“Let’s go fishing.”
This was always the suggestion out of either of our mouths. Jimmy and I were best friends since summer before junior year in high school, and we never really wanted to do anything but fish and sleep. It was the only real fun I ever had.
We were on the back lake in a row boat, canoe oars at our feet. The tackle box in the middle, open and strewn across the hull. Pack of cigarettes in pocket, and a few fishing poles. We were planning on being out on the lake all day.
From endless arguments of what girl in school was hottest, to ceaseless silence, cut only by “Lemme get a smoke,” there was always a line out. Always waiting for the bobber to jerk down into the dark water.
I had two lines in. One was rigged with lure bait, the other with bobber bait. Both on opposite sides of the boat. I had the bobber baited pole stuck up in the rope holder, and I was messing with the lure baited rig. Jimmy had a line out with some bobber bait off the bow and was watching it intently with a cigarette in his mouth, puffing like a train. We hadn’t caught anything all day.
Out of nowhere, Jimmy got a bite. Then two. Then three. I was becoming livid. So I pulled in the bobber, made the line deeper, and put another worm on it. I threw it back out and stuck it back up in the rope tie again. It got a few hits so I took it out and started messing with it. Nothing. Just little blue gill nibbling on the worm I put on.
Jimmy got a few more bites in the time I was dealing with the little nibblers. At this point I was irate. I began thinking what I could do to get a few fish caught. I threw out my lure bait a few times. But when this didn’t work I put my bobber back in and pulled the lure out. I began to get really irritated when almost six hours went by and I hadn’t caught anything. I had to catch something today.
So in a last effort I left my bobber out sitting around 50 to 100 feet from the boat, and I put a new lure on the other one. I threw it out a few times, but it wasn’t working. So I pulled it in to put the old lure back on it.
As I was reaching into the tackle box for the lure I saw a small jerk on the bobber. I watched it for nearly three minutes, but it didn’t do anything. So I went back to finding the lure. I was off my seat and on the floor of the boat when I heard something hit the boat.
When I looked up my pole was gone. I frantically stood up, not thinking I was in a boat. I grabbed my oar and tried to get the pole back. It was floating on the surface. I hit it once and it began to sink. As it sank it flew away into the darkness of the water.
In a whirl of swears and cigarette smoke, I yelled at Jimmy to go after it. We started paddling as hard as we could, as fast as we could. With no prevail, I slammed my oar down on the boat. My favorite open-faced reel was gone, and I didn’t know how to get it back.
I sat back in a huff and lit a cigarette, hoping it would take the edge off. I began thinking about what to do next. I pondered jumping in to see if I could get it with my feet, but remembered how scared I was of dark, deep water. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized its just a pole. Sure, it brought me happiness, but was it really the fish bringing me the happiness? Or was it the time I spent fishing with my best friend?
We began paddling back to shore, and the whole way there we were both saying repeatedly “That had to be one HUGE fish.”
To this day I have still not seen that pole, and I don’t hang out with Jimmy much. But by hope, every time I go by the lake, I look into the edges. Searching for the lost pole that had found its way onto shore, knowing good memories will come flying back.
