My Sweetie Out-fishes Me, All the Time!

Something from the tackle box:

       A truly good wife is the most precious treasure a man can find!  Her husband depends on her, and she never lets him down.  She is good to him every day of her life, and with her own hands she gladly makes clothes.  She is like a sailing ship that brings food from across the sea.  (Proverbs 31:10-14 CEV)

       Most of those who know me, also know my wife, Kathy, as well. I’ve written about her on this blog before.  You can go back to my entries for this past September and read, Fishing With an Artist, to see some of the wonderful watercolor paintings she has created featuring subjects related to life on the water.  Some other paintings are scattered around in other stories as well.  She is a very talented artist, but that is beside the point.  She is something extra special in the grace filled way she lives her life as a wonderful human being.

On Tupper Lake

       Kathy is just about the best person any other person could ever hope to know, and everyone says so.  I believe that my own mother likes my wife better than she likes me – and I have to give my mom credit for her good judgment on that point!  I love Kathy so dearly, and she gives me every good reason to do so – which is what makes it so hard to get upset with her when she continually out-fishes me! 

       You see, my sweetie out-fishes me at an alarming rate, one that cannot be accounted for by anything other than divine intervention on her behalf.  Any casino that offered Kathy the same odds on a bet that she would catch more fish than I do when we are fishing together, as they offer the average sucker poking quarters into their slot machines, would soon go broke.  It is uncanny!

a cold day on Long Lake

       Now, you do have to understand that my sweetheart does not fish nearly as much as I do.  If you count all the times I might walk the three blocks from my church office down to the lake, just to fish for an hour or so on an afternoon break from my pastoral duties, I might well go fishing a hundred times or more in a year.  It would not surprise me if I topped that number.  My wife goes fishing with me, on average, perhaps three or four times each year out of that number. 

       I love to fish.  But, most of the time, my wife is perfectly content to just send me off, rod in hand, and spend her time doing all the other things that she’d rather do until I get home.  She doesn’t mind fishing, but doesn’t have the passion for it that I do, and that’s OK with both of us.  More than OK.  I believe it is, in fact, one of the bedrocks of our great relationship. 

fishing in Florida

       However, as I said, every now and then, three or four times a year or so, my sweetie says, “Sure! I’ll go fishing with you today!  Sounds like fun!  Let’s go!”  

       And off we go.  If we’re up at our place on Long Lake we take grandpa’s old fourteen-foot boat and outboard motor.  If we’re around Lake Odessa, we pack our wide beamed lake canoe on top of the Subaru and head for one of the many nearby lakes or navigable rivers.  “Look out pan-fish, here we come!  And you had better look out for Kathy, way more than for me!”

       I’ve never minded the ‘slight edge’ in catching fish that any of my other fishing buddies might hold over me for a stretch of time.  Why, my good friend Wayne Swiler has pulled in a few more fish than I have, as many as three or four outings in a row, several different times.  I don’t even mind him grinning about it when he’s on a streak like that, because I’m just as likely as not to return the favor over the course of the next few session we fish together.  Our respective fishing bragging rights have always been tenuous, and temporary, at best.  Not so with Kathy.  She’s always ahead of me.

       The first time that it really hit home that I was getting schooled in fishing by my wife on a regular basis, was the very summer we bought our wide-beamed lake canoe.  We decided to take it down to Jordan Lake, just three blocks from the parsonage, paddle it to the east end and then up the mile-long scenic channel to Tupper Lake, where we would spend the afternoon trying to catch a dinner’s worth of bluegills before paddling back the way we’d come. 

       It was a beautiful, bright, sunny, summer day, and the water was very clear.  I always look into the water as I paddle along when it’s clear like that.  I like to spot fish where I’m thinking about fishing before I start throwing my bait out.  About a quarter of a mile up the channel we come to a bend, where I notice some movement in a shaded hole underneath a low, overhanging willow bough.  I tell Kathy to stop paddling when we are about ten yards beyond the willow.  I drop the anchor and quietly ease us back towards that willow branch with the flow of the water, until we are about twenty feet away from the spot. 

just around the bend from where this story happened

       I tell Kathy that I was pretty sure - - “I saw some fish movement, about four or five feet deep, right underneath that low hanging branch, and I don’t want to get any closer and scare whatever is there away.  That big branch won’t let you cast right to the spot, but if you set your slip bobber to about three feet up the line from your sinker, you can drop your baited hook into the water between the boat and that branch, then play some more line out, and the current should carry your worm right into that shaded hole with no danger of snags.  Here, let me show you.” 

       I demonstrated the technique I had just described perfectly, and I was rewarded with several good solid taps before my bobber went still, indicating that whatever was under there had stripped the bait off my hook.  I reeled in my rig to re-bait.

       “I got it,” Kathy said.  “I can see there’s something under there.  I’ll give it a try.”  She tossed her line in and floated it under that branch as nicely as you could want it done.  The only difference from my attempt was that her bobber just plain disappeared as her rod bent over, and she ended up cranking in a nice seven-inch long bluegill.  She smiled big as I filled the fish bucket with water and she tossed the first fish of the day into it.  She always smiles big when she catches a fish.

       “I’m up on ya, one to zip, sweetheart,” she giggled. 

       “Gills run in packs,” I replied. “We might as well stay here and see how big the family is.” – Well, - it was a honey hole!

       “I’m up on ya, three to zip, honey.” – big smile

       “I’m up on ya, six to one, sweetheart,” – big smile

       “I’m up on ya, ten to two, pooky bear.” – big smile

       “I’m up on ya, fifteen to three now, darling.”  - big smile

       “Let’s see.  That makes it twenty-one to four now!”  - big smile

       “Well dear, I’m done.  I’ve hit my limit.  But you keep fishing, honey.  I’d hate to see you go home with less than half a dozen.”  -  huge big smile

       Well, - when you’ve been bested, you’ve been bested.  And it’s best to be bested by the best, I always say.  “I love you too, sweetie-pie,” I replied.  And, believe it or not, I had just as big a smile on my face as she had on hers.  -  I am still smiling to this very day!

 

Something to take home in your creel:

       I’m not saying that Kathy has out-fished me every single time that we’ve ever gone out fishing together.  About once every other year or so, I will catch a couple more fish than she has, – really, – but she does hold a huge advantage over the years. 

       But I don’t mind it a bit.  In fact, - I kind of like it this way.  You see, my wife has the most beautiful smile of anyone I’ve ever met, and when she’s out-fishing me, she smiles a lot.  It is so worth it.  I’ve included a lot of photos that I’ve taken of my sweetheart smiling while she fishes, just to prove my point.  I hope that you think she’s as beautiful as I do.  And, if you’re a fisherman, I hope that you are just as blessed as I am, too.