Jumping the gun on fishing season

The ice is barely off the lake and I’m already chasing rumors.

Word had it that the smallmouth were biting in the shallows. That’s all it took. I hooked the boat up to the truck, loaded the tackle, and spent half the day yesterday flailing the water to no avail. I didn’t get a nibble.

I’ve done it all before -- rushed down to the river because I heard the caddis hatch was on only to find out it wasn’t, spent hours in search of a particular pond said to harbor huge bluegill and never found it, fished all night after hearing about five-pound brookies biting in the moonlight and came home with nothing but mosquito bites.

I can’t remember one time it’s paid off, but I blame that more on my failing memory than a lack of angling success. Surely, over all the years I’ve been chasing rumors, one must have come true.

The latest was typical. A friend told me his son and a buddy had gotten into a bunch of big smallies right after ice out. Of course my friend didn’t know exactly where or how deep or any of the specifics, but that’s the norm. Rumors are seldom spread by the fellows who actually caught the fish.

Apparently, however, that matters little to me. I don’t need much excuse to go fishing. A half-baked story about larger than usual fish passed on by a fellow known to stretch the truth provides more than enough impetus to get me off my duff and out on the water.

And I never bear a grudge when I come home empty-handed, telling myself the principals in the big fish story must simply be better anglers than I am. It was my fault I got skunked, not theirs.

Like the big one that got away, unfounded rumors aren’t quickly forgotten. I’ll probably go back and test the smallmouth rumor again before the week’s out, and it’s likely I’ll remember it next year at this time and give it another try.

I haven’t stopped looking for that pond with the huge bluegill in it and I heard that story 10 years ago. Or was it 20?

Visions of football-sized brook trout still swim through my dreams. To the best of my recollection they were hitting on live mice floated out onto the pond aboard wooden shingles under a full moon.

It’s just a rumor.

But it’s a good one to chase.

Parker Heinlein is at

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