Fishing and Camping

The first catch came with my second cast. It wasn’t clear who had caught whom as we were towed into open water. I hauled in on the line, slowly bringing a sizable pike alongside. Ben lowered the net for the seemingly exhausted pike. The fish wasn’t having it, thrashing so much so that it landed onboard. Thankfully, the canoe was broad enough not to tip despite the pike’s demented twists and leaps and our desperate lunges as we frantically tried to get it back in the water. I managed to club it and set about extracting the barbed hook and cutting up the net. Lowered overboard, the pike gave a mighty squirm and was away, leaving yellow crap in the canoe bottom, a ruined net, and two anglers with ruined nerves. Chastened, we paddled back to base. Mike and Matthew returned with three pike that Mike cleaned and filleted, dropping them into the fish cooler, ready for prepping and cooking at home.

We dined on beans and sausages. I washed all the pots in the lake and stowed them in the middle of our tent. By then it was dusk. After a long day, and another one coming tomorrow, we retired for the night. I didn’t sleep. I had learned some lessons:

• If the task like inflating air mattresses requires daylight, do it in the daylight. If not, make sure you have a hanging lamp.  Bring a proper pump; a partially inflated mattress is no better than no mattress at all for all the energy spent on it.
• The tent site has to be far away from the bear pole (and interested animals). Ours was way too close. The tent site should be free of lumps and protrusions. That night, I discovered what turned out to be, a wooden tent peg under my side with no room to avoid it
• A two-man Scout Jamboree tent is not suited to sloped sites. It takes two to erect. With one an expert (Ben) and the other a dunce (me), our performance was pitiable. Mike had a tent that sprang up, fully formed with just the pull of a tab.
• If the zipper doesn’t work, don’t use the tent. Holding the flaps together with clothes pegs – whilst ingenious – won’t stop a determined rabbit let alone teeth and claws.
• The pots should be up the pole not in your tent. They are a magnet, even washed, for whatever is snuffling outside.
• Silence is not golden. In the movies, silence happens just before the horror strikes. In the woods, that night, it went silent so many times.
• Banging pots scares away whatever is outside for about half an hour. Then it’s back.
• If you don’t want to be disturbed by snuffles and padding sounds, you’d best be asleep (like Ben).
• It was a raccoon not a bear, silly. Yeah, right.
• And bring a bigger fishing net.

Sausage and beans for breakfast again. Mike, Matthew, and Ben were bright as buttons anticipating the morning’s fishing. I was mired in the silences and the imaginings of intruders crowded into a sleepless night. Anyhow, we loaded up and paddled a ways down the lake to a lily covered stretch. Mike got into some bass. He gutted, cleaned, and filleted two that he fried up for lunch. Yes, they were the best fish ever.

Neither Mike nor I suggested any more expeditions. Fishing wasn’t for me and I wasn’t for fishing. Camping wasn’t for me and I wasn’t for camping. But I can skate!