Rick Cronin: Plan B
My friend, John, was out in his field yesterday on snowshoes working up his arm strength, casting his heavy tarpon rod. He will meet his son, Jessie, later this month in the mangrove backwaters of southwest Florida, far from all this snow, hoping to connect with a silvery saltwater missile of a fish. The Red Sox pitchers and catchers have also reported to Florida. Spring training is under way for baseball and fishermen.
Last year at this time I was planning my “fishing trip of a lifetime.” Ron and I had the chance to fish our way home to Maine from California. We had all the fishing and exotic western scenery we could stand on that memorable trip. Maybe a little more than we could stand. By the end of the summer my right arm, the important one for right handed pitchers and fly fisherme,n had just about fallen off. I could barely get my hand above shoulder high.
So this winter there were consultations with doctors, tests, physical therapy, surgery, and now more physical therapy. All that lead to the first inklings of a Plan B. Plan B was a spinning rod.
Plan B had always been lurking in the backyard of my rational mind. I live in Belfast and Ron and I drive two to three hours every chance we get to fish over some of the best brook trout and land-locked salmon fishing in the country. Glorious remote ponds and wild rivers that can match any that we fished on our trip from California. But only 10 minutes from my front door is great bass fishing. All the cool kids are doing it. Jeff heads out in the evening with his kayak and is fishing in no time flat. Ed fishes for them on his favorite pond with a fly rod — right behind his house. Paul and Ken never drive more than 15 minutes for great bass fishing. Harvey's happy as a clam right here in Waldo County. These are all fine, upstanding, decent friends who happily fish for bass. Even the famous fly fisherman, Lefty Kreh, comes to Maine not for the brook trout, but for small mouth bass fishing.
I could be doing that, too. I could be a bass fisherman. I'd be saving hundreds of dollars on gas, hours of my semi-precious time that wouldn't be wasted driving, and I'd never have to lift my hand over my head again. Just a side arm flick of the wrist and the bait would be flying toward a lurking monster. I'd be home in bed at 1 a.m., not getting a pot roast sandwich at Dysarts.
I'd have to learn a whole new language of rattle baits and poppers. Maybe I'd finally “call now!” and take up the TV offer for the “Mighty Bite” , “the only proven five-sense fishing lure system!” “Land the Lunkers!”
How could I have ignored those exclamation points between innings of Red Sox games for all these years. It's starting to sound magical. What could be nicer than poking around the islands of Lake St. George as the sun sets? What could be more exciting than the explosion of a bass after your bait? It would be like getting attacked by a tiger without the unpleasantness of their teeth on your neck.
But, there's a little voice reminding me of what I love. What is it about first seeing a fish in a clear stream? There's the quiet search, section by section of moving water. There's the watery kaleidoscopic distortions of rocks and bottom. And then there is the moment that you realize what you're seeing has just moved and it's a little darker and more fishlike than it's surroundings. For a moment you stop breathing as if you could be quiet enough to hear the fish. There's the care of putting a fly in the right spot so that it drifts like a real insect over the upturned eyes of a salmon. Then the fish's easy drift up to the surface and the sip. It's not at all like being eaten by a tiger, but it does have it's own elegant excitement.
I guess I can never really give up my affection for that kind of fishing, but this little rotator cuff problem has opened my eyes to other possibilities. When the Lord closes a door, He opens a little window. The doctor assures me that in three months I'll be able to cast even an eight-weight fly rod without any pain. That's May. But this summer I'm going to put some fresh line on my spinning rod and visit some of the beautiful little ponds right in my own back yard. Who knows maybe I'll land a lunker.
Rick Cronin fishes in Maine and reports on why the big ones got away.
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