Waiting for the pike to appear

When I was a kid my dad gave me an autographed copy of a book by Sasha Siemel. He was a professional hunter in Brazil, famous for killing more than 300 jaguars with a spear.

As I sat shivering in a fish house on Fort Peck Lake last weekend, staring down a hole in the ice waiting for a pike to appear, I tried to channel Siemel.

It didn’t work.

Eventually a pike did appear and I hurled the spear with undisciplined haste, missing my target by a wide margin. Had that fish been a jaguar I would have been lunch.

Instead, I simply suffered the feeling of ineptitude that seems to always follow an...