The Perpetual Uncertainty of Fishing

I admire anglers who slice through their fishing life like the bow of a steel-hulled ship through a gently rolling ocean. You know the guys: not so much brimming with confidence as constructed with it, wholly and entirely. They step onto boat docks at oh-dark-thirty with a John Wayne swagger, their mouths set tight against doubt, their eyes vanquishing uncertainty like flinty lasers. Their noses are always slightly aloft, as though sniffing the air for weakness. They already know they’re coming in with limits, or winning the derby, or catching the lake record today. 

Me? I ain’t that guy. My tackle box is full of lures and doubt. My compass heading is You Sure About That? When waves lap at my boat they taste vulnerability. 

Don’t get me wrong. I have plenty of confidence as an angler. I just don’t always have a ton of confidence in the fish. I have been humbled way too many times to ever embark on a trip with the firm certainty that I will return to the dock with coolers stacked with limits, or really, anything more than chapped lips and a sunburn. 

Remember that great scene in The Notebook, when, in frustration, Noah is pleading with Allie, “What do you want? What do you want?!” and all she can answer is, “I have to go”? He’s left mystified by her obfuscation. Well, there are plenty of days when I’m Noah and the fish are Allie. 

Let me backtrack a moment. Recently, I have been having some days where it does seem like I may have figured it out. I’m finding fish, getting them to bite, putting a few on ice. Yet just typing that fills me with an angst as gnarly as the funk that emanates from my fish box. Some anglers? Their jaws would be a little more firmly set, their faces defaulting into a smug sort of half-smile drivers in car commercials get just before they speed off down an empty road in a shiny new sports car. Their fishing spirit animal would be a “Jag - U -Ar”. Mine- I can’t help it- is a possum in that roadway and it’s about to get flattened. I have a tough time basking in long-term fishing success because I know how fish can be.

Here’s the thing: fishing is a lot like life in that, you can only get so far on bluff and bravado. And who would want it any other way? There is an old episode of the Twilight Zone where a gambler dies. In his new domain, life is pretty much the same as it was before, except he can’t stop winning. Pool, cards, betting, you name it. The only thing he fails at is losing, and he begins to get bored. He begins to try to lose. He can’t. The tonic of winning is suddenly distilled to where it has no taste at all and that’s when he realizes, he’s not in heaven, he’s in hell.  

And I think that’s my actual point here: the perpetual uncertainty of fishing makes literally every single catch thrilling to me. I don’t even have to be the one reeling it in. Most of the time, I’m not. Yet I am still ecstatic, grateful and transcendently relieved every time a fish hits the deck, because I know how fleeting good days can be. I don’t ever want to take it for granted. I’m not sure I’m even genetically capable of that. Those who can? Who are? More power to ‘em. Me, I’m forever The Notebook’s Noah, venturing out humbly on each new trip with the same question in my head: “What do you want”, hoping to hear back nothing more than “...today, a Frog Pattern Speedy Shiner top-lined at 2.5 mph, my love”.