Let’s go to the mailbag. A letter from a Montgomery resident merits consideration this week:
Dear John,
Naturally, I read your column and look forward to your outdoor sagas.
But I am not a fisherman. There are many reasons. Lack of patience. Lack of interest in getting eaten alive by bugs.
Lack of linguistic skills necessary to make sense of such basic tackle-box expressions as “poppers,” “fly patterns” and “plumb the shoreline.”
A few days ago, our oldest son thought it would be a good idea to head out to the Ohio River, rent a boat that goes too fast and attach an inner tube to the rear end for the purpose of bouncing wildly through waves already in ill temper because of barge traffic.
Tubing, it’s called. I didn’t get sucked into the propeller, so I guess it was okay.
Later in the afternoon, while trying to remain inside the boat while our son banked the craft at angles matching the ones he studied in geometry, I happened to notice a device that prompted this letter: Which would be a computer screen that shows where the fish are.
It even breaks the quarry down according to size.
A school of little fish was noted. Ditto a squadron of big fish. And I’m told, were I to position myself under the boat, my form would show up on the screen as a large whale-like creature.
Because I long ago left my poppers on the shoreline, I had no idea such reel- ‘em-in -technology exists. And that the science is sufficiently widespread for the gizmos to be installed on rental watercraft.
Silly me.
I thought fishing meant stocking the boat with enough beer to last out El Nino, dangling the bait in the water, putting the pole over the side, and hoping against hope the gods of the Rooster Tail send a smallmouth bass my way.
But no; nowadays anglers employ a cheat sheet, with gills for graphics.
Fishermen, how could you?
I mean, I thought one of the reasons to go fishing in the first place was to escape the throbbing pulse of laptops, pagers and cellular phones that have taken over our society.
All around you, people are downloading, manipulating data jacks, yapping about Donald Trump’s hair, and sending mail to each other without having the common decency to use the Postal Service.
Indeed, you can’t even go to the bathroom any more without hearing something go beep-beep.
You need to escape. You need to go one-on-one with a riverbank full of bugs.
So, you get out the old fishing pole, visit Cletus at the bait store, crank up the boat and prepare for an afternoon of the most old-fashioned of pleasures.
Right? No way.
Mere seconds after loading the beer, you turn on the fish-seeking sonar.
Can’t just sit back and relax. Can’t just wait for lunkers to come to you as they have since Noah and his crew finally got tired of eating red meat.
Got to do the nautical version of downloading. Got to put the largemouth bass, smallmouth bass, sauger, white bass, hybrid striped bass, freshwater drum, flathead catfish, channel catfish and carp and their buddies on visual.
I protest.
We have enough PCs on dry land. Enough modems. Enough beeping.
Let the high seas be a sanctuary from video display terminals and their brethren.
Let’s keep fishing what it has been for generations—a way for guys to get out of the house.
Hey, if fishing were supposed to be an exact science, Noah would have worn waders.
Take out the sonar. Use the circuitry to hot-wire something else. Baseball games maybe.
Your grandfather didn’t need a flow chart of a bunch of catfish to catch one. Neither do you.
Stick the line in the water and may your fly pattern make the fishing page in Field & Stream.
And, hey, if you really want to know what’s going on under the boat, take a Polaroid.
Sincerely,
R.B. Carter
—
Top o’ the morning!