Quatsino Sound Fishing: Day 5 & Epilogue
So many times we try to find the right emotion. What emotion is gonna help you? This is what helps you: forward motion; gettin' your legs back; gettin' up off the bottom; working the whole time. Those are actions. Not one of those was an emotion.
The fifth and final day of fishing is slow: it's the only outing on which we catch less than 10 salmon. Fatigue, contagious, ubiquitous, lingers, and it becomes more and more difficult to focus on the rod. To keep my concentration, I constantly tell myself that, in a few days, when I'm back in Toronto, editing videos and writing blog posts, I'll be daydreaming, wishing I was out on the water. But even so, my attention wanes: introspection intrudes.
I haven't been pleased with my demeanour in the last week. I've let external forces dictate my actions and reactions. But I've also failed to extinguish the negativity within me which, admittedly, can serve an important purpose. Being mad helps me remember my mistakes; failing to catch fish motivates me to learn more when I'm not out on the water; cursing is therapeutic, a way of expelling negative energy. But, as I get older, I doubt more and more whether this is shortest path to self-improvement.
Great anglers are positive thinkers. Anger, frustration, self-pity are distractions that prevent me from thinking rationally. These emotions make me change my lure every two minutes; they make me tie knots hastily and sloppily; they make me forget everything I did well and think of only what I bungled. I used to believe that positive thinking was a load of garbage. Now, when I look back at the smallmouth I lost on the long weekend, I remember first and foremost that I hooked a fish where I've never hooked one before. Staying positive in the face of adversity remains a challenge. But I'm improving incrementally.
Because of the rough conditions, we return to the cottages earlier than normal. The bottle of bourbon stands empty, and I know the trip is nearing its end. After dinner, I'm hoping to stay up late, but everyone else hits the hay, so I follow suit. Before I know it, I'm dining near the Tyee Club in Campbell River, a place where people follow asinine rules, and where men are content to let other men row for them. It's not a place for me. Though I do enjoy my oyster burger.
At the airport in Calgary, my dad and I say goodbye to Alex and his wife, Nancy, the unsung hero of the trip. For five days, she drove the boat while we were trolling, keeping it on course in both calm and rough conditions, her attitude, or so it appeared, paying no heed to the words and deeds of others. That she can sit for so long on a boat without touching a fishing rod is remarkable. I describe her position as my custom-tailored version of purgatory.
As our plane takes off, I pick up Carlos Baker's biography of Hemingway, conservatively titled "A Life Story". Fearing that some academic will give my memoir a similarly bland heading, I scribble down a few options to spare the writer the unenviable task of condensing my existence into a phrase. My favourite? The Bad Habits of a Short-Armed Bass Fisherman. Smirking, I fall into a light sleep.
(This very blog post is proof that my positive attitude is beginning to burgeon: after completing the first draft, I accidentally deleted the entirety of the article, simultaneously proving that manuscripts do in fact burn, even in this day and age. Rather than giving up on it and producing something second rate in its stead, I exhaled loudly a few times, then did my best to reproduce the original: to dwell on the loss would be irrational, particularly when my error simply resulted in an opportunity to create a better, second version. Stay positive!)
The fifth and final day of fishing is slow: it's the only outing on which we catch less than 10 salmon. Fatigue, contagious, ubiquitous, lingers, and it becomes more and more difficult to focus on the rod. To keep my concentration, I constantly tell myself that, in a few days, when I'm back in Toronto, editing videos and writing blog posts, I'll be daydreaming, wishing I was out on the water. But even so, my attention wanes: introspection intrudes.
I haven't been pleased with my demeanour in the last week. I've let external forces dictate my actions and reactions. But I've also failed to extinguish the negativity within me which, admittedly, can serve an important purpose. Being mad helps me remember my mistakes; failing to catch fish motivates me to learn more when I'm not out on the water; cursing is therapeutic, a way of expelling negative energy. But, as I get older, I doubt more and more whether this is shortest path to self-improvement.
Because of the rough conditions, we return to the cottages earlier than normal. The bottle of bourbon stands empty, and I know the trip is nearing its end. After dinner, I'm hoping to stay up late, but everyone else hits the hay, so I follow suit. Before I know it, I'm dining near the Tyee Club in Campbell River, a place where people follow asinine rules, and where men are content to let other men row for them. It's not a place for me. Though I do enjoy my oyster burger.
As our plane takes off, I pick up Carlos Baker's biography of Hemingway, conservatively titled "A Life Story". Fearing that some academic will give my memoir a similarly bland heading, I scribble down a few options to spare the writer the unenviable task of condensing my existence into a phrase. My favourite? The Bad Habits of a Short-Armed Bass Fisherman. Smirking, I fall into a light sleep.
(This very blog post is proof that my positive attitude is beginning to burgeon: after completing the first draft, I accidentally deleted the entirety of the article, simultaneously proving that manuscripts do in fact burn, even in this day and age. Rather than giving up on it and producing something second rate in its stead, I exhaled loudly a few times, then did my best to reproduce the original: to dwell on the loss would be irrational, particularly when my error simply resulted in an opportunity to create a better, second version. Stay positive!)
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