I've been thinking about my recent fishing successes and why they're not so great. When I was a kid in the 50's my parents owned a resort in central MN. My brothers and I had a wooden flat-bottom boat we rowed all over the place. We could out-fish anyone on the lake when it came to panfish, especially crappies. People used to wait in line to get at our spot - we really killed 'em. When we moved away my next fishing opportunity was in a river below a dam. My brothers and I used to catch black bullheads all day long and my grandma showed us how to nail their tails to a board and skin them. A couple of moves later found us in northern MN by Lake Superior. Fishing on the lake was out of the question for teenagers with no boat so we fished the rivers from the mouths up. Depending on the time of year we would cast spoons about a million yards out from the mouth of the river into the lake or we would walk the rivers casting dry flies. I learned to tie flies when we fished the trout rivers north of Duluth. At this same time we fished the flowage lakes north of Duluth. This was a whole different set of complications beginning with the little 12' boat and the 5hp Hiawatha motor with no recoil starter. We couldn't get it to throttle down so we back-trolled all over the place. We fished with crawlers and leeches - a whole new way to fish. The only leviathan I ever had on was in one of these lakes. I thought I hooked (another) stump but it was the biggest northern I've ever seen. It rolled on top of the water, headed for the bottom and never came up. The butt of my rod was stuck in my guts and the tip was under water. My knees shook for a half hour after the line finally parted. Another few moves and years later found me fishing muskies with my younger brother. He has a Capt. Ahab thing going with muskies. Basically we found the biggest hooks made, tied them to lures the size of Volkswagons and trolled them at 5mph. I've got muskie lures bigger than most of the fish I've caught. So that brings me to today, learning to fish bass from my new boat. My partner T comes from Kansas. You have to look a long time to find a lake there so she is just learning to fish and, incidentally, is out-fishing me by about 5 to 1 every time. We fish with the same baits and she gets blow-ups on half her casts while mine seem to be just out for the ride. It makes me wonder whether all I know about fishing is getting in the way of learning to fish in a new way. Maybe in the immortal words of Yoda - I must unlearn all that I have learned. Maybe T should take Yoda along fishing next time...
