A chubby, speckled-breasted robin is splashing in the
bird bath. Judging by the amount of
spray, he’s thoroughly enjoying his bath, even though it’s not Saturday
night. It’s the heart of the day and the
heat has been building. The fact that
the bird bath sits in the shade of our purple ash likely adds to the robin’s satisfaction.
Although the sky has been clear and pale blue all day,
wisps of vapor have been spreading in from the west for the last hour. Now a few thunderheads are building. You can watch the vapor roiling upward like white
lava tens of thousands of feet high. It’s
a little like revisiting Genesis as these sky mountains rise up. Time will tell
if they form a sky mountain range and begin rumbling with thunder, or whether
they will simply dissipate as the sun sets.
On my morning walk the other day, I saw a single blue chicory
flower. This morning there were hundreds
opened wide to greet the new day of another new season.
I drove north to the big woods yesterday to fish a
memory. It was Stevens Lake, nestled in
amongst the maples just south of where Wisconsin meets Upper Michigan. I hadn’t fished it in fifty or more
years. Strangely, it was the fact that
it was missing from my lake maps book that made me recall fishing it with my
father years ago. Although the publisher
who put the map book together didn’t think it was worth mentioning, I
remembered that we did well on perch and walleyes on that trip so long ago. Maybe the publisher had the heart of a
fisherman and decided to not include the lake because it was a personal
favorite fishing hole. As I turned off
the main road onto the rutted gravel though, I began to think maybe the
publisher wanted to spare others from cringing every time their boat bounced on
the trailer from another pot hole.
But as I pulled into the boat landing and the lake
peaked out from the last corner I rounded, it seemed that all was well with my
selected waters. I got out of the truck
and walked up to the water’s edge. It
looked good. The south shore was covered
with rushes and lily pads as I remembered.
A couple of dozen cabins looked out on the lake. The north shore was tree-lined and a bit
rocky. An eagle soared above, wings
locked, just as a loon warbled from the far shore.
I looked at the posters stapled on the billboard. One was the special regulations for this
particular lake. I noted that walleyes
between 20-24 inches could not be kept.
Good to know. I drove the boat
past the last cabin and slipped in to within casting distance of the
rushes. This felt right. I snapped a black and gold Rapala floating minnow
on my rod and cast towards the shore.
That was what my father and I had used.
The fish hit the lure before I turned the handle a full turn. After a minute of headshaking, the fish came
to net, a beautiful deep bronze flank slipped into the net. But the tape measure said 21 inches, so I
slipped him back into the water after I unhooked him. The next hour proved definitively that despite
my first-cast luck, this was not going to be a fish every cast kind of day.
I decided to bait up another rod so I could fill up
the live box with all of the yellow perch I knew were lined up and just waiting
for me. I cast the line. Before I could slip the handle into a rod
holder, the bobber dipped underneath the surface. I pulled back and felt the weight of a good
fish. I thought at first that it might
be a bass because it was very stubborn about coming in. It wasn’t until the fish was very close to
the boat that it started to make the classic quick, tight circles of a bluegill. My eyes were big as I stretched out the tape
measure from his snout to the tip of his tail – 12 inches. I have never caught a bluegill that large in
my life. I caught an 11 ½ inch bluegill
once, and twice I have filled an entire stringer with bluegills that were all
over 10 inches, but this was a great fish.
I hurried to rebait and cast out again near where Moby had come
from. The bobber went down immediately. This one was closer to nine inches. Normally I would have congratulated myself
with that, but visions of filling up the live well with 12-inch fish faded quickly. For the next hour the crappies wouldn’t leave
me alone. The problem was they were all
just a bit too small to mess with.
I turned my attention back to casting for
walleyes. Just as I was debating
quitting, my pole arced as I set the hook.
Good fish. It was another
walleye. I smiled, but I knew. The tape confirmed it was a twin to my
earlier fish at 21 inches. I slipped
that one too back into the lake. Then I
scooped the two nice bluegills out of live well and back into the lake. I wouldn’t have anything to show others, but
I felt like I got what I came for.
As I pulled out of the boat landing road onto the
gravel a red-coated doe and her two spotted fawns stepped into the road, all
three turned their heads my way simultaneously.
The doe jumped back into the woods with the fawns right behind her. I looked into the woods as I went by and I
saw the two little white tails bouncing deeper into the green.
When I turned back onto the highway and headed home I
took a deep breath. I passed a farmer
chopping hay and breathed even more deeply. I
looked out at the big woods and noted that the fresh green of spring, like the
memories of that fishing trip to this same place with my father, had mellowed.
It is now the deep green of summer. It is not so much a time as a place. It is something and it can be someone. It is all around us. Breathe in deeply.
His Peace <><
Deacon Dan
Photo by wisconsinpictures on Unsplash
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