4.75. It would have taken a 20-pound bluefish to swallow it whole, but perhaps the idea was that the bass would bite merely on one of the six medium-sized hooks dangling from the lure and leave the lure itself alone.

Back to the pond I charged. Once again I loosed a splendid cast, and the bobbin plopped down 30 yards from shore. I could see the jitterbug jitterbugging as I pulled in the line, but once again there was no indication of piscatorial awareness. Matters were not helped when I tied a couple of metal sinkers to the line, hoping to find the fish at a deeper level. I did learn from this effort that more line sinks when the sinkers are attached, but the bobbin will keep the hooks floating near the surface. Apparently the thing to do is to place the sinkers near the lure and hooks, and the bobbin much farther up the line. I did this and once again cast off. This time the jitterbug sank deeper, and I was able to pull in slime from the bottom on all six hooks. This was my catch of the day.

To be a true fisherman is never to yield to despair. It is not acceptable to be laughed at by fish. Surely I will catch a hefty bass eventually. It would be nice to report this success to my 9-year-old grandson. Some day he will succeed me, and undoubtedly better me, as an outdoorsman.

Even if I catch nothing, I want the boy to know that I’m willing to keep trying, that success is always a possibility. That is fishing’s deeper meaning for me. I want to hear my grandson say, “Can I go fishing with you this summer, Papa?“ When I hear that, I’ll promise him a new hoolahopper.