Bark's has Bite
The temperature's dropping and the sign reads "Barry's Bay 154". It's been a tough hard water season. Having slept only one hour, distracted, tempted by the snicker of a sweet dream, I roll down my window to keep myself awake as I drive through Algonquin Park. It'll hit -30 degrees Celsius by the time I reach Sunny Hill Resort on Bark Lake. I remember mostly the white cloud sitting over Whitney, covering the petty loneliness of a place past its prime, and running headlong into an orange light spreading before me.
The bag of minnows from Complete Bait & Tackle in Huntsville sloshes beside me in the passenger's seat as my car comes to a stop. Jason, always punctual, greets me and takes me to my hut: the same one I used a few weeks before. I'll be fishing in 80 feet of water. And I've decided I'm not going to go home empty handed this time.
My elkhound Zac, a native of Attawapiskat, warms up by the propane heater while I toggle the settings on my Humminbird unit. I'm sure he would rather be playing with his friend Apollo, a husky rescued from a kennel in Muskoka. With my electronics tuned, I start covering the entirety of the water column with a white swimbait. But I get discouraged quickly because I don't have the faith to fish it vertically. It isn't long before I lean on my crutch: a drop-shot rig tipped with two minnows, and a Lindy Slick Jig in place of a weight.
Tedium hits quickly. By noon I haven't even had a whiff of a bite and I fall asleep on the floor, frustrated. Hours of preparation. Painstaking attention to detail. Sometimes it just doesn't matter. You try and try and try but you feel like you're destined to fail. But that's the trick. You feel. And success does not depend on how you feel. It depends on what you do. And luck is a fickle little ---.
I wake up to see my medium-heavy rod falling off its perch, a cheap plastic folding chair. I scramble clumsily to reach for it and somehow, despite my worst efforts, manage to set the hook on a fish. It's not big, but it's my first lake trout of the year. Energy, focus, and ambition return in an instant, in a torrent of irrational confidence: the kind you need to become a good fisherman.
Some might discourage that arrogance. I relish it. There are times in life when we are left alone, when there's no one to teach us, no one to help us, no one to encourage us: succinctly, when no one gives a -- about you (unless, of course, you're doing something wrong). Confidence, baseless or otherwise: there's no better weapon to use to defeat that --. It gives us the strength to recognize that we always have choices, and that failure and success are always on the table. I say -- failure and -- external forces. Regardless of circumstance, I choose to overcome, to master, to win.
With that attitude, my next and final hook set is perfect. The slick jig does a beautiful job, its sharp hook holding on to a fish bigger than the lake trout I caught a few hours earlier. It puts up a good fight for its size, so I work it patiently to the hole. Grabbing its slimy body, I'm more than pleasantly surprised: it's my first ever ling. -- yeah! I leave the hut to take a few pictures. Alone in the sun, happy, accomplished, I examine my domain. It's still cold as --.
Adrenaline wanes slowly as the orange mirage fades in front of me. It takes only a few turns to get back to Huntsville. The fisherman always becomes introspective and philosophical after a day on the water, quantifying his success in units of murder. I too have this tendency, to erroneously think in hindsight that it wasn't really fish that I was after. The taste of the burbot's sweet meat kills that abstraction and brings my attention back to the soft subtleties of my sweet dream. I quickly forget that the fillet knife in the kitchen is still sharp, very sharp, and my entire house smells of fish.
With that attitude, my next and final hook set is perfect. The slick jig does a beautiful job, its sharp hook holding on to a fish bigger than the lake trout I caught a few hours earlier. It puts up a good fight for its size, so I work it patiently to the hole. Grabbing its slimy body, I'm more than pleasantly surprised: it's my first ever ling. -- yeah! I leave the hut to take a few pictures. Alone in the sun, happy, accomplished, I examine my domain. It's still cold as --.
Adrenaline wanes slowly as the orange mirage fades in front of me. It takes only a few turns to get back to Huntsville. The fisherman always becomes introspective and philosophical after a day on the water, quantifying his success in units of murder. I too have this tendency, to erroneously think in hindsight that it wasn't really fish that I was after. The taste of the burbot's sweet meat kills that abstraction and brings my attention back to the soft subtleties of my sweet dream. I quickly forget that the fillet knife in the kitchen is still sharp, very sharp, and my entire house smells of fish.
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