Another view

How to catch fish yesterday

BY JOE MCFARLAND

"You should have been here yesterday," the man at the bait shop tells me.

I've heard this before.

"I was," I point out to the smiling man, "and I can tell you, I didn't catch any fish yesterday either."

He looks at me with one of those mixed expressions of sympathy and pain. My grandmother used to ¦look like this before church: I'm a pathetic, lost soul beyond salvation.

All of my life I've been told by fishermen what, exactly, is the secret to catching fish. They all say the same thing. According to every fisherman I've ever met, the fish were always biting great yesterday. Never today. Maybe tomorrow. Probably a few days after I'm gone.

But the fishing today is always terrible. It's a fact of nature. Here is the story of my life, a lifetime spent trying to catch fish which cannot be caught. By destiny, I always choose to fish on the days of the week when it's impossible to catch fish.

"Oh, buddy, you missed it," I hear from the man at the resort where I make my reservations.

"Don't tell me," I answer. "The fish just quit biting yesterday?"

"No. They quit biting two days ago. But the moment you left last year, someone caught a 43-inch muskie. A real beauty. I could still see your tail lights when he brought it up."

I'm used to this.

"Wait. It was a kid who caught it, I think. A girl. Just messing around by the dock."

"Thank you for telling me that."

"No, wait. It was a lady who'd never fished before. I remember her now. She had a cane pole and a piece of string with a paperclip for a hook."

I'm no fool. When I realized there was no point in fishing today, I changed the fundamental nature of all of my fishing trips. Starting this year, whenever I feel like fishing, I'll go yesterday, when things were better. This, of course, requires innovation, since fishing in the past tense is not technically possible; it defies the Theory of Relativity or the Treaty of Versailles. I can't remember which.

Yet I refuse to embrace the facts of nature when it comes to fishing. I will catch yesterday's fish, and I will catch them yesterday. Beginning this year, I'm planning my fishing trips extra early. I've booked reservations in September for a week of October fishing at the Little Vermilion River. It's a brilliant plan. I plan to arrive August 1. I'll sleep in my truck in anonymity. I won't be a registered guest. Nobody will be expecting me at the resort, not even the fish. When October arrives, when the fish quit biting in anticipation of my arrival, I will already have caught yesterday's fish.

Friends, it's that simple. Nevermore will I miss the best fishing, which alway, mysteriously peaks sometime before I show up. I have been humiliated long enough. This year I will catch fish, and I will catch them yesterday.

Joe McFarland is a free-lance writer from Benton.

June 2000    5