The Lake Where You Live

The fishing season opens next weekend. Have I looked forward to it? Of course, but that doesn’t mean I’ll actually fish. Opening day, for me, is more personal than a square on the calendar.

You know what Opening Day can be like. Often as not, the water is still too cold for the fish to be active. The weather can be nasty. You may find condensation on aluminum boat seats turned to ice in the chill before dawn. I feel no obligation to be out there. No, opening day happens when and where I choose. It’s a time of the heart.

For one thing, there is no magic in that first May Saturday. In April, for example, you can target perch and bluegills or fish certain rivers for walleyes. I’ve spent a few warm April afternoons along a river near my old hometown, drifting cheesecloth-wrapped clusters of salmon spawn through riffles and into pools, hoping to hook a steelhead trout. 

Sometimes, instead of obeying the calendar, I let that first May Saturday to go by and allow opening day to come to me. Maybe it blows in on a late-May wind that brings three or four clear days of seventy-five degrees. Stepping outside on a Sunday morning, I know from the feel of the sun and the scent of the earth that largemouth bass are moving into the shallows of a small lake I discovered years ago. 

I grab a medium spinning rod and a small box of lures, drive to the lake and slip into waders. Entering the water thigh-deep, I cast a chartreuse spinnerbait along shore and retrieve it, slow and steady. I feel a jolt and a fish is on, leaping clear of the water, throwing off spray. 

Or maybe opening day comes when, driving home from work, I notice purple flowers in the ditch along a town road and understand what that signifies. I skip supper, hook up the boat, take a flyrod and a box of poppers, and head for a bluegill pond at the end of a gravel road. Anchoring on a point, I cast a black popper up to a sunken log, and smile inside as it vanishes in a swirl.

Sometimes the opening comes as a surprise. Years ago, three friends and I arrived for four June days at a private Northwoods lake. It was past sunset. The calm lake looked inviting. Rod in hand, I noticed the full moon’s reflection on the water, floating not far from where I stood. Just for fun, I cast a floating plug out beyond that reflection. As I twitched it back, into that shimmering circle, the attack of a bass scattered droplets of moonlight.

Opening day also can be a private ritual. It’s my first evening at a Northwoods vacation cabin I’m in a row boat not far offshore, holding a lightweight rod, working a piece of nightcrawler straight down at the edge of a cabbage-weed bed.

This isn’t the way to get big fish, yet here I am, fishing like a child. I let the split shot take the bait to the bottom, then give the reel one turn. And there it is — a subtle tap on the rod. I sense the vibration in my hand and wrist, lower the rod tip, lift it gently, feel a weight, and then a tug. Something is down there. That’s all I needed to know.

Ted Rulseh, a writer, author and advocate for lake protection, lives on Birch Lake in Oneida County. Visit him and his blog at https://thelakeguy.net.