Tuesday afternoon rolled around and I suddenly realized I had an outdoors column deadline.
This was not a good thing. I had spent the weekend outdoors, but I was doing mundane things such as mowing the lawn and working in the garden. It is hard to make a good outdoors column out of mowing the lawn. I called my wife. "We have to go fishing as soon as I get off work!" I told her in tones just short of panic.
In the many years of writing this column, I have never missed a deadline. I have come close a few times, such as when I crashed a paraglider in Colorado and had to write with my ribs taped.
There was also the time I got caught in the tail end of a hurricane during a duck hunt. I had to drive several miles to find a place with electricity to be able to send a story to the waiting papers. One or two of the newspapers publish my column on Wednesday and need to have it there by midnight on Tuesday. It is hard to be creative under pressure when the most exciting thing a person has done outdoors during the past week is to plant veggies.
As well as being a good sport about my many idiosyncrasies, my wife loves to fish as much as I do. When I told her we had a fishing emergency, she was all for helping any way she could. I know I could have gone fishing alone, perhaps I could have even come up with something interesting or entertaining, but it is much easier with someone you enjoy. If a person falls of the dock getting into the fishing boat when they are alone, it is just wet and annoying. If the same thing happens with someone watching and laughing them self silly, it becomes entertaining, even to the unfortunate soul that is all wet.
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We started casting along the shore as we headed toward our favorite fishing spot in the deep water that contains a lot of cover. My wife got a bite on the first cast. I stopped the boat while she fought in a nice bass. It was in the three- to four-pound range and had a full-rounded belly.
Being close to shore and appearing so fat, I thought it to be a female ready to lay eggs. She turned it loose and cast again next to the shore. As soon as her lure hit the water, another fish was on. This one was slightly larger but just as fat. The spawn must be on.
I left the motor off as we drifted the shoreline. Nice-sized bass were savagely attacking anything within a few feet of the shore. My wife was using a large green minnow and I had on a large buzz bait. Nothing small could get on either line, and we had no shortage of fish.
We fished until dark with almost non-stop action. We turned them loose because I thought most of them were big, fat, pregnant females. The next generation will come from them. Also, I had a column to write and did not have the time or desire to clean fish.
Nobody fell in the pond or hooked themselves. We were still able to entertain ourselves with a fishing emergency and I was able to meet deadline with something other than the outdoors adventure of mowing the lawn.
Walter Scott is an outdoors enthusiast and freelance writer from Bloomfield, Iowa.
