2nd Half-Century

I just crossed the threshold into my 2^nd Half-Century, and while most of the recent public talk has been about the 50^th Anniversary of MLK Jr.’s March on Washington, I’d like to point out that he’s not the only one to have a dream.  Mine are more limited in scope, for sure, and many are just budding for me.  They are less well-articulated, but they are close to my heart, and I hope that my pursuit of them accomplishes some good along the way.

I, of course, dream of the best for my girls, even though I probably can’t define what “best” for them might be.  The providence of genetics and nurturing is largely complete, but I still have a role in enabling Stability and Opportunity in their lives.  I simply wish for their happiness as productive adults, surrounded by loving companions.  I wish for a future filled with interesting pursuits that provide for their growth in a safe, healthy environment.  I hope to remain their friend.

Not just my girls, but all my younger relatives and friends and their cohorts should have the opportunity to prosper.  At some point we need to get away from our collective short-sightedness and self-centered interests and decide to build a stable future that provides some real opportunities.   Here in Michigan, we should be preparing to build George Jetson’s car instead of fumbling along like Oliver Wendell Douglas in Green Acres.  We should be able to look slightly past the opportunities provided by the use of sticks and twigs as fuel and demolition of blight as a growth industry, and focus our attention and resources on education, service, and quality of life issues.

Mostly, I dream of A’s companionship and the fun to be had.  I dream of a boat in the water, an amenable nap schedule, some good meals and books, and lots of exploration and poking around.

On a fun but somewhat unnecessary note, some occasional blue water excitement (including occasional calm seas, warmth and a few new species?) would be nice.  This actually seems possible, given my efforts in retailing and outfitting for the past 7 months.  Maybe I even dream of these efforts spreading into other areas, getting out of my cubicle, and enjoying a future that involves some more time on the water.

Enough of dreams; here’s some reality.  I started off my 2nd Half-Century with an unlikely, quasi-spontaneous trip to Florida with my youngest daughter.  We’d talked for years about various Father-Daughter Trips, but we’d never actually executed one.   I knew we’d be alone this Labor Day Weekend (my other girls were in Maine), and a quick review of the Venn Diagram of Our Interests showed an intersection dominated by roller coasters and snorkeling.  So, supported in large part by funds from my second, fun job, we flew off on my 50^th birthday to Orlando for 3 Days, 5 Parks and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea!

It was generally awesome to share time alone with her, and this trip was a very well-earned reward for her general goodness and strength of effort.  I felt stupid for even thinking about traveling to Florida at the height of Hurricane Season, but in the end, all logistics worked out perfectly, crowds weren’t so bad, we did everything we wanted, and most of all it was FUN!  The best part of each experience was the sound of her laughter and the sight of her smile, and I was able to enjoy these things even more because the trip was focused on our companionship.  Not much else mattered, and the typical distractions and pressures of other trips (such as driving, fishing logistics and expectations, juggling multiple schedules, etc.) were minimized.  In addition to being fun, this trip was relaxing; and somehow I came back home rested and recharged.  I should remember this formula!

M in typical Florida mood and ready to go!

Underwater Selfie!

We took a break to visit the aviary and were visited by these two Sunny Conures.

Sharks!  Just Nurse Sharks, but still Sharks!

A typical encounter in crystal clear water; Cow-nose Ray, Look-down Jack and a Blue Surgeon.

• Three days
• Five parks
• Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

Well, I can’t quite check off this last item.  But Marie and I did spend half an hour or more underwater with 70-pound aerated helmets on a Sea Adventure, walking around on the “ocean” floor while viewing hundreds of fish (bony and cartilaginous!) and various invertebrates.  I’ve been a huge fan of Jules Verne since I discovered reading, and while this experience wasn’t 100% Authentic (safety, oversight and boundaries did, after all, rule over flat-out adventure and collecting our dinner), it was a cool experience that I shouldn’t have waited 50 years for.  And I might have swum 20,000 leagues in my full day of snorkeling; at least that’s what my body is telling me.

Underwater with a Photo-Hogfish

Hogfish and Porkfish, with Jacks and Grunts in the background.

A beautiful Perth Mint Surgeon.

Worst-to-First!

It's late August and the Sox are still in First Place.  I'm starting to contemplate the growing of a 2013 Playoff Beard (so successful in 2004 and 2007) to help their quest from last year's Worst Place finish to this year's targeted First Place finish. Good luck to all involved!

I've been back from our New Hampshire/Maine vacation for a few weeks now, and I've been either too busy or too brain-dead to report on it.  But I was reminded of Worst-to-First turnarounds while fishing.

Maine has been very generous to me over the last decade-plus of striper fishing, and so when I received negative reports for the season from my local contacts upon arrival, I wasn't all that worried.  I've always caught some stripers.  I know from experience that I may have to suffer through a few consecutive slow tides, but sooner or later, the stripers and I will intersect.  But conditions felt inexplicably dead for the first few sessions, and with vacation time dwindling, I started to wonder if it would be my Worst Season Ever.  This was a short-term vacation and probably my only chance for the season; I was on the verge of blanking, and I knew it.

The only sign of a striper (or even suitable bait) in three days had been the mid-day sighting of a single (but very sizable) striper swimming under the dock.  With the belief that a chance at such a fish was better than throwing in the towel, I tried some pleasant, relaxed, sun-lit, tide-centered fishing one afternoon.  Mackerel made a sudden appearance to break up a slow start.  Since the first one landed was too large to free-line, I chunked it and set it on the bottom.  I was soon surprised by a confident take and run by what turned out to be a fine, 31-inch striper.  The skunk was out of the box, and to be honest, Striper Quest 2013 was a success!

Rarely have I been more pleased to catch a fish... a long-anticipated 2013 Striper!

Soon thereafter, another chunked bait (this time the mackerel's head) zipped out and I was tight to what I knew to be a very nice bass. She turned out to be 37 inches long, the biggest one I've ever taken from shore! In just a short time, I'd averted my worst striper season with a best-ever catch.

37 inches of bulldogging stubbornness...my largest ever shore-bound striper.

The good fishing held up through the evening.  Marie joined me for a bit the next day and took care of the first fish all by herself.  Her techniques were a little rusty, but losing the fish was worth it, just to experience her reaction to a fresh mackerel head being unexpectedly tossed at her face.

Fish on for Marie!

Head-shake!

The bait is thrown...

...and narrowly misses Marie!

What a face!

The evening continued with more opportunities, but few landed fish.  The fish were simply too big and too wily to land from my shore-bound location on my light tackle of choice.  While the season's final tally of fish landed was unusually low, their size made up for the lack of action.  And I'll never complain about Personal Bests.

But perhaps the most memorable fishing of the week took place with my oldest daughter on the Connecticut River, while my other girls canoed nearby.  Again, the fishing wasn't great, but I was able to share some fine memories and experiences.  We also got a good view of what should have been my largest Connecticut River largemouth bass ever (over five pounds, easily), just before it threw my popper at the side of the canoe.  The best part; I'd just told her the tale of my largest Connecticut River largemouth bass; caught 30 years ago or so, probably from within 10 feet from where I'd just encountered this lost fish.  Ahhhhhh, fishing!

My next cast produced an acrobatic smallie.  It was big enough to interesting, caught on a top-water from one of favorite bodies of water, with all my favorite girls.  Giant Bass, Personal Bests and so forth are nice, but it doesn't really take too much to make me truly happy.  And I'm glad I can recognize that.

Air-borne smallie!

Boat-side antics!

Numenon in hand; in many ways.

The Learning Curve

I’d like to think that I can claim to be a life-long learner.  I’ve taken a hiatus or two, but otherwise I’ve always been pretty busy at functioning at a generally acceptably high level, reading worthwhile stuff, collecting skills, increasing self-awareness, and seeking general self-improvement.  Without doubt, many of these efforts have probably been misdirected, and in some cases, fruitless.  But I’m no slacker, and my utility to friends, family and society has probably increased over the years.   Along the way I’ve accumulated a diverse array of experiences and memories, some of which might even make me occasionally helpful or interesting to others.  

One of the great things about fishing is that it offers unlimited potential for improvement.  Whether it’s new waters, new habitats, new species of fish, more fish, bigger fish, new tactics and tackle,  or competing in tournaments, there’s always a broad horizon of opportunities and challenges to take on.

Most of the discretionary part of my youth was spent acquiring the knowledge, skills and tackle to become a competent bass fisherman.  Those pursuits took me into my thirties, but I reached a point where, given the amount of time I had available for the pursuit, I wasn’t getting much better at it.  I kind of knew what to expect from any given bass outing, and one season was pretty much seeming like the last.  I wasn’t exactly bored with my fishing efforts (I do love bass fishing), but I have to admit that golf held a strange attraction for me at the time.

Unlike my teenaged Rhode Island, West Michigan has diverse, quality fishing opportunities.  I'd always enjoyed my occassional walleye, brown trout and shore-bound pier/river salmon excursions that spiced up my fishing, but it wasn’t until I mounted a single down-rigger on Mrs. Paul and tried my hand at Lake Michigan salmon fishing that my passion for fishing re-ignited.  I’m willing to bet that the salmon fishing in August of 1995 was worthy of “Best Ever” status, because week after week, despite limited tackle and knowledge, I was getting enough action and enjoying enough success on the lake to think about little else (in terms of recreational pursuits.)  Fishing mostly by myself, and pretty much blind (without a GPS, speed indicator, temperature probe, or even a depth sounder capable of reaching the bottom), I encountered good numbers of fish of impressive size.  And these fish pulled drag!

I don't think I was obsessed, but most other types of fishing fell off to the wayside over the next few years.  More and more time and money got spent on the pursuit of Great Lakes Trolling Excellence.  I added many new presentation options to my repertoire, and I soon out-grew Mrs. Paul.  Along came Numenon, with more space, new electronics and longer range.  With all these new toys, tips and tricks at my disposal, plus the fact that I continued to learn from just about every trip, if not every fish, I was motivated enough to equate "Fishing" with "Great Lakes Trolling".

At about the same time, I was able to seasonally access and learn a viable striped bass fishery.  These quickly taught me that many of my freshwater skills and tactics weren't quite up to snuff.  Combined, I was now catching (and expecting) more, larger, stronger, meaner fish with a variety of tactics.  Instead of knowing what to expect, there were constant surprises and choices to be made.  Fishing had become something beyond the act itself; there was endless balancing, exploration, learning and application; it was more than the simple sum of skills, tackle and time.  Fishing had become much more than a past time, it was an avid pursuit, it was now a true avocation.

I was exposed to an early theory in ecological studies that became known as the “Optimal Foraging Theorem.”  (Before I go any further, let me apologize to any of my former professors or ecological cohorts for any miss-statement I might make here.)  Optimal Foraging basically stated that, in heterogeneous environments with varying resource availability, an individual spending only enough time gathering food in place so as to exceed the average foraging success rate would ultimately come out ahead.  The individual could sample different environments, get a sense of rates of return, and focus only in those areas of good (i.e., better than average) returns.  The benefit is in staying “ahead of the curve” and therefore assuring better than average performance.  All cannot be above average all of the time, but there’s nothing to say that we can't be smart about our choices.  

Science!  It takes time to have initial success, but then you learn quickly.  But don't stick  with the same tactics, because your returns will diminish!

And so for many of the last few years, I’ve focused my efforts on the best available quality bite at a given time.  This has been my version of my Optimal Fishing Theorem, and by fishing for the "hot" species at the "right" time, I can stay with above-average opportunities all year round.  My fishing always at least has a chance of being above average.

Another ecological concept in my approach to fishing is sustaining a maximum return for my efforts.  As we master an activity, our rate of improvement diminishes; by constantly trying new species and tactics, I may have missed out on overall mastery of one approach; but I'm constantly learning new applications and being exposed to new experiences.  No more Same Old/Same Old, but rather each trip has the potential for offering something new.

Science!

And now there’s musky fishing.  I can’t really claim that these efforts are in any logical way, optimizing my chances of success.  But I will say that I've recently learned more and taken greater/quicker  strides towards competency than in other fishing effoerts.  So I’ll hang on to the steepest part of my Learning Curve (Return vs. Effort) as hard as I can.  Simple calculus indicates that this is where the fruits of my efforts are “optimum”.

I’m not really sure what my relationship with Rates of Return says about me.   After all, ”When the going gets tough, the Tough get going,” and it kind of seems like I’m more interested in improvement that in actual total performance.  Given recent political interest in metrics, and my sincere belief that this is a dangerous and misleading lesson when applied to school performance, future opportunity, etc., I'm not really proud to say I'd rather enjoy improving as opposed to being awesome.  But I am enjoying this most recent ascent of The Learning Curve.  Thinking back on my recent musky exploits, it simply makes me smile.

Smile!  Numenon's first legal, targeted muskellunge.

Simply Fishing

I visited a favorite local lake this morning for some simple bass fishing in my small tin boat, Arracuda.
This was her maiden voyage for the season, and my first simple trip since starting the open-water season with some suckers.  Despite getting up at 0-Dark Thirty, skipping breakfast and travelling smoothly to the lake, I still managed to be about 20 minutes later than I'd have liked.  So while I was fishing before dawn, I missed out on a chunk of the easiest fishing.  And the accommodating fish did make it easy today, especially early on.  If a fish showed itself in pursuit of prey or my lure, it typically fell to a subsequent cast.  Most of the strikes came on a Rapala Skitter-Pop, but those I missed fell to a pitched Senko.  The bass of the day (but still less than 3 pounds) came on a Johnson Silver Minnow (gold, with white trailer.)  This fish provided a water-pushing bulging strike as the spoon wobbled just beneath the surface among some pads, and was a joy to pull out of the cover with my new Inshore Revo.

Sunrise

The first nice bass of the morning fell to an old favorite, the Johnson Silver Minnow.

This guy got pulled through some heavy cover, and was not going to get off.

Perhaps the fish of the day was a 5 pound (or so) dogfish.  Not only did it provide a nice battle, it was one of about 4 dogfish encountered today.  One other was briefly hooked, and two followed surface baits all the way to the boat.  They were active today!

I've long a thing for dogfish, and this one outfought any bass today!

No tournament excitement, muskies, stripers or glory fish today; but it was the best way to spend my time this morning.  Back home by Ten or so I enjoyed a pancake breakfast, and I still have some time to prepare for tonight's shift!  The dogfish stories will provide another notch in my belt, and it seems at least as likely that a customer will be interested in dogfish as an upcoming trip to Nunavut.  But I could be wrong.

ppm

Given Thursday’s completion of a fairly major task at work, a beautiful (albeit windy) June day,  and the dwindling clock on my oldest daughter’s break from school, after a quick lunch at a favored restaurant, we hit Lake M for another shot at muskies.  We had tried for muskies on Sunday morning, and had shared a really nice experience that encompassed a signature West Michigan Early Summer Dawn, some wildlife, a fairly quiet lake, and even encounters with two of Lake M’s muskies.  The estimated duration of our exposure to the muskies was about a second (and so represented less than 1 part in 10,000 parts of our fishing effort), but this 100 parts per million (ppm) or so was more than enough for us to choose to try again.

I’m not used to fishing in the early afternoon of work days, nor have I embraced fishing in 20 mph northerly winds, but as I approached the area of Lake M where we’d crossed paths with Sunday’s fish,  I had a bit of confidence.  Despite the wind, boat control was good; the weed’s break-line was clearly visible; the wind was pounding into this barrier; and my lure was spooking up fleeing baitfish with each cast.  I expressed some of my optimism to Katie, likening my lure and the baitfish to marlin and mahi, respectively, and asked her to dial in, because conditions seemed “right.”  Less than 15 minutes into the session, my feelings were validated when I experienced one of my most memorable freshwater strikes ever; and I briefly loaded the rod on a very sizeable muskellunge.  She’d eaten my Rapala Gliding Rap right on the break, exactly like I had hoped.  Of course, I didn’t sink any hooks into her and she quickly disappeared with a stunning displacement of water; but I’d gotten my dose of more than 100 ppm, and the need for my next fix cemented into my being.

Nothing else of positive fishing note happened for the rest of the afternoon, but we were in the game, enjoying each other’s company, and we each had an inkling of what real success at this musky thing will feel like.  And while I know that it doesn’t really matter whether or not you catch the fish, catching one has to be better than just exposing them, right?  In the meantime, I’d gotten more out of the effort than I’d likely have gotten from a routine bassin’ trip, and I’m getting more comfortable with and more appreciative of my new musky gear.  I’m piecing together my experiences with those of other musky-chasing co-workers, and my knowledge base and confidence are growing.  While this might be at the expense of my current Great Lakes or local bassin’ experiences, it feels like a proper investment of, and the right thing to do with, my limited fishing time.

Part of this blogging thing is getting the proper picture, too.  Just another way for me to fail, but it’s tough to get a good picture of these fish when you’re not getting them in the boat.  Oh well, here’s an opportunity for me to simply share a picture my dog, Oliver, behaving and enjoying himself on his first non-Reeds Lake fishing trip.  He did really well, did not in any way detract from the fishing, and truly enjoys getting out.  I wonder how he’ll deal with a 49-incher in the boat?

Oliver's Numenon

Maiku

Maiku  (My Haiku)

Hunter Thompson said,
"Civilization does end
at the water-line."