My Fishing Line

Despite popular belief, fishing is not entirely about fish. Fishing is about the experience or in my case, the perceived experience. Some days I can catch about as many fish while casting in my own back yard. I can live with that, as long as I don’t lose too many lures.
State records being removed from my expectations, I took a day off and headed for the lake. In Suwanee I made a stop at one of the local bait shops to get my annual fishing license and an essential chocolate cupcake.
A drive-by census of my regular fishing spots ended me up below Kentucky Dam with the snaggers and the bucket packers. The Fish and Wildlife man was standing at the top of the steps leading down to the water so I asked him as I approached if he was checking fishing licenses. I had just invested $15 dollars for my orange card, the least he could have done was look at it.
But, “No,” he said, “I’m doing a survey on krill, I may want to talk to you when you come back up.” I said “Okay,” and continued down the steps.
“Krill?” I thought, looking at my 6 pound test line, “Isn’t that something that whales eat?”
I’d heard the name and probably seen the fish but I was among seasoned fisherman and this was not the time or the place to show your ignorance. I figured I’d look it up when I got home and then I could pretend I knew it all along.
I made my way down the long stairway to the waterline where it was more-or-less elbow-to-elbow fishing. I have a real problem with #8 treble hooks whizzing by my ear so I moved some seventy-five feet down stream from the nearest snagger and laid claim to a small group of semi-flat-topped rocks.
I flipped a brand new green and orange spinner out into the swirling waters and almost immediately the line back lashed on the real. The lure sank to the bottom as I untangled the mess. This was the death sentence for the lure as I snapped off the line.
I sat down on the least pointed rock I could find, not recently painted by water birds, and replaced the line on the real.
While everyone else fished and the wildlife man did his survey, I inventoried my tackle box, and found that all of last years’ empty bait packages were still there. The white jigs I had bought in September were now orange having rusted in the bottom of the box. They would have been handy right then, but I tied on yet another brand new spinner bait and continued casting for half an hour or so, with barely a bite.
Following a cast, I pulled up the slack and felt stiff resistance at the other end. It was heavy, I estimated probably 500 pounds of trophy limestone. I was about to select something from my list of disgruntled outbursts, when it began to swim off with my lure.
This fish showed no excitement, but had every indication of something large, as if I’d hooked a pick-up truck slowly backing out of my driveway. I held my ground as it headed back upstream toward the snaggers.
The seldom heard drag brake released a length of line making that little noise that tells everyone else, “Hey, look at this!” I glanced up to see at least a couple of other guys who had stopped fishing to watch the action. I assumed my best “American Sportsman” stance as I took in some line imagining wild surface action and slow motion camera shots. It was my show now and there would be no commercial breaks.
But the fish changed it’s mind and went deep again and straight out in front of me. Again the drag buzzed as he took the line from the reel. I felt a little like the dog who chases cars; now that I got one, what am I going to do with it?
Again, I took up the line, and again he came closer to the surface. It occurred to me at that point that the lure was only a 1/16 ounce spinner, and I marveled at the stresses that it was under…
Instantly the line went slack and then gave a slight tug. I raised the rod up quickly and reeled to maintain the hook set, when out of the water popped this four inch stripper dangling from the end of my two inch spinner bate. If ever I wanted a fish to fall off the hook, this was it. I thought about the snaggers and turned to block their view of “Nemo” as I removed the hooks and dropped the fish back into the water.
I made a couple more casts and decided to leave. The Fish and Wildlife man had already left so I was relieved that my vast knowledge of krill would not be put to the test.
I opted to forgo the stairway some hundred feet away and headed straight up the steep rip-rap. It’s always farther up than it is down so I was really out of breath when I got to the top, where a lady in the parking lot asked me, “Did you have any luck?”
“Yes ma’am, I did”, I gasped. “I got all of the way…back up here… without having a heart attack.”
“Well, that’s something!”, she laughed. “At least your not bragging about some fish that got away.” She was obviously a fisherman’s wife.
Later, sitting on the porch bench at the bait shop, I turned up a cold bottle of grape soda while out-of-town anglers fueled up their bass boats and rearranged their coolers. These guys were seriously into losing lures, I thought, as I flipped through a complimentary sport fishing guide, covertly searching for krill.