A person has to love a woman that calls her husband at work and says, "It has been a rough day, we should go fishing when you get off."
Having had a full day myself, her suggestion was music to my ears. When I got home, it took about three minutes to change clothes, refresh the cooler, load the dogs and take off for the farm.
As we neared the cabin, Coty jumped out of the truck, ran down the hill and jumped into the water. There has never been a happier dog than when Coty can swim as long and as far as he wishes. Labrador retrievers and polar bears can swim almost indefinitely. He is getting better at staying away from the boat as he swims laps across the lake since he has gotten yelled at for swimming too close to us while we are fishing. He gets his feelings hurt easily and definitely does not want to be put back in the truck.
Dulce, the standard poodle, likes to wade in the shallows and hunt frogs, but when the boat leaves the dock, she wants to be aboard. She has to watch carefully and check out each fish we land.
The day before, Damon, Amanda, and the grandsons had been fishing. The boys and Amanda were catching crappie, but Damon only fishes for big bass. He uses lures that can not be taken by anything less than five pounds. He does not catch many fish, but the ones he does catch are impressive.
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His favorite yellow buzz bait was on 18-pound test Spider-wire when a giant mouth opened and swallowed it whole. With a quick swirl, it turned and snapped the line. My wife and I, feeling sorry about the loss of his favorite lure, tried our best to catch that fish. Though we did not tell Damon, we were more interested in catching the bass that could snap that line than retrieving his lure.
Neither of us has the patience to fish all evening if we were only going to catch one or two fish. Since the big bass were not biting, we switched over to crappie lures. Small plastic jigs, either green or yellow, were just what we needed. We soon were pulling in fish as fast as we could get a line in the water. We caught about 20 nice-sized crappie and a few bluegills in the next half hour.
As quickly as they started biting, they quit. We fished for another hour or so, catching only an occasional small bass or bluegill.
The sun had set and the fog was rolling down the valley across the surface of the water. The damp air was surprisingly chilly as we motored along the shore back toward the dock. Coty made a final swim from the island to the cabin and Dulce, who had long since lost interest in fishing woke up from her watch dog position in the bottom of the boat. A pair of fawns, disturbed by our talking, ran up the dam from their hiding place at the water's edge and watched us as we silently cruised away.
A wet and smelly, but happy, Coty fell asleep in the back of the truck on the way home. Dulce, with her head on my lap also dozed off after a hard evening of watching us fish. My wife and I were much less stressed about the things in life that drive us crazy. She had a good idea about getting out, enjoying the outdoors and doing a little fishing. It makes a person think about something different. A person has to love a woman that comes up with ideas like that.
Walter Scott is an outdoors enthusiast and freelance writer from Bloomfield, Iowa.
