"That's the biggest bass I've caught all year," he said.
"You just haven't been going with the right guide," I said.
It was an intense and rushed five-day weekend back in New England, full of emotional and memorable moments. But like Nick Hornby's Arsenal-based memory in Fever Pitch, my memories of this trip will hinge on my personal obsessions -- on the sharp visual recall of a bronze finned missile sailing through the air, spraying us with lake water as he tail-walked next to the canoe, and breaking the rusted hook on my balsa popper (the guide let his five-pounder get away, intentionally of course).
We got these fish on the same lake that I visited back in a June post. It is a special place partially under protection from Acadia National Park, and its specialness for me is proven by my adamant efforts to carve out an evening to fish there with my old friend in the old canoe that he inherited from me. To clear Tuesday evening I had to dine with my parents Monday evening, which meant rushing out of Massachussetts and doing a hard-nosed six hour drive from weekend party scenes in Northampton. It ain't easy rallying your hung-over buddies to start a Monday morning road trip, but I did it with the motivation of lake water lapping by the shore (see the third stanza).
In a way this lake is truly the home water of my childhood fishing origins, while the Pit River is more my adopted adult home. We go there and regress, with my friend Stroutster usually bringing worms and fishing them under a bobber like we did at age 12. A few years back, I took the hook out of the mouth of a small yellow perch, stuck it back under his dorsal fin (Ow! Sorry PETA!) and before long, no kidding, a big fat smallmouth took that bobber for the ride of its life. On this latest trip we operated under the all-artificials rules for October, with Strout taking his fish on a krocodile spoon I had left over from Alaska, and me working poppers on the floating line. I guess we may be finally growing up.
Ah, and we all know where that ends! Let me tell you that, after helping my friend bury his mother, I went straight back to my parent's home and gave my mom a pretty urgent hug. Inevitably, we fell to talking about hers and my father's wishes for the scattering of their remains, and her answer briefly took my breath: she named the very lake I have been writing about. She and my dad too, have had some special times there. I have fished with both of my grandfathers, now dead, on that lake.
So it makes sense why they would want it to be their final resting place, this beautiful glacially carved lake full of healthy fish. It makes sense, too, that I keep wanting to go back there to connect up with so many factors: with my childhood joy, with the sense of being together with my parents and grandparents, with the real sense of bonding with my fishing buddy, with the sense of being young and being older too, with the sense of beauty all around and peace inside -- to wit, if I may continue Nietzscheanly in this sappily symphonic vein of prose -- to have a strong and acute sense of just BEING.
I'm afraid I could keep going on with this psychobabble and philosobabble. That's what you get when you take a personal passion like Arsenal football or fly fishing and make it the main organizing factor in your life. But this is a fishing blog, so let's not let it stray to far into the author. Let's think about getting back to that lake in Maine in August (following the proposal-friend's marriage) when they'll be even more aggressive to topwater flies, and maybe even taking the time to get out to storied spots like West Grand Lake on the kayak. In the end, though, pound-for-pound, the bass from a certain lake on MDI are the heaviest of any.
