The Lake Where You Live

I’ve written about lakes at least weekly for close to 25 years. That includes two newspaper columns about them, and three books.

My newly released fourth book is about the main thing I do on the lakes, and the one I most treasure. That is to say, it’s about fishing. “You Shoulda Been Here Last Week” is a collection of stories from my angling life, from toddlerhood to advancing age.

It doesn’t try to tell how or where to catch fish. Instead, it explores the deeper sides of the activity — successes and failures, precious times with family and friends, moments of magic and wonder, lessons learned, experiences forever carved in memory. 

I’d never claim not to care about the catching; I emphatically do care. It’s just that as you likely know, there’s a lot more to fishing than that. One story recounts the precise moment when my daughter Sonya made that discovery.

From the time she started fishing, at age four or so, Sonya was all business in the boat. If the fish weren’t biting, her mood soon turned sour. Then came an evening when she was about10. We were casting silver minnow spoons for pike here on Birch Lake. The sun had slipped below the treetops, imparting a pink tone to scattered, puffy clouds.

Then two eagles appeared overhead. Sonya looked at the pair, circling together, climbing on the thermals, never beating a wing. “Oh, that’s beautiful,” she said. For a second she looked down at her spinning real and thumbed the release button. But then her gaze turned upward again. “Daddy, can I stop and watch them?”

“Of course you can,” I replied. She tilted her head back against the orange pillow of her life preserver, her eyes following the eagles’ spiral ascent into rose-tinted sky. I looked on and smiled, because that’s when I knew, for sure, that Sonya was learning to fish.

Moments like that, more so than filled bag limits, make time on the water worthwhile. There was the last fishing outing I took with my dad, when he was in his 80s and nearly blind from macular degeneration. In a reversal of roles, I was the one unhooking the bluegills he caught and baiting his hook.

Son Todd and I shared a memorable evening on a small lake at sunset as nighthawks appeared, closing in around us in silent flight, whisking so close we could almost feel the breath of their wings. We fished on among them, those ghost birds, until it was so dark we could barely see the white tops of our bobbers.

There are lighter memories, too. Like doing enthusiastic battle with my wife over the keeping of night crawlers and hellgrammites in the kitchen refrigerator. The search for the elusive Luny Frog. My misadventures trying to design and prototype an entirely new kind of neutral buoyancy minnow-imitation lure. 

My wish is that these stories help connect you with your own angling world. You might find an idea or two that help you do a little more catching. Mainly, though, I hope these stories evoke experiences you’ve had, or maybe would like to have, somewhere on water, and so make your angling life a little richer. 

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.