Fishing for Memories Sake

[Scott McKee]

After yesterday’s heavy blog, I thought I’d lighten today’s.  Some of the boys and I were shooting the s**t at the bar tonight and our topic of conversation turned, as it often does, to fishing trips from years back.  Tonight we were talking about species of animals we’ve caught that weren’t fish.

We’ve caught all sorts of creatures over the years.  We didn’t really catch them since we never used hooks.  We’ve had plenty of seagulls fly off with pieces of bread or crackers only to rip the morsel of food from them mid-flight.  Their cry after getting duped is really quite funny.  We’ve had dozens of raccoons hightail it off with sausages and other bits of meat.  A raccoon running away with a meat prize can really peel off line trying to keep its booty from its buddies.  We’ve tried, on our more intoxicated nights, to catch bear at the Rock on Lake Nipissing.  Luckily for us we never found any takers, but certainly not for our lack of trying.  I had a skunk on once on a Sturgeon Lake trip, which probably wasn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever done.  I tried to coax him back to our deck with gentle pressure as the rest of the gang bolted into the cabin, but fortunately the sausage bait fell off and the stinky bugger meandered off.  None of us drink Bloody Mary’s, so getting rid of the stink would have been put on hold until somebody was sober enough to drive into town.  On our first fishing trip a million years ago, I had a mouse destroy a tiny piece of bread smeared with peanut butter.  The little guy smashed it and the roomful of idiots watching me “fish” for him almost wet their pants as he took off from the kitchen and the tip of my ultra-light loaded up just the tiniest of bits.  We tried to catch a mouse with an actual hook on a later trip with size 28 dry fly hooks, but we thought the better of it after trying to tie the knot.  Have you ever tried to tie a knot on a size 28 dry fly hook with a bathtub full of booze in you?  Not too easy.  Plus we didn’t want to hurt the mouse, he just wanted a few chips and what guy doesn’t want a few chips late at night on a fishing trip?  Mike Schomber had a beaver destroy his Super Spook once and all our buddies within earshot thought he had a World Record bass on.  I went over to where Mike was to help retrieve the lure.  When I got closer I changed my mind quickly.  Have you ever heard a beaver hissing in distress?  I hope the little guy threw that lure, because there was no way I was going to put my hand anywhere near that bucktoothed, brown hairy murder machine.

What I’m getting to here is this.  In just a few minutes at the bar tonight we brought up a bunch of really funny stories, at least to us, from the hundreds, if not more, hilarious stories and legends from our yearly fishing trips.  One thing I’ve always thought strange about our club is our unwillingness to travel, or our disinterest in fishing destinations.

I could be wrong here, but it seems to me that only a handful of our members take fishing trips each year.  I couldn’t imagine not taking fishing trips with my pals.  It’s not just the fishing that I would miss.  It’s the preparation, the anticipation, the speculation and the jubilation that comes with actually setting out to a destination.  The really memorable fishing trips are not memorable because of how good or bad the fishing was.  It’s the being there with your buddies that makes them special.  The stories we’ve accumulated over the years will be rehashed by us for the rest of our lives.  “Up North with Doc”, a regular feature in In-Fisherman, has nothing on our adventures.

It’s February, the perfect month to book a fishing trip.  Do yourself and your buddies a favor, book one and start building your own fishing trip story library.  If you have any room, give me a call.  I’m always looking to expand my fishing story resources.