The Honest Angler

Here’s one of my favorite stories, for the most part true. Maybe young Joe Cermele will take this one to heart!

I happened to be fishing with Jason Brunner last fall on Arizona’s Lake Powell. Jason is a very talented—and somewhat young—rod designer for St. Croix Rods.

Before we set out in the morning I am drinking coffee, squinting at the rising sun, and feeling just the touch of an ache in my arthritic knees. “So, Jason,” I say, as he appears, ready to go in full fishing garb. “You need to know something. I am The Old Guy, and you are The Young Guy. Do you understand about this?”

Brunner doesn’t miss a beat. “Yeah, I do,” he says. “It’s like the Old Bull and the Young Bull.” I’m immediately laughing and ask him to explain.

“Well,” he says, “the Young Bull and the Old Bull are standing on a hillside overlooking a pasture full of cows. The Young Bull is prancing around, all excited, and says to the Old Bull, ‘Let’s run down there and [bleep] some of those cows!’

“The Old Bull just shakes his head. ‘Nah,’ he says. ‘Let’s walk down there and [bleep] all of them.’"

I choked on my coffee, for once managing not to slop my shirt. Then I got a second cup with which to toast his wisdom, unusual for a young angler. We killed some more time warming ourselves like rock-bound cormorants in the growing sunlight. Finally I felt like fishing, so we hopped on a bass boat and ran off to catch small stripers with fast-sinking fly lines and chartreuse Clouser minnows.

So I had F&S Senior Editor Colin Kearns in the boat yesterday during a massive cold front that locked down the bass bite tighter than a bank vault. A stiff north wind with falling temperatures under clear blue skies made conditions really difficult. Despite this, he did manage a couple of adolescent largemouths on  deeply fished soft plastics, which was two more than I caught.

Note in the photo that even this young editor has already learned to hold a small bass at arm’s length so the wide-angle lens I was using would make the fish look much bigger!

Kidding aside, I was happy to see even small fish under those conditions. Can anyone out there tell me why bass fishing so often shuts down during a cold front? I’ve asked many people over many 
years and still haven’t heard what I think is a good explanation.

One of the editors from our New York office has come up to spend a couple of days fishing and article planning. As usual, the fishing comes first.

So today I have to put up or shut up. We’ll be hauling my boat in about an hour off to a nearby lake where I plan to put him on some local largemouths. That won’t be easy in these August doldrums.

So can Senior Editor Colin Kearns hack it with a baitcasting  rod? Can he put just the right twitch on a 5-inch, Green Weenie Zipper worm? Or even more important, can this old-timer get the young guy 
into a good one no matter what?

Stay tuned, folks. I’ll be reporting in the next installment. This is more drama than we usually get around here, and right now it’s making me a little nervous.

Cheap. Cheap. Cheap. The editorial zeal shown by most media—including this one—for the best deals on gear or the least expensive, so-called great trips is beginning to sound like the noontime chorus at a chicken ranch. Maybe we’re overdoing it. I mean, what’s wrong with expensive?

Years ago, I paid my dues many times over sleeping in car seats or under polyethylene sheeting next to trout streams or striper beaches, which I fished with cheap tackle while having an absolutely wonderful time. In later years, I was able to fish from higher-end lodges, either by hook (my own money) or by crook (the kinds of freebies writers sometimes get). I have to say that a hot shower after fishing, followed by a Cuban cigar (where legal) and martini enjoyed while somebody else does the cooking is not a bad thing.

Obviously, not all can afford the high end. Neither can I, at least not often. My wife and I still camp out on many of our fishing trips, partly because we just enjoy the camping and partly to save money. And once in a great while we splurge on a higher-end trip. Expensive is not so much bad, I think, as it is an aspiration. If it weren’t for expensive, what would we aspire to?