Twenty Walleye and One King

I just got back from another fishing trip.

DH and I went to the Columbia with a pretty straightforward objective.

Catch fish.

We planned for it. Probably overplanned for it. We hauled enough gear to account for situations that had very little chance of actually occurring and then justified most of it with the principle that it’s better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.

The boat’s hand winch can now testify to the wisdom of that philosophy, having been pressed into service after a gear bushing gave out.

We learned what eating a real half-pound hamburger does to your gut when you’re spending the rest of the day together.

We laughed over what may be the greatest advertising slogan ever conceived:

“If you see crack, you get your money back.”

And somewhere in all of this we caught fish. Quite a few of them.

Which is exactly why I’ve been thinking about the trip differently since I got home. Because if you asked me what I’ll remember about it a few years from now, I’m not sure the fish make the top of the list.

Except maybe one.

Fishing Is the Excuse

That might sound strange coming from someone who spends an unreasonable amount of time thinking about fishing.

I plan these trips. I watch conditions. I study water. I think about where fish should be, what they should be doing and how we should try to catch them.

I bring too much gear.

Obviously.

And when we’re on the water, I absolutely want to catch fish. Let’s not pretend otherwise.

But fishing is also the excuse. It’s the thing that gets us in the truck. It gives us somewhere to go. It gives us a reason to wake up too early, drive too far, eat things our bodies are increasingly clear we shouldn’t eat, spend money on things we probably don’t need and haul enough equipment around to test the limits of a perfectly serviceable hand winch.

Fishing creates the trip.

What happens around it is something else.

There Is a Lot of Time Between Fish

That’s something people who don’t fish probably don’t understand. Most fishing trips contain remarkably little actual catching. Even good ones.

There are hours between those moments. And those hours get filled.

You talk. About important things sometimes. About complete bullshit much more often. You solve problems nobody else would consider problems. You argue about where to fish next. Well... important stuff. You question each other’s decision-making. You defend purchases that probably aren’t defensible. You give each other grief about something that happened three trips ago and apparently will remain funny forever.

Eventually a phrase like “if you see crack, you get your money back” requires absolutely no context whatsoever.

That’s when you know you’ve been traveling together long enough.

There aren’t many places left in life where we spend that much uninterrupted time with another person. No meeting to get to. No particular reason to end the conversation. No requirement that the conversation accomplish anything.

Sometimes nobody says anything at all.

You’re just fishing.

I think there’s more value in that than I’ve given it credit for.

The Bad Parts Somehow Get Better

Every good fishing trip seems to require at least one thing to go wrong.

Something breaks. The wind comes up. The forecast misses. The fish don’t cooperate. The launch doesn’t go according to plan. You make a long run for absolutely no reason. You discover that something you absolutely, positively had to bring probably should have stayed home.

Or the boat reminds you exactly why you brought the thing you were convinced you’d never need.

At the time, none of this is particularly entertaining.

Later, those are the stories.

Nobody remembers the six hours when everything worked exactly as intended. We remember the hand winch. We remember the hamburger. We remember the stupid slogan. We remember the moment when one of us looked at the other and realized whatever we were attempting had become a terrible idea.

Those things accumulate. Eventually two people can have an entire conversation consisting of a few words that make absolutely no sense to anyone else.

That’s history.

Fishing just happens to be where we collected it.

And Then There Was the King

We caught around twenty walleye.

Twenty.

That’s a damn good day of fishing by almost any reasonable measure. We worked for them. Figured some things out. Put fish in the boat.

Twenty walleye should have been the fishing story from the trip.

Then there was one King salmon.

And twenty walleye weren’t equal to one King.

Not even close.

I’m not entirely sure that’s rational. Twenty fish versus one. But fishing has never cared much about the math.

There’s anticipation in a King that starts before the fish ever bites. There’s the possibility of it. The reason you’re there. Then something happens and suddenly whatever conversation you were having doesn’t matter anymore.

The rod loads.

Everything changes.

Someone grabs it.

Someone else starts clearing whatever needs to get out of the way.

The boat gets smaller.

The river gets bigger.

And for a few minutes there isn’t anything else.

One fish.

That’s all it took.

Twenty walleye became part of the trip.

That King became a story.

The Photograph Misses Almost Everything

That’s the strange thing about pictures from fishing trips.

We photograph the fish. That’s what we hold up. That’s what gets posted. That’s what we send to somebody when they ask how the trip went.

DH and me. A fish. The Columbia behind us.

There’s your fishing trip.

Except it isn’t.

The photograph doesn’t show the drive. It doesn’t show the conversations. It doesn’t show the hamburger we shouldn’t have eaten. It doesn’t show the hand winch earning its keep after the bushing let go. It doesn’t explain why two grown men now think “if you see crack, you get your money back” is considerably funnier than it has any right to be.

It doesn’t show the bad decisions. Or the good ones. The quiet stretches. The frustration. The laughing. The miles of water.

It doesn’t show twenty walleye suddenly being demoted by one salmon.

The fish gets the photograph.

The rest of the trip gets the memory.

More Than Fishing

I’ve spent a lot of time lately thinking about why I fish.

I’ve been building tools to make better decisions about it. I’ve studied the variables that separate a promising day from one that probably isn’t worth the drive.

I still believe in all of that. If I’m going fishing, I want to make a good decision. I want to understand the water. I want to become better at this. And I definitely want to catch fish.

But there is something no Fishability Index will ever measure. What happens between leaving home and coming back.

I’m not sure I’d want it to.

Because the fish are sometimes just what gets us there.

DH and I went to the Columbia to catch fish. That’s why we loaded the truck. That’s why we brought the boat. That’s why we hauled entirely too much gear. That’s why we spent the time, burned the fuel and traveled all those miles.

And we caught fish.

Next time, I’ll do the same thing. I’ll check the weather. I’ll look at the water. I’ll study the data. I’ll probably overthink it. I’ll pack something we almost certainly won’t need because I’ve learned what happens the one time you don’t.

We’ll have a plan.

Then the river will have its own.

Hopefully we’ll catch fish. Maybe even another King.

But someday I’m not going to remember the water temperature from this trip. I won’t remember the trolling speed. I won’t remember exactly where we caught walleye number fourteen. I won’t remember what the engine scored the day or why I thought one piece of water was better than another.

I’m not sure I’ll even remember that there were twenty walleye.

But I’ll remember going. I’ll remember DH being there. I’ll remember the King. I’ll remember laughing about a ridiculous slogan. I’ll remember a hamburger that apparently weighed considerably more once it reached my stomach. I’ll remember the hand winch.

And I’ll remember stories that haven’t even become stories yet.

That’s the thing about fishing trips I’m starting to understand.

We spend an incredible amount of time trying to catch the fish. We plan for them. Study for them. Drive hundreds of miles for them. Spend entirely too much money trying to outsmart them.

And occasionally we actually do.

But years later, when somebody says,

“Remember that trip to the Columbia?”

I don’t think the first thing I’ll remember will be the fishing.

I’ll remember who I was fishing with.

And everything that happened while we were there.