That Fine Line

One pre-dawn morning earlier this season, I approached a blinking red light.  My mind (admittedly, probably on auto-pilot) interpreted it as a four-way stop, and so even though I saw the car approaching from my left, having stopped, I went to accelerate through the intersection.  Then something momentarily clicked for me, I braked hard, and the car continued just past my truck’s nose at full speed.  That car had the right-of-way with just a blinking yellow caution light.   I had both almost wrongfully caused, and narrowly avoided, a nasty T-bone accident.  I had nearly shared a very bad day with a stranger, through no fault of their own.  Instead, I proceeded to pick up my fishing partners for the day, and we caught some very nice salmon, including a pair of personal bests.  The day as a whole was a resounding success.  But this near-incident served as my most recent pointed reminder of the very fine line that, during every outing, separates success from failure, safety from disaster, good memories from bad.  I try to be mindful of that line, respect it, and stay on the right side of it, but I doubt I’ll ever fully understand its nature.

Early in my salmon fishing “career”, I shared a trip to a more northerly Lake Michigan port.  To date, my experience had been at more southerly ports.  For the most part, these are structure-less, and the salmon are nomads, chasing bait in pockets of water with preferred water temperatures.  A basic key to success at these southern Lake Michigan ports is to present you lures at the intersection of bait and temperature; the salmon should be there.   Up north, the drop-off and other lake bottom structures become more prominent and often dominate the fishing strategies.  Success here is often based on staying in touch with fish that are relating to the drop-off, associated currents, etc., and folks can get fairly aggressive in asserting their rights to maintain relative position while trolling along the break.  On this particular trip, we were having some success in 110 feet of water, as were others.  While Lake Michigan is a big body of water, it’s not big enough to accommodate multiple boats in the same spot, and the circumstances of boat traffic forced us into shallower water.  We struggled against the change in location as long as we could, but when the downrigger balls started bouncing on the break’s bottom, it was time to change our presentation, if only to protect our gear.  But before I could raise the first cannonball, a downrigger rod fired.  In short succession the other rigger and the dipsey were attacked, and we had our first ever triple-header.  Needless to say, we stayed in shallow, banged bottom, and continued the catching; nice fish that we would have missed had we not been forced to cross the line and change locations. 

The drowned river mouths of West Michigan are robust fisheries, and they’re especially well known for trophy walleye.  This is mostly a night bite, and some of our local trophy hunters seem to think that unnatural lights put off the bite; and I’ve learned that many of them choose not to use their required navigational lights when fishing for walleyes.   I learned this the almost-hard way, by nearly plowing through an unlighted walleye boat in the middle of a basin while running to my first bass spot of the morning.  This incident was way too close for comfort, and it changed the way I approach fishing in the dark.  I also learned that it’s not too infrequent of an occurrence. 

What agent of luck provided the margin by which I missed that boat?  I’m sure it’s the same as that which determined all the close foul balls, contested third strikes, blown umpire calls, and the narrow wins and losses of my baseball youth.  The stakes seem a little higher with hockey; a fraction of an inch up or to the side and I could have lost my vision to pucks at least twice.  Instead I simply bled a lot, got some stitches, and endured a couple of epic black eyes.  No real damage was incurred, and yet I was super close on multiple occasions of suffering life-altering injuries.  Let's not even talk about bikes or cars.  I’m sure it’s just physics, but beyond the mechanics of a given situation, how can one not wonder at the magnitude of the underlying dumb luck, especially when there’s risk of great loss?

I don’t want to get too deep here; fishing’s about fun. So of course we should remind ourselves to be careful, to act responsibly, and to avoid problems.  We should be thankful for our good fortunes, and we should learn from our close calls.  We can manage our luck to a certain extent, but I still wonder at some of the factors behind our catches.  When I stop for gas on the way to the ramp; wait for somebody at the launch; tend to bodily needs; or navigate around a flock of water-fowl; do these acts alter our results?  Do they change our timing on the water, and present our baits to different (bigger/smaller) fish?   I’d like to think that the effect of these incidents is small, compared to the bigger decisions of fishing location, lure presentation, and so forth.  Thinking about these little effects is probably like trying to balance your household budget by controlling butter purchases; too ineffectual and misguided in the main.  And yet, how can I not think that at least some of the individual fish I’ve encountered have been a result of these small forces, or that I’ve not missed out on other outrageous fish by a similarly fine line?

An honest Lake Michigan Tyee Salmon - 32.5 pounds