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Inside Angles: The Hot Breath of Civilization

One most precious thing we have is limited time.

Inside Angles: The Hot Breath of Civilization
(Larry Tople illustration)

Precious cargo. A sandwich in the cooler, couple hard-boiled eggs, salt and pepper shakers in a plastic bag, plenty of ice, a can of Sam’s Diet Cola, a bottle of tapwater, the cooler pushed to the front of the boat to help hold the bow down. Setting alongside one gunnel is a pole and a bag of bait, the bait optional because I might catch it streamside. Finally, a wire-mesh fish basket—and my catbag with lead, hooks, floats, and a few other possibilities. Surely Thoreau would smile.

Heading upstream, the motor tilted up to negotiate the shallow water, skeg and prop grinding and grudging through gravel and sand, rounding one riverbend and then another, the trees and brush along the bank becoming dense—sense of immediate time begins to fade.

Jack Curtis had it right when he wrote about feeling the hot breath of civilization on the back of one’s neck and the need to find a place to fish away from the crowd. Curtis, though, was just as stuck as most of us. We can’t simply climb on a plane and chase a fly-in dream, because the time and the money aren’t there. So we get away close to home.

I’ve known such places for more than half a century and they are almost the same today as back then, when I first started wading in jeans, tee shirt, and tennis shoes in the August heat. You might hear a distant train or cars traveling a nearby road. You might see a farmer doing fieldwork. But in all those years and surely over a thousand miles, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve run into other anglers on the small stream stretches that I walk and wade. These kinds of spots are still there, I guarantee it, in every part of the country.

Admittedly, stream access isn’t as easy as it was when I was a kid. In those days the world was wide open and you didn’t think about asking—a posted sign was a rare flower, indeed. Traveling close by a farmstead, if you saw someone you waved and they waved back—never mind, and hope you’re having fun. Thirsty, you walked into the yard and drank from the well, your hand cupped under the iron pump spout, catching the cool water, as you worked the pump handle with your other hand. Might pick a juicy apple from a tree in the yard. Probably get another wave from the kitchen window.

Today, posted signs are like dandelions in a ditch. So at times it takes a small boat to get to spots where you can get out and wade in quietude. The legality of it all varies from state to state. Some places you have to stay in the boat unless you have permission to get out. Those places are pretty much out West, like Wyoming—trout country. In most states if you’re in the water or darn close to it, you’re doing no wrong.

But then in farm country even today you can still usually ask and not get turned down. Farmers who live with a little piece of paradise flowing through their backyard sometimes don’t think about it that much—much less consider fishing it themselves. So they don’t mind the idea of you catching “their” catfish. It’s a little bit different story when you show up in fall, packing a .30-06 and wanting to shoot their deer and the farmer wonders if you might not also shoot his horse and the jingle-jangles off his prize bull.

We’ve talked about catching these small-stream catfish before. You have to be cagey as an old fox to corral them. Well, not really. But a feller deserves to feel good about himself and his capabilities from time to time. Here we are, spending next to nothing and we’re in paradise—and we’re going to catch fish, to boot. Makes a man smile.

In my early days I used a cheap flyrod, 9 feet long, with a lot of whoop in it, so even small fish had a fighting chance. That’s fun. It was just an Aberdeen hook on the end of the line and a lead shot if necessary 6 inches above it. Just follow the course of the drift with the rod tip. The line hesitates, you lift, and the game’s on—or you’re snagged.

Grasshoppers are good bait, plentiful near most streams. More than a decade ago now my late friend Toad Smith and I are dressed for wading—old jeans, tennies, and so on. Toad has on an old red knit polo shirt that doesn’t quite cover his tummy, much less his Joe the Plumber’s crack when he goes to bending down. “Moowhooon over the Minnesota!” I yodel when he reaches for a catfish.

We are going to fish the Minnesota River and stop at a diner in Granite Falls for a cheeseburger. Leaving the diner we discover right off that we can go from vehicle to vehicle in the parking lot and pick plenty of fresh grasshoppers off the grills of pickup trucks—it’s still mostly Ford, Chevy, and Dodge pickup trucks parked at diners in most farming communities, with some of the retired boys driving Caddies, but nary a Mercedes in sight.

That’s when Biker Lady steps from the diner, toothpick in mouth, flexing arms like pistons from out of a Grateful Dead T-Shirt with the sleeves cut off at the shoulders, a snake-and-skull tattoo on one bicep, her blond hair in the kind of tight bun reminiscent of one of the fuhrer’s women in a war documentary. She is as big as Toad and as hard as the rock faces on Mount Rushmore.

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Biker Babe sees Toad, dressed as he is, looking like a homeless person we later suppose, there picking grasshoppers off the grill of her truck, her chopper in the pickup bed. She slips a big wad of bills from a pants pocket and offers Toad $5 to get a hot meal and maybe a shower—along with a wink and a “why don’t you come see me sometime.”

It is the only time I ever see Toad at a loss for words. A tight, pained smile creases his face. Beads of sweat break out all along his brow. “Opportunity knocked and you failed to answer,” I say. “For a moment, I saw my life passing before my eyes,” he says. Those were the days.

These days I often go even cheaper than an old flyrod and use a plain fiberglass pole, no reel, just about 8 feet of 15-pound line tied onto the end, and then the terminal rigging, still just a plain hook and maybe a shot, and sometimes a float. The poles are telescoping Shakespeare Wonder Poles, 12 or 13 foot long, but there are other options on the market.

Maybe fishing with the pole is a little like hunting with a long bow instead of using a compound. It limits opportunities but the chase is the thing. There will be places that I can’t reach. Also, hooking up with fish in cover is a matter of heaving to, holding on, and holding your own. That’s fun. Anyway, I’m not at war with these fish, just here for a day of the best of it in these surroundings. I know I’m going to catch enough and it doesn’t matter any more if it’s 5 or 25, although 10 would be just right.

The ritual started early. Hunting or fishing, grandpa and I would stop for lunch. The fish or birds could wait while we ate hardboiled eggs, raisin bread and cheddar-cheese sandwiches, and ginger cookies. It was a break, a chance to replay the events of the morning and consider the possibilities for the afternoon to come. So, about noon, back at the boat after hours of wading, time to find a shady spot and dig into the cooler.

A good sandwich is the heart of a streamside break. I keep it simple. The raisin bread and cheddar-cheese combo still ranks up there with the best of them. Another favorite is tuna and chopped sweet pickles on whole wheat or rye—just a little mayo. Or corned beef with a slice of Swiss cheese and a zingy Chinese-style hot mustard. Or a big whack of liverwurst, a slice of red onion, and lots of salt and pepper. With that one the weatherman predicts a blustery and quite dangerous afternoon downwind, the better to be alone on a secluded stream.

I have read that flatulence was not the problem that one might suppose among cowboys who survived largely on three meals of biscuits and beans each day, their systems having been tempered by this diet. I tend to believe, though, that campfire scenes from the movie Blazing Saddles lie closer to the truth—free-range farting. I am also just now reminded of a friend from our annual elk camp who has over the course of 15 years practically and professionally won the well-deserved nickname, Little Big Wind.

One most precious thing we have is limited time. Sitting there in the shade, stream trickling by, a few catfish in the basket bound for an evening meal, sandwich in hand, nowhere in particular to be but right here, the mind tumbles back through all the years, some of the fish, many of the situations. There have been moments and opportunities wasted, but never here.




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