The Bobber, Warm Water, and...

Fascinating at least to a young boy on a summer day, or the same lad in his dotage, on the same pond decades later. Somewhere in between, the fisherman may, as so many have, been lured to cold water and the bluegill's less evolved cousin, the trout. That is fine, it leaves more room on the pond. However, some anglers lose, in the transition from coarse fish to sophisticate, an essential element of the fishing experience -- undiluted hope.

On a warmwater pond, on still summer morning, assuming the usually profligate assortment of marine life -- pickerel, bass, crappie, sunfish, perch, hornpout, shiners -- the bobber floating on the surface, suspending a nightcrawler just above the weedbed, is a lightning rod of expectancy. There is no assumption on the part of the fisherman that the movement of the plastic sphere will indicate, immediately, a six-inch perch or a twenty-inch pickerel. The angler may have chosen his spot based upon previous catches, but that doesn't bring science to his endeavor, many creatures travel the deeps of a small pond. Every young fisherman knows that the whimsey of the Red Gods could send him Leviathan in sundry forms -- and that is his delightful hope every time the bobber quivers.

The stream fisherman pursuing trout in fast water knows, often with depressing exactitude, what lives in the riffles and runs. All too often, he knows because the only trout there have been stocked -- 2000 of this species, 500 of that, and all of a size. Little room is left for hope or wonder. Oh, there is still "Luck" and there might even be science, but Hope was left on a small pond with a bobber and a worm.

© 2006 Reed F. Curry