Spring fishing trip tests angler’s positive thinking

Shortly after sunup, Hank Lyons had second thoughts about fishing when he noticed ice in the backyard birdbath. “Too cold… and too rough,” he thought with a glance at the trees already tossing in the wind. “Lakes haven’t warmed up any; a fish would freeze to death if it came up to clean off now. I’d just be fooling myself in this weather.”

Angler optimism, however, overcame ambivalence. Pouring a second cup of coffee, Hank told himself, “You never know ’til you go” and “you sure can’t catch ’em at home.” But no sooner was his attitude adjusted when his wife, who had gone outside to fetch the wind-flung newspaper, burst through the backdoor. “My God, it’s cold out!” she exclaimed. “That wind’s like ice. You’re not going fishing are you?”

Thus began a series of encounters that tested Hank’s power of positive thinking. At the filling station, where he stopped to top off the outboard’s fuel tank, the attendant quipped, “What you need today is a saifuel tank, the attendant quipped, “What you need today is a sailboat.”

Likewise at the bait shop: “Your fingers’ll freeze off sewing on a bait today,” said the woman doling out a dozen smelts.

“It’d be worth it if I caught a few fish,” Hank replied.

“If you do you’ll be the first I’ve heard of anyone catching a fish since ice-out,” came the candid reply. Walking to his truck, Hank thought, “Why is it that the truth always hurts?”

So it was at the crossroads store handy to the lake. No sooner did Hank step through the door when the storekeeper recognized him with: “Are you serious? I thought you had this April Fool fishing out of your system.”

“I do,” said Hank. “I just came down here to buy a can of WD 40 and a package of Slim Jims off you, and to run the kinks out of the outboard.”

“Oh sure,” the storekeeper answered through a chuckle. “Well, I’ll guarantee that if you sit in that boat for long today, you’ll have some kinks in you.”

“That’s why they make Advil and Ben Gay,” Hank countered as he left.

Within a mile or so of the store, the avid outdoorsman pulled to the side of the road when he spotted a flock of wild turkeys feeding in a field of corn stubble. Watching the birds, 18 in all, Hank thought about Maine’s forthcoming turkey season (May 3-31). Although he had hunted turkeys in southern states, he had yet to apply for a Maine turkey permit.

“Trouble with springtime hereabouts is, everything happens all at once,” he mused. “It won’t be long before Atlantic salmon, stripers, and smelts’ll be running in the river, fiddlehend streams, trout’ll be feeding on fly hatches, the landlocks’ll be swatting streamers and the smallmouths’ll be moving onto their spawning beds. It’d be a homemade sin for me to go hunting with all that fishing staring me straight in the face.”

Whipped by the wind, whitecaps churning almost broadside to the boat ramp made launching the 14-footer alone a verbal as well as physical exercise. Let’s just say that Hank’s exclamations amounted to more than “Oh, shucks!” when a wave washed over the tops of his hip boots as he muscled the boat, turned kitty-corner by the wind, off the trailer.

Yet there was consolation. On the third pull of the starter cord, the 10-horse outboard coughed, cleared its throat of winter congestion, and started. Smiling, Hank thought, “Every year I think about trading it. But when it starts like that, I think, why?”

The woman in the bait shop wasn’t exaggerating. By the time Hank had a smelt sewn on – ‘course you know the wind coiled and twisted the leader and caught it on everything imaginable – his fingers felt as brittle as icicles. For two hours, then, he cursed the cold, spilled coffee, gnawed on the half-frozen Slim Jims and fought the wind, which blew his hat off and whisked his snap-on polaroid lenses overboard when he swung around to fetch it.

“Well, at least I’m not being bothered by blackflies and jet-skis,” Hank muttered as he pulled the half-sodden hat back onto his head. Fact is, the only other fisher he saw was an osprey perched atop a spruce stub. Obviously, the fish hawk wasn’t overly excited about the prospects of picking off a meal. When Hank eventually reeled in and set a spanking course for the landing, he hadn’t, to his knowledge, gotten so much as a second look from a fish.

Rather than repeat the earlier boat-ramp exercise, Hank backed the trailer into the water until it was entirely submerged and then ran the boat onto it. With everything battened down and stowed away, he was climbing into the cab when a familiar sound stopped him in midstride. Overhead, their calling broadcast by the gusting wind, a tightly knit flock of Canada geese unraveled in the woolly gray skies. As always, the sight and sound of the majestic wildfowl captivated Hank, who watched them “whiffling” downward – spilling air from their wings in a series of sideslips – into a cove on the lake’s lee shore.

On the way home, Hank detoured to check a trout brook that usually produces decent early fishing. But owing to the lack of snow runoff and rain, the brook was discouragingly low. Shaking his head, Hank thought, “This wind’s drying everything out. If we don’t get an ol’ soaker soon, Mother Nature’s garden will be in serious trouble. The ground water that trees use in sap production alone is astronomical, and that’ll increase dramatically when the trees begin leafing out. We need rain in a big way.”

When Hank arrived home, his wife greeted him with, “I suppose you released all the fish you caught.”

“Nope. Never had a touch. Had a good time, though. Watched some wild turkeys, saw some Canada geese and an osprey, and the outboard started on the third pull and never skipped a beat. The fish were anti-social, I got wet and cold and lost my polaroids to boot, but so what? That means the best is yet to come.”

You have to think positive.

Tom Hennessey’s columns can be accessed on the BDN Internet page at: www.bangornews.com.