Fishing was low on my list of priorities when in the summer of 1997 I took a road trip out west with four close friends. We called it Teets or Bust, an awkward pun on the Teton mountains, and most of us were concerned with being outdoors and away from home. Still, although we all have great memories of hiking and camping together, for me one of my favorites is of a time I was fishing by myself.
From the beginning fishing was a priority for Parzen. David Parzen is a great friend, and packed two of his fishing poles, broken apart in the centers and slipped into the hard, plastic, tubular storage case. He also brought a tackle box full of hooks and lures of whose proper uses he had an adequate though novice knowledge. For the first week and a half of our 5 week trip Parzen's questioning of park rangers concerning good fishing spots was mostly a reason to make jokes, but gradually we all got some fishing fever. Maybe all of us were remembering the other times we'd been fishing. I know I was. Fishing is relaxing and adventurous, and there's a passionate thrill to catching something.
For sixteen years I went with my family for a week each summer to Camp Michigania alumni family camp up near Charlevoix in northern Michigan. Until I marched into my teenage years, when my interests became more interesting, fishing off the dock into Walloon Lake was a ritual activity at Camp. My father had a few rods, probably as old as his childhood, which were brown and weathered and simple, and worked well enough. We fished at dusk off the short white swimming dock. Our shoes made hollow knocks on the boards of the dock, or if we went barefoot our steps sounded like slaps. In our summer-tanned hands we carried the rods, some plastic sand pails, and the small plastic carton full of dirt and nightcrawlers, bought at one of many baitshops in the area.
That container of bait captivated me, as it does most young people, because it had what kids like: dirt and a bunch of slimy worms. Still, as much as worms fascinated me, it was my father, at least until I was a brawny lad of 10 or 12, who had to dig the creatures out of the rich, black soil and cut them up. I remember clearly how some of those worms were carrying eggs. Their bodies had a balloon-like sack in the middle portions where the eggs were stored. Even when I was able to chop up the worms myself, I never felt comfortable making the incision on that sack. That sack had hundreds of little eggs in it, which spilled out when that cut was made, and continued to spill while the worm squirmed and dad poked the hook through its now multiple parts. That slicing was a disgusting scene, but it never seriously occurred to me that we were killing these baby worms in addition to the mothers and fathers. All I needed to see was my hook with some bait on it.
Once the worms were well fastened on our hooks, we'd cast as best and as far as we could out into the lake. Of course we had our share of tangled lines and caught shirts and pants. Occasionally somebody would hook a finger as we swung our rods through the evening air like professional fisherchildren. Dad filled a few buckets with water, waiting for any fish we might catch. I never asked and still don't know what kind of fish we caught. Water depth was only about five feet there, we could see the bottom, and the fish were visible and not more than six inches long. They were sleek grey darts in the shadowy water, and I just kept my sights on the red and white bobber affixed to my line. When that thing bobbed under I yanked the rod hard, and when I finally pulled a fish from the water I could see that nameless fish for what it was. A slippery, sparkly, lean fish, with flapping gills and lost eyes, a hook jammed in its mouth and out a cheek, flipping and convulsing in the air. And I loved it. Only with practice could I momentarily curb my excitement long enough to swing my rod gently over to dad. He took a strong hold of that mighty fish and delicately removed the hook before dropping the fish into the bucket. Once we had caught a few it was fun to look in the bucket and watch them swimming around, sometimes splashing up some water. Every now and then a fish would thrash so violently that he flung himself out of the bucket. When all was tallied up, the lot of us collected four or five fish in a couple of pails, maybe more if we were in good spirits. Then dad poured the fish out of the buckets back into the lake, where they probably showed up the next night for another bite of worm lined hook.
Red and white bobbers, nightcrawler egg sacks, and gleaming little fish summed up my fishing experiences until highschool. Somewhere in the transitory activities of high school, Parzen had acquired an interest in fishing, and being best friends some of that naturally rubbed off on me. He purchased the necessary equipment, rods and reels and lures and hooks, and in the spring he began to check the newspaper for the weeks "Hot Spots." I indulged his enthusiasm a handful of times, consenting to go fishing with him now and again. A couple times we went to a pier in Port Huron for evening walleye fishing. It was an ugly pier across the river from a dirty factory with tall polluting smoke stacks and lots of lights remindful of alien space ships. We never caught anything on those trips.
Another time, when I held firm and refused to go to industrial Port Huron, we went over to Kensington State Park. The park has a little damn that allows a small, shallow river to flow out of the lake. As we set up at the side of the creek, we fit our lines with sparkly lures instead of worms, and cast out to the patches of seaweed where fish might be lurking. Suddenly fishing was all fun again. The fish looked just like Camp Michigania fish: small, thin, sparkly, kicking. And they were coming fast. In an afternoon Parzen caught nearly twenty, I caught twelve or fifteen, and another guy we were with hooked half a dozen or so. We didn't have a bucket to keep our catches, so we just kept throwing them back. Maybe we caught the same three fish a dozen times, I'll never know, but we caught a lot and that's what counts. It's the feel of a bite on the line that gets the pulse up.
When all these memories poured in while we were in the mountains, I couldn't help but to see if we could catch something. Parzen took his rod out a few times in the Tetons, but he never caught much and I didn't take up the rod myself. Then we got to Glacier National Park, where we had a day to explore before taking a three night back country trip. The sun shined bright and strong, kept company by pleasant soft clouds, so we sought to quench our growing urge to catch big fish. On the eastern side of the park there is a lodge next to a nice blue lake, and though our wilderness instincts abhorred lodgings, we went because the lake supposedly had fish in it. All five of us piled into a rented row boat, tossed in the poles and the tackle, and headed off. (Photo 1) I forget the name of the lake. It wasn't enormous, but it would take you a good couple hours to canoe it's circumference. We didn't. At intervals along the shore opposite the lodge rivers of varying size spilled into the lake, and in our expert opinions these spots were best for fishing. With small waves lapping against the sides or our boat, someone, not me, laboriously rowed us toward the most prominent river, which was all of ten feet wide. Just where the water flowed in was a shallow area, where gravelly sediment had been deposited, and we were thus prevented from rowing close enough to the mouth, where the good fish swim. So Parzen and I, sun struck and enthusiastic, decided we'd hop out on a sand bar and walk up toward the river mouth, because we wanted to catch some fish, and cook some fish, and eat those fish that we were gonna catch. Parzen had packed his filet knife; we were prepared. Our rowboat beached up on the sandbar, the two of us stepped out into three or four inches of balls cold water, took our rods and pushed the rowboat back off to wander off. We found some stones near the mouth that rose above the icy water and perched there as well as we could, balancing and setting up our poles. (Photo 2) We didn't even get a nibble that day, and I had my doubts as to whether our fishing skills were up to the task. But the experience was still fun, and the next day we had a sweet backcountry route planned on the less travelled western side of the park. We were to hike along the edge of Logging Lake, which is not only beautiful and large, but also chock full of fish. Parzen strapped his fishing tube on his pack, and with the addition of an american flag doo-rag he looked like a GI Joe heavy trooper armed with a portable missile launcher. The mission was clear: seek, catch and eat lots of good fat fish. Not to mention enjoy a beautiful trail and relax heavy duty at the camp sites.
As soon as we hit the trail things started to turn sour. Whether due to previous periods of rain (were there any?), the forest of this western side (it's just nature), or the return of a Biblical plague, our trail was a heavy mosquito feeding zone. The 100% deet bug repellent, potent and arguably toxic, flowed freely onto our skin and clothes. If it even held off the blood suckers a few moments we were lucky, and never did the swarms around our bodies disperse. Immediately the motto of the trip became forget dehydration, forget relaxation, we're not taking any water breaks. We tore through that jungle until we reached the campsite, where some twisted devil in the backs of our minds figured there might be some mosquito relief. Think again. The only thing worse than hiking through mosquito infested land is standing around in it. We set up the tents right quick and jumped straight in.
Now, I like hiking, but I love getting places, and to not be able to enjoy my campsite is intolerable. Our site was right on the lake, and as Parzen certainly wasn't going to give up prime fishing opportunities, he was out in a flash with the poles. I joined him. Decked out in our rain gear, our best protection against bug bites, we found a couple of good spots on shore and started fishing. The threat of bugs receded as the thrill of casting took over. It was tricky drawing the rod back only far enough so the hook wouldn't catch in the brush just behind and to the sides of me, and then flick it forward with enough strength to cast a good distance. Still, I was doing well, and I had daydreams of success. Then I cast the upper half of my rod about fifteen feet into the lake. You're not generally supposed to do that.
These neat two part rods are fine for travelling, but if they're not connected damn tightly, amateur fisherman beware! The fishing line feeding out of the reel toward the bottom of the rod does indeed go through eye holes on both parts of the rod, so I still had a life line to my upper portion. However, just reeling the line wouldn't work, because another major threat to beginning fisherman, who don't always reel at the right pace or right time, is getting the hook caught on the bottom. Sometimes just a tug will free your line, but of course on this occasion I had hooked the ground good. Maybe having half a rod down there with the hook had something to do with it. Maybe not. In any case, I had already cost Parzen a few lures by irretrievably catching the hook on the bottom and having to cut the line, and he was not about to lose an entire rod on my pathetic account. As drizzling rain finally started to extinguish the mosquito terror, I stripped to my boxer shorts and waded into the chilly dark water to get the damned rod. I tugged the legs of my shorts up as far as I could while I went deeper and deeper in, finally resorting to tippy tip tip toe walking to save my shorts from a damp fate. Catching the rod in my hand, I worked it around and finally yanked it from the ground, quickly scurrying back to shore thereafter. With this dangerous excitement behind us, no bites yet, and rain coming on, we retired to our tent. But I'm no quitter. I didn't feel like reading books in a stuffy tent like the rest of them. The rain was steady and slow, so I grabbed a rod and moved over to another good casting site. Empty casts occupied my time for a while, leaving me to my thoughts, which were few.
Then I got a bite.
I knew it was a bite.
The bottom of a lake doesn't jerk you that hard.
"I GOT ONE I GOT ONE PARZEN GET OUT HERE WHAT DO I DO I GOT ONE GUYS I GOT ONE I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO PARZEN GET OUT HERE I GOT ONE I GOT ONE." My heart was soaring as I called for my friends to guide me to success and witness this awesome sight. It had been over a year since I had caught anything, and never had I a bite this big. I tugged that rod, and cranked that reel until a blessed thick fish emerged from the water. It flapped in the air just like the ones in Walloon Lake, but it was twice as fat, twice as long, and twice as heavy. Where the fuck is Parzen? I hear him rustling about in the tent, "Rock, you got one you got one hang on I'm coming hang on to it!" And from the other tent, "Rock got one did he get one holy shit Rock got one?" "PARZEN PARZEN COME ON WHAT DO I DO I GOT ONE I GOT ONE PARZEN GET OUT HERE." Finally he comes rushing out of the tent to take command of the operation. I calmed down a bit, still beaming a big fat smile while the fish got tired of fighting and just dangled from the line. We talked about keeping it to cook that night, but didn't want to deal with preparing it, especially if we weren't going to catch any more. Parzen wiggled the fish off the hook, and I said goodbye to my special catch as he tossed it back in the lake (later we learned some things about fishing, and one of them is don't throw fish back in the water. Hold them delicately under the water until they regain the strength and confidence to swim away by themselves.)
Well, this was real fishing. No docks, no piers, no fucking factories. We're on Logging Lake in northern Montana, and I just hooked a fat old fish, what turned out to be a Lake Trout. My catch rallied the troops, and soon we were taking turns at the rod. I had broken the barrier between us and them. Those fish had held out as well as they knew how, but they couldn't resist the sparkle of our spinner lures. Maybe once the first one was set loose the others saw there was no serious harm and started jumping on the hooks. Whatever it was, dinner was on. Parzen caught a fish that evening, and Dan caught another one.
Of course, now that we had food on the mind, this business of fishing got a lot nastier. Parzen knocked the fish against a log a few times to kill it, and then under a modest drizzle he searched for a good fileting surface. The fish Dan caught faced a more punishing death, as Dan, Aaron, and Parzen worked together to knock the thing out. They tried banging it against the log, but the fish wouldn't die. The most memorable scene I remember is Aaron taking swings at the fish with Parzen's fishing rod case. Whack after whack trying to kill this fish. (Photo 3) Sooner or later the job was done. On to fileting.
Camping sites don't have tables, and the best Parzen could do was a nearly flat stone on the ground. He whipped out the fileting knife and set to work. I have a photo of him crouched down over that stone in his bright yellow rain suit bought on the road for a few dollars, fileting this fish as best as he could. (Photo 4) What that amounted to was hacking off its two sides and throwing the ravaged remains back in the lake. None of the rest of us knew any different, so that was that. Lacking butter, we decided we'd cut up the fish and boil it. And that's what we did. We boiled hunks of fish flesh with the skin and fins still on. Then we ate this unsavory meal. It was the coolest thing to be cooking up some fresh caught fish, but the finished product wasn't so pretty. Aaron hunkered down stewing our fish on a camp stove, under a shoddy kitchen tarp which failed in its intended use as mosquito protection. The bugs were fierce, and so was the fish. As the rest of us delivered our spoons to the cook, Aaron apportioned out the pieces of boiled grey and flaky fish. It got to be a joke, because nobody wanted to eat the pieces with fins on them. There's a rumor that Aaron kept the good pieces to himself while Dan had to take the brunt of the fin and skin dinner. I was sitting next to Aaron, and my lips are sealed. There can be no waste in the backcountry, so we finished off our catch with a lot of help from the spice kit.
The next morning we hiked as quickly as the previous day. By mid-afternoon we arrived at our campsite, where we would spend two nights. This site was also on the lake, and right near a little creek. A little trail led to a nice bare piece of shoreline that was quickly deemed fishable. Success is rarely immediate in fishing, but we must have been on a role. Parzen quickly snagged some fish, and my line hooked its fair share as well. However, for some reason that day we didn't feel like boiling more fish with fins, so we were just throwing them back. Surprisingly, that last part wasn't as easy as it should have been.
Some fish really chomp down on the hook, and the hook can enter and exit the fish in any manner. I deferred to Parzen's expertise in unhooking fish, but even when he took a firm hold of the slimy fish the hook was not easily dislodged. I became nervous because I could see the fish suffering. It stopped wriggling after a minute, but it was still on the hook and out of the water. "Get it off get it off," I moaned. I felt like we were irresponsible fisherman. I knew we were. I didn't want to kill it, though we'd killed one the day before. This day was just a fish for fun day, and seeing this fish on the edge of death got to me. Finally Parzen unhooked it and laid it in the water a few feet out where we could see it sink to the bottom and lay there. I just watched it, waiting for it to move, but it didn't. I decided I was done fishing. I didn't know enough about it, and what we were doing was cruel. Then the fish started to float up a bit and slowly swim away. As if to check to see if it was really alive, I tried poking at it with my finger, and immediately it darted away. Apparently fish are hardier creatures than I gave them credit for. So, what the heck, I didn't kill it. Let's keep fishing and just be sure to be careful and efficient getting the fish off the hook.
Unfortunately fate had other ideas. After a few smooth catch and releases, I found myself in the same panicky jam. This time after a few minutes without success, I got really worried and regretful. Maybe this fish wasn't going to make it. Why hadn't I stopped without innocent blood on my hands? Fearing for the fishes life we cut the line and tossed it back with a hook still dangling from its mouth. After a few moments it recovered from shock and swam away. With a hook in its mouth. That's no way to live, I thought. Even though it was alive it was going to live from now on with a sharp metal spike through the cheek. A product of human sport, or maybe just my irresponsibility. If I don't know how to handle the fish, why am I fishing? Because it is a thrill to catch a live animal. To capture life as if we lived in the wilderness and had to do it. It's a primitive pleasure. But I don't live in the wilderness, and obviously I didn't have the skills or knowledge of one who did, so stop pretending.
I stopped fishing that day, deciding for the second time that I was done for good. That night a family came by boat to the campsite. They had been fishing all day and had caught a few large fish to cook for dinner. We watched them build a fire and fry up their fish in a skillet. They caught and cleaned it with care, and now were preparing to enjoy the fruits of their toil. We ate macaroni. The fish looked a lot better, and a lot more satisfying.
By the time we got back to the first camp site, I wasn't thinking too much about fishing. Despite the mosquitos, the trip was going well. Another couple was already at the site, and after a short conversation we discovered they had caught some fish for dinner. Temptation set in. I took a glance in the lake and saw a nicely gutted fish teathered to the shore. It looked alive in the glistening water, except it had no insides and was roped to a log. The skill by which the fish was cleaned and tied up in the lake, a natural refrigerator, showed that this couple knew their stuff. We talked some about fish, and when he mentioned that some morons had just left a fish carcass right next to shore we played innocent. "Those morons, can you believe it?" He offered to show us how to filet, so Parzen and I eagerly became his students. He brought out his fish from the lake, laid it on a log and went at it. Make an incision just behind the head, only deep enough to hit the spine. Then smoothly wiggle and slide the knife down the length of the spine, cutting off all the meat. At the tail end, flip the filet over so it's sitting still in the skin, then use the same technique to wriggle under the filet and slice it away from the skin. When he finished he had two beautiful bright orange filets.
Now that I knew a real skill, I thought maybe I could fish again. Maybe now I wouldn't feel so bad about fucking things up. Or maybe I wouldn't fuck them up any more. Parzen was way ahead of me, and with luck we immediately reeled in a vibrant fish. (Photo 5) I attempted to filet the first one. The guy told us we didn't have to kill the fish first, and for some reason we decided not to. I laid this fish down on a log and just sliced into it. It quivered a bit but I just held firm and sliced a nice filet. After doing the other side, I just continued on to the next fish. We took a picture of us holding the filets. A great shot. (Great Shot) I was so proud of what I'd done. I'd fileted two fish, and I'd done it well. I wasn't just an irresponsible punk, I was a fisherman. We wanted to fry our fish like we'd seen it done, but we still had no butter. We were going to use some of the couple's butter, but they had just used it up. So I sorrowfully cut up my pretty filets so we could have another fish stew. But this time there were no fins or skin. The fish was soft and light and we thought it was one of the best meals we'd had all trip. Fresh fish, caught and cooked by us five ourselves.
Since then nobody can believe that we didn't kill the fish before fileting them. I can't believe it myself.
THE END
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Me and P takin it easy on the rowboat. Back to essay Top |
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Parzen doing his best in ass cold wateer Back to essay |
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Aaron and Dan going hammer style on their fish. Back to essay |
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Parzen in his yellers doing a crude filet job. Back to essay |
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That's our fish! Back to essay |
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And that there's our filets. Back to essay |