Sometimes I look like I know what I am doing

I’ve been fishing for nearly 60 years so you’d think I’d know what I’m doing.

And at times I do.

But if I’m not catching anything, my confidence quickly heads south. I get nervous and twitchy, convinced that I’m the only guy on the lake who’s getting skunked. I’ll switch plugs, move the boat, even pull out the binoculars to spy on other anglers.

However, I will never, ever, ask for advice or admit that I’m fishless. It would be like admitting I’m lost.

Just give me a little time. I’ll figure this out.

Or not.

I fished with friends last week on Fort Peck Reservoir, one of the nation’s premier walleye fisheries. We got there early, stayed out late and boated nary an ‘eye. We did get into the northern pike, but none of any size.

At the ramp when we were leaving, my buddy Chris struck up a conversation with a couple of young guys who were loading their boat.

“Yeah, it was slow,” they said.

Only a handful of walleyes and no big ones. But it was hard to keep the 10-pound pike off their hooks.

Our biggest pike didn’t top five pounds. I figured these guys were lying. After all, they were fishermen.

But they’d planted that seed of doubt. It wasn’t the fishing. It was me.

Two days later we were on another lake packed with boats and anglers. We’d been there a few days earlier and caught a single fish so my expectations weren’t high, especially after the Fort Peck debacle.

Adding insult to injury, an acquaintance had stopped by when I was unhooking the boat following that trip and lamented that it had taken him all of an hour and half to get his limit that morning.

We fished for an hour without any luck and then Chris hooked into a nice ‘eye. We kept doing what we were doing, and although fishing was slow, it was steady. After six hours the fish box was full and we headed back to the dock.

A state fisheries technician there weighed and measured our catch.

“You guys ought to be proud of these fish,” he told me as he surveyed our catch.

But proud wasn’t what I was feeling. Lucky was more like it. I hadn’t really fig-ured anything out. We’d just happened to be using the right lures at the right time in the right place.

Every now and then it looks like I know what I’m doing.

Parker Heinlein is at [email protected]