A smallmouth story

wThe farmers who owned the land next to the creek where I was fishing were out planting the fields, and it just made me smile.

During my day job I work mostly with high-school aged kids, and so many of them are so inspiring. They have a genuine joy, a faith in the future, and many have a sincere desire to make a difference.

My foremost concern for them and people in their generation is our growing addiction to these devices we carry everywhere and look at increasingly.

Watching a field tilled and planted, the owner's son throwing you a wave from a tractor, felt like a type of sincerity that was fading from our everyday lives.

Thinking that you were climbing into a creek, next to a field where food was grown, and where you might see on any given evening... deer, geese, rabbits, hawks, otters, beavers, or eagles felt like something to be savored.

The places we see on our tiny screens are made to seem more desirable in any number of ways... maybe they have names we've read about or that se've seen mention of in books. maybe the lighting, the filter or the people in the photos make them seem more alluring or inviting.

But that's really a matter of marketing and perspective. And we are all increasingly beholden to a reality that is created and portrayed on and through devices.

Because, and I could certainly be mistaken, but I'd guess many of you have a creek, not far away, at least somewhat similar to this one. It's small, and might readily be described as 'unremarkable,' in the sense that it's just a veign of water flowing through cornfields.

But once you climb in and spend any amount of time there, these places are fascinating in so many facets. the levels of life that exist from the smallest bugs, emblazoned with remarkable color considering their size, to the bucks that can jump four feet off the ground from a standing position are absolutely incredible.

Let me reiterate -- it's not the case that children think these things are incredible and then as adults we realize that they are commonplace. It's the case that children realize that they're incredible and as adults we forget that somehow.

after a couple averaged-sized smallmouth near the end of the evening I threw a cast into a particular corner that usually held promise.

it was at the end of a mud wall where the current slowed just enough to create a small pool and where a fish looking for a veritable conveyor belt of menu items to flow by might choose to sit. 

I didn't have much hope because i'd caught a fish there earlier, but why not check again? 

a smallmouth inhaled the jig and took off downstream. 

With an ultralight rod and a light line and leader, applying pressure to a bass with a current at its tail doesn't usually end enjoyably for the one holding the rod.

so i followed the smallmouth downstream. it was nothing like the scene in a River run's through it where brad pitt's character fights an enormous trout through raging currents in montana's blackfoot river, but hey... it felt that way for a few minutes to me anyway. 

when i caught up to the smallmouth i realized the net I'd had clipped around my waist with a wader belt was gone, so i had to carene it into slower water.

holding it up i considered that while it was not a truly enormous smallmouth by objective measure, it might very well be my Largest smallmouth, and most everything in fishing and life is ultimately relative to your own experience. 

i'd just, at the very end of the night, hooked and landed a fish that i'd remember all year. As I eased him back and forth in the current, he swam -- no doubt still recovering -- in the creek next to me, idling in the current. I was just crouching next to one of the best bass I'd ever landed, with nothing connecting us but space and time.

it's increasingly easy for any of us today to stare at a device and admire, long for, dream of, or despair that we're not currently in one of the places we see in a 3-inch by 4-inch lcd screen.

but if i had to guess I'd say that, in all likelihood, not far from where you're reading this, there's a creek flowing through a field with life above and below the waterline.

you might not see it at first glance, but step in and spend some time. the color and the life will continuously surprise you, I promise. From the smallest bugs that land on your rod to the richest reds you've ever seen light up a horizon, nature's details rarely disappoint time and attention given them.