The Glassy Pond

The Glassy Pond

The pond is glass.  The decision to roll out of the warm bed before we’d caught the first Striper of the year is not easy but the birds at dawn and the lack of any wind movement in the tree tops are overwhelming motivation.  Without time for the real stuff, I stuff a pinch of coffee in my bottom lip, grab my gear and set down the the dock.

Casting the small Whaler off the pier, I paddle off a bit before starting the engine.  The old Evinrude quits after a few waking compressions but restarts quickly.  The surface of the pond shows no circles or splashes, just a mirror of the rocky shoreline and soft morning sky.  I head for the East corner which has rocks and depth and a history of early spring fish.

Even at this early hour, the orange sun comes up again, amazingly.  I see what seemed like movement in the water and stop to cast without luck.  The little boy in me speaks and says to put down the damned flyrod and cast the giant mackerel swimmer.  I do, again with no result.  I decide to troll with the heavy sinking flyline that I haven’t changed since a glorious salmon run North in April.  Trolling with a fly rod is like shooting turkeys with a crossbow I suppose.  Fancy gear for easy work. A small striper takes after not long and I cut the engine.  After landing it quickly and noticing the healthy lines and sea lice, I return it and begin casting.  The fish hit regularly now, almost on every cast. I catch one for every one I miss and the fish are small but fight hard. The salmon purist would kill me for saying it, but a 27” Quonnie Striper fights as hard as a few of the 40” Atlantic Salmon I caught just 60 days ago.  The Stripers are on the way North from the Hudson and competition for food is fierce.    

In the midst of all this, I think of Dad.  He’s laying in a hospital bed in the house he’s lived in for twenty years and his kidneys are finally quitting on him.  He’s decided not to extend his life with dialysis because of time and energy is not worth the little extension of an increasingly dependent life would give him. As much as we love him, I’m not trying to convince him to do otherwise.  He’s earned the right to decide on that one I figure. The people who love him have had good visits recently.  

He is pain-free and, more importantly, he has no regrets about a life well lived.  

  

I’m thinking of him because my part in the beauty of this morning is in large part due to him.  He raised me and taught me how to work and how to treat people right.  He worked hard and found a place in Rhode Island, far from the rush and crowd of the Jersey shore.  He learned the water and bought this ‘66 Whaler and showed me how not to hit the big rocks around the points.  I remember my call to him from a foreign port when his boyish enthusiasm jumped through the phone as he told me that he couldn’t wait to show me that you could catch Stripers on a fly IN the pond!  

I focus on the fishing again.  I move to that corner where I caught my first keeper on fly with him many years ago.  The same place we saw the Blackfish “kissing” on the surface in the fog and where the Cormorant popped up and nearly scared us out of the boat in the same fog.  That seems like a long time ago.  I hook another good fish and drop it.  The wind shifts and the glass is gone.  The clouds shroud up the sun and the day’s feel has changed.  As I’m ready to give it up, a “God’s eye” of sun pokes through the clouds.  A big beam lights up to the North and West.  The kid in me wonders if its pointing to an old white house in Northwest Connecticut, to the man who I have to thank for this morning on the glassy pond. I need to get my boys out here next time.  

Decisions

All fisherman make decisions.  Taking into account weather, bait and lure choices and the capacity of boat and engine all go into the calculus of success or failure on the water.  In most cases, "success" and "failure" are measured by the hard numbers of fish caught on the trip.  In rare cases, those measures become hazier and mix with "lessons learned", "lifetime memories" or "unfixable mistakes".

When I first moved to Rhode Island, one of my first jobs was helping to run an after-school club in the city.  As part of the club, we introduced children to the game of chess.  Several of the 10 to 13 year olds took to the game quickly.  The best young student was a boy who's family was originally from Laos.  I found out a week after starting the club that they lived next door to my new apartment.  Though his parents spoke very limited English, they made it clear to me that education of their children was a top concern.  The father had served with the South Vietnamese Army during the early 1970's.  He had hunted and fished for food for his family before emigrating.  Having a military background and a love of the outdoors in common, we became friends despite the differences of language and culture.

In August of the year, I invited him to come with his son to fish the south shore of RI with me.  He was committed to work but he said his son could come.  The boy was a hard worker and quick study and I agreed to take him.  The late afternoon run from Providence was full of questions about what we would be fishing for, what we'd use for bait and if it would be dangerous.  I assured Chan that we'd be safe, we would fish for Striped Bass and Bluefish using live eels.  We'd leave the dock in my 14-foot Boston Whaler and travel out Quonochontaug Breachway to fish along the Charlestown shoreline in Block Island Sound.  The weather was warm and clear and the wind was low.  I had been out the Breachway hundreds of times and we both would be wearing life preservers.

We arrived, parked, moved gear to the boat and were away from the dock in no time.  I wanted to get as much fishing time in as we could before dark. In the lowering late afternoon light, we picked up a big bluefish and snapped another fish off.  The boy clearly had his dad's hunter/gatherer gene.  As is my unfortunate habit, I stayed on the grounds a few minutes longer than I should have based on the light.  The sun had just dropped below the horizon when I finally resigned to moving the boat the 1/2 mile back to the Breachway mouth.  As is also my habit, as we started out, I instinctively reached back to lift the plastic  gas can to gauge the level.  My brain halted for a second when the plastic can came up from the deck so quickly.  Immediately, my astonishment turned into dread.  There was no way I had enough gas to get the boat back in.  Darkness was setting in, the wind was rising.  I had no phone. And, I had someone else's child with me.

Silently and slowly, I began pushing the boat to the west, into the now slowly building sea.  Staying within 200 yards of the beach I began calculating chances.  Anchor and use the gas can as float to kick in with the boy?  Leave the boy at anchor and go in for help?  Anchor and stay until morning, or until the coast guard was inevitably called?  Keep moving toward the darkening Breachway, now in mid-outgoing torrent, further hindering my progress?

None of these were good options but I was going to need to choose one, fast.  I decided to keep going toward the breach.  I listened carefully for a change in the engine's pace as we plodded into the wind and approached the sweep of the water pouring out of the pond.   The "rip" of the breach had risen with the tide and wind change and my whaler began to pitch through the 3 foot chop as I turned toward the opening.  I prepped Chan that I might need to "kedge" with the anchor if I had any engine trouble.  In my mind, I was seconds from that "trouble" as we passed the outer rocks of the breachway in the now almost complete dark.  Dark shapes of shorecasters stood like fenceposts at the end.  I'm sure they were shaking their heads,  knowing what an idiot I was as we chugged slowly uptide.  I knew that the bend in the breachway might be my best and last chance to stop the boat from falling back into that dark rip, making my set of earlier troubles almost insignificant in comparison.  As we hit the bend, I heard what I'd been waiting for; the engine began the high to low "cycling" that was the telltale of a dry tank.  Not knowing the oldtimer's trick of lifting the can for extra life, I jumped to the bow and threw the anchor as far toward the eastern shoreline as I could.  The hook caught and I strained against the tide to bring the boat over it before repeating several times.  Finally and breathlessly, we made the rip-rap in a slight eddy.  My relief was deep.  The boy asked "Did we run out of gas?" 

"Yeah, we did.  We'll have to wait the tide out here for a little while." 

The night was nowhere near over.  It was 9 PM.  The tide would ebb at 10:15.  My dock was a mile from the breachway.  His family would expect him around 9:30.  This was not good.  Luckily, it was a warm, clear night.  The boat secured, we sat on the edge of the breach and looked with the flashlight into the clear water.  We noticed lots of activity among the rocks. Cunner, green crabs, small eels and small lobsters were abundant.  Looking deeper, I saw a bigger lobster moving back and forth.  An idea popped to mind and, without knowing the law about shellfishing after dark, I cut the head off the big bluefish and put it in the extended net we had.  I lowered it into 4 feet of water near where I'd seen the lobster and we doused the light.  While we waited, we moved away from the boat and Chan began to try to catch a small lobster with his hands.  I used the light as he used a method he knew from catching crayfish.  I was amused but doubtful until he hoisted the 8-inch hardshell from the water.  I'd never seen or heard of anyone catching a wild lobster by hand from shore.  Releasing the little one, we moved back to the boat and checked the net.  Sure enough, a big lobster was nestled square in the middle of it chomping down on the Bluefish head.  I lifted quickly and we dumped the 2 pounder in the boat and reset our "trap".  By now, the tide was starting to slow and we could see big silversides at the surface toward the middle and we heard several big "plops" made by Stripers feeding.  We cast plugs with no luck. 

When the tide died fully and began to swing, we jumped in the boat and pushed off into the middle and I began to paddle with the lone oar.  The sky was now cloudless and the brilliance of the stars was amazing to the city boy.  He saw one shooting star, then another and then 8 more during the mile-long slog back. 

"I've never seen shooting stars before" he said after the first one. 

I've never run out of gas before, I thought to myself.   

After a quick tie-up and a run up to the house, I had him call his mom.  I told her that I was sorry and that we'd be back in an hour.  I dropped him off with the Bluefish and the Lobster.  I was embarrassed and apologetic.  His family was jovial and grateful.  They laughed when they heard I'd run out of gas.  In future trips, his mother would be sure to laugh when reminding me to "check the gas".  I haven't run out since and hope I never do again.  

Food Chain Fishing: The Snail's Revenge

I was in charge of my 7 and 9 year-old sons and their two pre-teen boy cousins for a day at the Cape last summer.  Wanting to avoid any chance that they would be zombied by an electronic screen for the day, I made a bold claim:  “We’re going Food Chain Fishing.”  When the boys asked what I was talking about, I explained. 

As the only present male members of the “tribe” around for this day, it was our job to catch food.  We would eat tonight only what we caught with our own hands.  And?  We would bring only three tools:  A sharp knife, fishing rods (with hooks) and a net.

They looked at me as if I had told them we were going to Mars to fish the afternoon tide. 

Quickly though, they started to take to the idea.  The importance of being the “sole” providers for our families brings out ancient instincts in kids.  Soon, they had taken the lead on packing up and we were off to a nearby tidal river, our mission firmly in mind.

The weather was very hot.  When we arrived at the trailhead, sand underfoot was already hot enough to force a running pace in bare feet.  The tide would be moving in for most of our hunting time and we got right to work. 

Step one, I explained to the little hunters, was to consider the possibilities of the menu. 

“Stripers!” the youngest one began, optimistically. 

“Maybe” I said, knowing the small likelihood of that happening in mid-day in mid-July. 

“Blue Crabs?” my 10 year-old asked. 

“Definitely.” I replied.  We had seen good numbers at the bridge a mile away the day before.  We noticed a fisherman in hip deep water pulling in good sized Scup not far down river and we had our second menu item targeted.  Snapper Bluefish was the decided third menu item and we set to it. 

Step two:  How to catch the Crabs, Snappers and Scup?  I remembered from my earliest days on the RI coastline, my father teaching us that you could use Periwinkles to pull Mummichogs from the marsh pools at Quonochontaug.  We crushed a few of the thousands of snails around us and tried our luck with good success.  The sport of yanking the three inch minnows from the water as their lips gripped the snail bodies was good stuff for the under 13 crowd and we probably could have spent most of the day doing just that if we didn’t refocus on “feeding the tribe“.

Step three:  Putting the Mummichogs on a hook is the early fisherman’s dilemma.  Most 7 year-olds are still sensitive enough to know that “hurting” other things isn’t good.  Luckily, they had me as a guide whose karma has been shattered enough by years of live-lining that I could teach the art of “fishing rationalization” – to catch big fish, you usually have to hurt little fish.  After the first cast produced a 12-inch Bluefish, everyone was pretty good with sacrificing the Mummichogs.  We set the 10 year old and one of the cousins on Bluefish duty.  They got to it with gusto.

Step four:  The Blue Crabs.  We had seen them cruising the shallows around us and we sacrificed the first Snapper Blue for bait.  One cousin and the 7 year old worked as a team baiting and netting with me as the “measurer”.  We began to gather the crabs with consistency and our feast was building. 

Step five:  Chasing Scup.  Watching the fisherman near us, we realized we’d need either live Mummichogs or pieces of Bluefish as bait for Scup.  We baited a double line with one of each and began Scupping.  After a few small keepers the 7 year old took over the duties as “Chief Scupper” and the rest of us wandered around hunting some of the other prey.  Soon, the fisherman (who had begun watching our crew amusedly) called out to me that the little guy might need some help.  Looking the 80 yards downstream to him, I saw him backing up on our little patch of sand lifting a large fluke from the water on his now tripled-over pole.  We all began sprinting up to him as he simple smiled broadly at all of us and said “I got a big one!”

The fluke measured 18” and, after proclaiming him “the Fluke Whisperer”, we promptly surveyed our total catch:  5 Scup, 8 good sized Snapper Blues, 6 Blue Crabs and the Fluke.  The boys beamed with pride as we hauled dinner back toward the car.  When we arrived back at the house, we surprised our families with dinner plans that none of them had known about.  There was much joy and pride from the successful “hunters”.  With a little corn and salad  (and Old Bay) tossed in, the meal was fit for kings,…or at least tribal chiefs.

The epilogue to the story involves the “Snail’s Revenge”.  A few nights after the big catch, my oldest awoke at midnight complaining of itchy ankles.  The next day, it looked like a good-sized spider had delivered a string of about 20 nasty bites on his ankles and feet.  We applied ointment and watched him struggle with the irritation for days.  I was angry at the spider but thought little of his pain, thinking that he needed to “toughen up” a bit, until I woke up at midnight with my own “pain”.  The “bites” had visited me.  Thinking little of coincidence, I called over to the cousins house.  The cousins were also reeling from the “bites”.  With a little more research we found our answer:  The Revenge of the Snail!  In very warm weather in some estuaries on the east coast, some species of Periwinkles spawn.  Their microscopic eggs take hold in anything they drift upon, including human ankle flesh.  We dealt with the pain for three solid weeks until the sores disappeared and we have not been back to “food chain fish” lately.  

Casting Without Fishing

The tide is pushing through the narrow breachway at mid-tide and the sun is setting.  As the Boston Whaler crosses the boundary from the pond into the confines of the breachway, the force of the flow increases.  Small baitfish splash along the western edge which has a small section of shadow growing over the eddies and swirls along the seaweed-laced granite “rip-rap”. 

Mixed in with the small splashes of tiny fish are bigger swirls and loud splashes and schools of fleeing bait of bigger size.  The rocky bank has no visitors other than the snowy egrets and little green herons waiting like sentinels for preoccupied silversides being swept into the pond. 

We edge closer to the action and the rocks.  There are pockets of baits being swept in and corralled into an indent in the wall and the action and our hopes quicken in unison.  Under the boat, thousands of two to four inch fish are swept along with the tide and around them millions of tinier other fish that dimple the surface like a steady drizzle.  Seaward, three terns dip into the schools and wheel away to return dinner to their mates on the beach across the dune.  The rip rapped shore is thick with Montauk Daisy and beach plum and the air smells like low tide and bayberry.

As my partner hold the boat steady in the current, I pull the line from the reel in 12 movements.  The yellow line coils at my feet and I’m careful to look for “catchpoints” on the deck before I cast.  In four metronomic sweeps, I drive the Clowser minnow to its full length.  I let it drop at the rock’s edge and begin pulling back in short, quick strokes through the disappearing swirls of feeding stripers.  I’m anticipating the bump and heavy resistance that a hit will produce but it doesn’t come. 

The feeding becomes more frenzied and now some mid-20 inch fish begin cartwheeling through the pods, large square tails briefly pointing skyward – a sight that the most seasoned angler would be hard pressed not to be thrilled by.   My casts are strong and downstream at 45 degrees with no result.  I turn the rod over to my partner and take the wheel.  He begins the same drill but hooks up after several attempts. The bass is small but healthy and strong and we lift the 20-incher and admire it for a second before sending it back.  I continue as the feeding builds in pace.  He takes another smaller fish with a Kastmaster and we decide to drift back into the pond. 

We anchor on the flats  in four feet of water as the sun nears the horizon.  4 paddle boarders cross the channel and several small bass actively feed on both sides of the boat as the light continues to drop and the bait continues to flood in.  I finally hook up with a small fish and we release it as the sun sets.  He continues to cast and talk drifts to the health of my dad and the loss of his mother and father in the past year.  We talk about medical issues of aging, which, as a physician, he is learned in.  We move on to talk about quality of life as we age, mortality and the emotions that men usually avoid discussing or reserve talk of for moments of quiet beauty and casting a line without fishing. 

Sight Fishing for Fluke

Fluke sometimes haunt my dreams.  Yesterday, I awoke from a dream of lifting (by hand) seven sluggish “doormats” from crystal clear waters in a slow river.  I’m not going to try to figure that one out. I don’t think that “dream interpreters” know what a "fluke" is anyway.  I think I know where the dream came from though.  

The season and limits for Summer Flounder change from time to time in Rhode Island.  This fact is not as strange as the appearance and habits of the fish itself.  The larvae hatch with eyes on both sides of their head.  The right eye “drifts” over to the left side as the fish slowly sinks closer to the bottom in the first days of its life.  The fish spends the rest of its life lying on its right side, camoflauged in the sandy bottom, lying in wait for squid, minnows, crabs and anything else unlucky enough to drift or crawl across its lightning-fast jaws, ringed by needle sharp teeth.  

Growing up, my brothers and I didn’t like "fluking".  “Bottom fishing” was considered boring as we focused on chasing blues, bass and bonita across the coast of Southern Rhode Island.  The sluggish pace of fluking was left to older generation of my father and his friends.  We couldn’t understand the allure of bouncing a squid-draped jig off of the bottom, only to catch a fish that felt like a perforated trash can lid as it rose from the depths.  

As I got older, I started to come around to the joys of fluking.  I don’t know exactly what started my fascination with them.  Maybe it was the fact that they would occasionally rise off of the bottom of the breachway channel to take a fly or trolling lure.  It could be that the quality of the flesh was so good that I recognized that the “tribe” I was helping to feed valued it above all, especially when a fillet was set 

with tomato and lettuce

between two pieces of good, crunchy bread.  

One event that I know has fueled my love of fluke fishing is the first time I ever “sight-fished” for them.  It was early September and my father was spending Labor Day with my young family and I near the salt pond.  The weather had been fair and the water was clear of the usual late August “storm gunk”.  We took our small Whaler out to fish the incoming tide.  From earlier success in the summer we had a bag of “fluke-bellies”, the white strips of skin and flesh taken from the underside filets.  They’re far more durable than squid strips and the fluke don’t seem to mind the taste of their own kind.  Key to our trip would be finding Mummichogs, fat little minnows that inhabit the marshes along the New England coast.  We learned long ago from an old local of the existence of a “secret” mini-pond adjoining the salt pond.  At the pond, we’d throw our minnow trap (baited with marsh mussel) in and wait and talk.  After about 10 minutes the trap can gather about 30 or 40 “mummies” on a good day.  

Once we gathered up the mummies we headed out to where the breachway meets the pond.  For a while, my dad had preferred to fish in the pond for fluke rather than going out the breachway into the sound.  He’d claimed to many skeptics in the neighborhood that the fishing inside was just as good as it was outside.  I was one of the skeptics.  He had a habit of announcing the arrival to his hook of an interested fish by saying “I feel ya’ knockin’” and usually closed the deal with a sharp pull back to set the hook.  On this day, the tide started slowly and our first few attempts at a good drift were not great.  Eventually the tide and a light breeze created a strong drift straight into the pond.  The morning light and the gin-clear water combined to give a vivid view of the bottom as we drifted above it.  The water runs from about 10 to 16 feet deep and, as we began to bump our bucktails along the sand, we could see what looked like tan shadows following in the path of our jigs.  It took a few minutes (and a few “hits”) for us to realize that we were seeing numbers of fluke lining up behind our bucktails.  After catching a few “shorts”, we had our first bigger “shadow” line up and take a mummichog.  As the drift approached the shore, we ran back up to the head of it and repeated.  Again, the bottom appeared to be a collection of moving tiles, attracted to and investigating our bucktails, then attacking the mummichogs.  I honestly think that watching the fluke gather and attack was as much fun as boating the fish.  

After three hours and countless drifts, the tide began to die.  We’d tallied nearly 40 fish with 6 over 18”.  It was an extraordinary morning that I haven’t been able to repeat since.  I’ve “sight-fished” again with my sons in the pond and with my brother-in-law in 5 feet of water off of the Vineyard and Monomoy.  I hope to find those perfect sight-fishing conditions in real life again soon.  Until then, dreams will have to do.  

Nantucket Sleigh Ride

I’ve noticed that if children catch fish early in their lives, they usually like fishing.  It seems like a basic notion but I’ve seen enough situations when little ones are subjected to hours of “patience building” with adults who are well-meaning.

My oldest son is ten now.  He caught his first keeper striper a few years ago and he loves fishing.  My eight year-old has had some success but has never been in the “right place at the right time” to catch a big one.  He doesn’t make a big deal of it but I can tell he’d like to.  I also know that he’d probably like fishing a bit more after catching a big one.

Recently, I was fishing a marshy shoreline on an incoming tide in a wide salt pond.  The youngest boy and my wife were happily kayaking nearby when I had a strike and miss on my chunked squid.  I called for her to kayak him over to me in case we had another.  On the next cast, the fish struck again.  I was using a rod better suited for snappers and mackerel fixed with 6-pound test and the fish screamed line off the reel as the rod tripled.  I handed the rod to the 8 year-old and told him not to touch the line and to hold on as I shoved the kayak fishward.  I yelled to my wife to follow the fish and began to laugh.  I expected a quick but unsuccessful finish to what started as a wild fight.

I had explained to the boys the night before what catching a fish on kayak was like.

“Its like a Nantucket Sleigh Ride.”  I told them, incorrectly expecting them to know what that meant.  Their puzzled looks pushed me on.

“In the old days, the whalers in small boats would harpoon a whale and tie the line onto the bow of the boat and hold on for dear life.  The ride would be fast and furious and sometimes the boat would be destroyed.”

As the little blue sit-on-top kayak took off, leaving a wake behind it, I continued to laugh at the site of the 43-pound boy holding on to the screaming reel as his mom paddled furiously to keep up as the big fish surfaced and thrashed about.

Time passed and the line didn’t snap.  The fish didn’t wrap around a buoy or any of the numerous weedy rocks in the cove.  The rod didn’t break or fly out of the little guy’s hands.  My laughter stopped as my expectation rose.  After about ten minutes, the kayak was about 300 yards away and my wife had begun paddling backward toward the marsh.  In five minutes, they had maneuvered the boat to a spot where I could help land the fish.  As the late afternoon shadows began to hit the marsh, I slid my thumb into the bottom lip of the striper and I lifted it to the boy, his face alight with wonder.  28 inches!! A keeper!!!  

I looked at him as he gazed down, smiling, at the line-sided monster.

“Do you want to eat it?”

“Nah,” he said, without hesitation “Let’s let it go for good fishing Karma.”

I had to laugh a little.  I’m sure that I had mentioned to him before that sometimes it’s good to let one that you could keep go, just because.  We made sure to take a couple of pictures for posterity.

  

We gently moved the fish forward through the cold water for about five minutes until it began to thrash about.  We pushed it out from the marsh grasses into the deeper water, the powerful tail gave two good sweeps and the light green shadow was gone for good.  The Nantucket Sleigh Ride had come in just the right place, at just the right time.

Stripers in the Fog

I remember the excitement of being asked to go fishing, at night, with my dad.  In the steamy days of late August, Striped Bass haunt the rip-rapped breachways of southern Rhode Island.  Sometimes they are itinerants, moving their way ahead of the fall migration to winter homes in the Hudson, Delaware or Chesapeake.  Some have been there since early spring and have found the routine of predictably changing tides moving through a narrow channel to their benefit in feeding. 

My father had heard they were there and we had heard stories of him catching a big one in Newport long ago.  We were within a mile of the breachway on the edge of Ninigret Salt Pond in our small month-long rental.

I was twelve.  He was then and has always been a giant in my eyes.  A picture on my refrigerator now shows me at 2 looking up in awe at his young, weathered face as we sit before a massive pile of split wood.  When he asked if I wanted to go with him at 2 in the morning to the breachway by boat to fish for stripers I leapt at the opportunity. 

I remember a small dock and the beach next to it that we laid the boat on.  The boat was the classic 12 foot “tinboat”.  We had two gray wooden oars and a small outboard that pushed us across the glassy pond in the pitch dark.  A long, serpentine channel lead to the breach. I held a flashlight over the bow as we traveled and I imagine he told me at some point to turn it off to conserve the battery.  Looking into water like that at night with a light has always fascinated me.  The water was rich with life and mystery.   Our pullout was a sandy recess on the West side of the channel, across from the state parking area.  We could hear the crashing of the surf in Block Island sound, only 200 yards over the barrier dune from our landing.  As he fished, I continued to peer into the water. I remember great schools of Silversides and many green crabs roaming the openings between the breachway’s slippery rocks.  I remember Striped Killifish mating at the very edge of the water at the top of the moon tide.   I’m sure that he was a bit disappointed that I was more interested in looking in the water than I was casting the Rebel plugs into the middle on the incoming tide.  I can’t remember much about the fishing except that we didn’t catch any Stripers and that the trip was cut short by an envelope of fog as the dawn approached. 

We packed out our gear with some urgency and raced (as best the small engine could) through the turns of the channel to the pond.  Once in the pond the fog settled completely on us and we were lost.  A thick fog makes a mockery of sense of direction.  The mind’s imaginings become confusing.  Navigating is like walking through your house with your eyes closed. 

He seemed more concerned about me and how I felt.  He told me that the best thing to do in fog was to set the anchor and “hunker down” until the fog lifted, which it surely would.  Once we’d navigated back out into what we thought was well out into the open pond, we set anchor.  For three hours we tried to get sleep on the hard, damp aluminum hull with little success.  I spent some of the time peering through the water, with and without the now useless light as the foggy darkness led to foggy light. 

As the fog began to lift and we recognized where we were, we laughed together.  100 yards to our north was our dock and beach.  We had been within 300 yards of our beds the whole time.  I remember sleeping well and him telling me that he didn’t mind being stuck in the fog with me, or something to that effect. 

Looking back, like all sons of good fathers I suppose, I would love to be lost out there, alone with him for another three hours.  Its not that bad being lost with your dad in a boat.  It sure as hell beats being lost by yourself. 

We haven’t fished for a while lately.  Now, more often than not, I’m the one carting sons out for adventure.  He had Lyme so bad last year we thought we were going to lose him.  He’s feeling better now and I’m hoping to get out a few more times with him on any water, with or without fish or fog.