FROZEN IN TIME – Death By Degrees

My hearty fellow winter wonderers: I know you must marvel, as do I, at the hard truth of a frozen lake—this once lively, liquid pool, now captive, groaning, its huddled molecules tired of such close quarters. Where, just four months past or hence, you're in it, one with it, now you're shut out, settling for but a skin-deep appreciation with boot or blade.

Unless you're an ice fisher, chances are that's where your attention ends, your curious juices freezing the instant they hit the surface. But, as with all surfaces, there's more to see if you can look deeper.

Occasionally, a surreal image will catch your eye: a fish frozen into the ice. Sometimes they've died before freezing, floating horizontal to the bottom of the top, there but for ice's shield against beak and talon.

Sometimes they've died before freezing, floating horizontal to the bottom of the top

But, once in a great while, you find one caught alive, vertical, flash-frozen in mid tail stroke. You stop and ponder how it could possibly have not been able to swim away as the water, passing from 33 to 32 degrees, started to set around it.

What went through its little mind as heart kept beating, blood kept flowing awhile, till that too eventually thickened and set.

And I wonder, is there memory in death by degrees?

Snapshots from Zihuatanejo - Panic in Zihua Bay

Roiling schools of bait fish glide like cloud shadows across Zihuatanejo Bay. Here, as in all of Nature, life's drama reveals itself to the patient eye. Pity the last to join the swarm, for predators ply its edges, where panicked flight sweeps the surface like invisible hands.

DEEP CONVERSATIONS – The Wonders of Fishing

I’ll never forget the first time I went fishing. It was at Peter Pan, a little summer camp my parents sent me to when I was about seven or eight. I caught a sunfish from the dock. Its bright, exotic colors and patterns captivated me. It was cool and slimy. It smelled funny but good—sort of earthy and spicy. It wanted very much to get away and used its spiky dorsal fin to make its point. I got it, and it hurt. There was a little drop of blood.

For the impression it made on me, that little bluegill might as well have been a space alien. Ever since that day, I’ve found fishing to be about the most fascinating, beautiful, peaceful thing I do. If ever there were an activity that’s all about discovery, patience and appreciating details, this is it. But perhaps more than any of these qualities, I think it's the mystical dimensions of fishing that hooked me.

If there’s something down there in that cold, dark, liquid place, it eventually sends you a message through the line. 

You throw a morsel of food deep into a hidden, alien world, connected by a thin filament held between your fingers. Then you wait. If there’s something down there in that cold, dark, liquid place, it eventually sends you a message through the line. Is it a kind of fish you’ve caught a hundred times before or one you’ve never seen? Is it big or small? Is it even a fish at all, or maybe an eel or turtle?

The clues might come in the form of cautious nibblings or a reckless attack. The creature might pull on the line or it might carry the bait toward you, slacking the line. Some fish gingerly gum the bait to see if there’s anything that doesn’t taste or feel right. Some grasp the bait between their lips, run a few feet and drop it—I guess just to see what happens. Others greedily gobble up the bait and run as fast as they can with it, perhaps chased by rivals.

THINKING LIKE A FISH

Besides the cryptic quality of that connection to another world, fishing is full of opportunities to observe and explore. One of the first rules of the sport, for example, is that, if you want to catch fish, you have to think like a fish.

Look at the water. At first, maybe it just looks like water. But, on closer inspection, you’ll notice the way a current eddies after it flows past a point, or wells up over a submerged log. You can check out a lake map or just use your anchor to find out where there’s underwater structure—drop-offs, rock piles, sand bars, etc.—where fish like to rest or lie in wait for prey.

Sometimes you’ll see minnows jumping, scattering frantically as they flee a hunting game fish. If you wonder what bait to use, look for what’s already there. (Fly-fishermen are the masters of this art, tying their artificial flies to replicate the insects they’ve seen the fish eating.) For fish that don’t feed so visibly, some fishermen will dissect one they’ve landed to see what’s in its stomach.

More rabid fisherman than I invest in all sorts of high-tech gear to help them find the fish: global positioning systems, sonar, even underwater cameras. (Now there’s a trick that takes the last shred of guesswork out of the sport!) Call me a purist, but I still love the mystery of not knowing exactly where the fish are.