We’ll try for some nice, nice fish ~ May 16, 1996

David Heiller

There’s something about planning a fishing trip on a Sunday afternoon that can’t be beat. Notice that I didn’t say Sunday morning, Hilma.

Actually, I did jot a few things down on the back of the communion card during the sermon. Cook set. Minnow bucket. My mind couldn’t help but stray to the canoe trip.

This year will be the tenth straight for Dave and Jim and me. Paul missed one for the first time last year, but he’s back into the fold.

A little ice on the lake.

We’re heading up to the ice-bound Ely area to find some fins, if we can find some open water. Lakes are still covered with ice from the Winter That Wouldn’t Quit.

Our trip follows the same pattern every year. At first I have thoughts about how I shouldn’t go, how I should stay home and get the garden in and the screens on and the lawnmowers tuned up and the soffits painted and the rain gutter fixed and on and on and on.

But something always kicks in about a week before we’re supposed to go, and I push those essential jobs onto the non-essential list in my head, and get excited.

The something is fishing.

No one in our group is a die-hard fisherman. We don’t take along coolers and live traps. We don’t carry big tackle boxes that spread out like suburbia when you open them. One year I even forgot my rod and reel. Last year only Dave caught any fish, and just one at that, a small lake trout.

But that’s our excuse for going. We call it a fishing trip. And deep down inside we do dream, if I may speak for the others, of catching a lunker. A big fish. Ten pound walleye. Twenty pound northern.

The bait-du-jour

That’s what I was thinking when I looked at my Slug-Gos on Sunday. A Slug-Go is a big fat rubber slug with a hook in the middle. I have two of them, purchased from Gateway Amoco in Moose Lake. I had read an article in the Duluth News Tribune by a guy who had taken a fishing trip into Canada. The only thing that had caught any fish was a Slug-Go. He caught a lunker with it, a big northern like you see hanging on the wall at Stanton Lumber.

So I bought three, although I have never caught anything with one. “Maybe this year the Slug-Go will deliver,” I thought as I carefully laid them in my Tupperware tackle box.

I read the sales pitch on the back of the Slug-Go card: “Meet Slug-Go... the unique, soft stick bait with the erratic, out of control action that instigates savage strikes and aggressive behavior from all predators...”

How can that NOT catch fish?

I went through the rest of the tackle, sorting hooks and sinkers, admiring lures, making a mental note to buy some leaders and swivels and big hooks for the Slug-Go.

Jim and a northern and, 
it is snowing...

Then Sunday night at 10:30, I watched Butch Furtman’s fishing show on Channel 10. I don’t watch it often. Just this time of year. We’re usually sound asleep by then.

Cindy rolled over and groaned when she heard the show on. She can’t stand the way they talk when they land a fish. It’s so bad, you just have to laugh, which we did. They say the same thing with every fish, which by the way is usually at least two pounds.

“Nice strike.”

“Ooh, nice fish.”

“Solid.”

“Nice, nice fish.”

“Full bodied.”

“Nice girth.”

“Nice color.”

“Solid.”

“Nice, nice fish.”

Just once I’d like to hear them say, “Lousy fish. Skinny. Weak. Faded color. Lousy fish.”

If one of us catches a walleye on our trip, it sounds more like this:

“I got one on.”

“Nice one?”

“I don’t know.”

“What kind?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t lose it. We’re running low on instant potatoes.”

“Get the net.”

“Hold your rod tip up, she’ll snap your line.”

“Shut up, I know how to—darn it. Lost her. !!@#$%&*+!!”

“Was it a big one?”

“Yeah, Nice fish, Nice, nice fish.”

We’ll see, next week.