Looking Into the Water

Something from the tackle box:

       Jesus later appeared to his disciples along the shore of Lake Tiberias.  Simon Peter, Thomas the twin, Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, and the brothers James and John, were there, together with two other disciples.  Simon Peter said, “I’m going fishing!”

       The others said, “We will go with you.”  They went out in their boat.  But they didn’t catch a thing that night.

       Early the next morning Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples did not realize who he was.  Jesus shouted, “Friends, have you caught anything?”

       “No!” they answered.

       So he told them, “Let your net down on the right side of the boat, and you will catch some fish.”

       They did, and the net was so full of fish that they could not drag it up into the boat. (John 21:1-6 CEV)                                                                    

Thumb Lake is another very clear watered lake I like to fish

       I don’t own any high-tech, electronic fish-finding equipment of my own.  It’s not that I have anything against that kind of stuff, I’ve often thought about getting a fish locator and I probably will someday, but the good stuff costs some good money that I'd rather spend on other stuff.  Anyway, a fish finder wouldn’t get used that much with the kind of fishing that I prefer to do when I’m out fishing on my own.  You see, I like to fish in clear shallow water that I can see into for myself.

one of my favorite clear water fly-fishing holes

       Of course, I love to fly-fish, and that’s all a case of reaching out and placing your small imitation bug or bait on or just under the surface of the water.  When I go to a site I’m going to fly-fish, be it on a lake or in a stream, I always start by spending some time looking at the surface of that section of steam or lake I’m planning to fish for those tell-tale splashes or ripples that show me right where the fish are rising to snatch a snack off the top layer of the water.

       If I see a lot of this kind of activity I look to see what’s buzzing around in the air over the water or skipping around on the surface.  Then I tie on something that sort of looks like that particular gnat, skeeter, skipper, hatching fly, or whatever.  You’d be surprised how much success I’ve had doing that, especially with the lake shallow dwelling bass and bluegills who aren’t nearly as picky eaters as stream dwelling trout are most of the time.

a spot I fish on the Sturgeon River

       But even with the trout, fish that can be notoriously finicky about what bugs they will rise to, if you fish where you can see that they are currently feeding, and you’ve got a good selection of flies in your box, you will often find that they will take a chance on your fly if you present them with something reasonably close to what you can see is actually buzzing, swimming or crawling around near the water’s surface at that time. 

       It takes some critical observation and deductive reasoning skill to really do well at it, but fly-fishing is not rocket science, not even close.  If you spend some time looking into, on, and around, the water, you can get it figured out a lot of the time all on your own and do pretty well fishing like this. 

       Even when I’m fishing with a spinning rod or cane pole, whether I’m using an artificial lure or some live bait, like grubs, worms, minnows, or crickets, I tend to like fishing in shallow or very clear water that I can see into, finding the fish for myself. 

the crystal clear water by my dock on Long Lake

       When I’m up at my place on Long Lake in Cheboygan County I’m blessed because the water is so clean and clear that I can easily see fish swimming around ten feet or more below the surface.  I can find the weed beds, reed banks, rock and log formations, where they are hanging out.  I fish them using my own eyes to tell me when to stay put or to move on.  I get a lot of satisfaction fishing that way. 

       But, not every lake is as clear and clean as Long Lake, and sometimes, especially in mid-summer, the fish aren’t in the shallow water, or anywhere near it, anyway.  Clean Long Lake water or not, I can’t see forty, thirty, or even twenty feet down.  It gets too dark down there.  And on most lakes I get to fish on I can’t even see more than four or five feet down, sometimes much less, because of all the stuff in the water, the plankton, algae, and the silt or mucky bottom dirt some lakes have, which gets churned up by weather conditions and power boats and stays suspended in the water for a long time before settling back down.

       Now, deep and even somewhat cloudy water doesn’t mean that the fish aren’t there or that the fishing won’t be good if you find them, it might be fantastic, it just means that you aren’t going to be able to see into the water for yourself and find where the fish are with your own eyes before you set up shop to catch them. 

       Now, I don’t mind fishing deeper, darker water, and some people I fish with actually prefer it.  They say that the deep dark holes are where the really big fish hang out.  This is where a fish finder can really come in handy!

my good fishing buddy, Wayne Swiler, fishing on Augst Lake

       My friend Wayne will usually take a fish-finder out when we go to harvest the big bluegills that populate Augst Lake.  We almost always try the shallow water around the cattail-lined banks first, but sometimes they just aren’t there. And when they aren’t there we start crisscrossing the deep dark water in the middle of that eighteen-acre pond, where the fish might be bunched up anywhere, five, ten, fifteen, or even twenty feet down on the bottom. 

       The fish-finder has a screen that shows us when we are in the vicinity of fish, about how many there might be, one or two, a few, or a lot, about how big they might be on average, and about how deep down underneath us they are swimming around.  In short, if it’s worth while dropping anchor and sending down a worm or two to see if they’re hungry or not.

       Now, you might not catch any of those fish even if you do stop to feed them.  But, as Wayne says, “At least we know they’re there.  They might not be biting today, but you certainly aren’t going to catch any fish if they aren’t fishing where the fish are at.”  And, I have to admit, that observation is the truth of the matter.  You aren’t going to catch any fish if there aren’t any fish there to be caught.  But, as I said, even if there are, - there are no guarantees. 

       This past summer I went up to fish with my friend Jerry Jones at his place on Rainbow Lake in Montcalm County.  Jerry is the retired pastor of the Greenville Congregational Church and we’ve been trying to get together and fish one day every summer for some years now, since the days when he kept a place up near Lake City.

       Now, Jerry has a really nice boat.  It’s actually more boat than you need for Rainbow Lake, but it’s the boat that he used to keep on Lake Missaukee when he had his place up there, and he’s just kept it. 

       Anyway, this boat is equipped with a built in sonar fish-locator that’s way nicer than any other I’ve ever used.  A big screen a with color display that’s attached to the dash, but can be pulled out and swiveled so it can be viewed from any seat in the boat.  It can be programmed to give you all kinds of information about the environment it’s looking into, if you want.  Things like, water temperatures, bottom conditions, height and density of vegetation, and of course, location and size of fish, all in clear and colorful graphics.  It’s really kind of fun to look at, and I told Jerry that it was as fine a piece of useful technology as I’d ever seen. 

       When I got there Jerry let me know that he already been scouting and knew right were the fish were at.  We only motored out a couple of hundred yards into the lake from his dock, near where another boat was already anchored and fishing, and sure enough, the fish started showing up on Jerry’s fish finder in huge bunches.

       There was a depression – a hole – where the bottom dropped down to twenty-three feet deep from the average of fifteen to twenty that you would find across most of the lake.  And on the screen you could see two big bunches of fish congregated in and over that hole.  One big school was right down near the bottom, hovering one to three feet off the floor of the lake.  The other school was directly above the first, about ten feet higher and just ten or so feet below the surface of the lake.  Both schools showed good numbers of good-sized fish on Jerry’s fish-finder. 

       We anchored, and Jerry told me that folks were getting them by putting a heavy sinker on and dropping it right on to the bottom and then slowly drawing the bait back up through that lower mess of fish you could see on the fish finder screen. 

       Of course, being as contrary as I am, I said that was all fine and dandy for him, but as for me, I intended to set the line stop for my slip bobber about ten feet up the line and hang my bait from a float right in the middle of that higher school, which looked just as good as the lower school of fish to me on his screen.

       “Suit yourself,” is all Jerry said to my declaration, - with a smirk on his face.  -  I should have listened to his advice. 

me with a nice one on Rainbow lake fishing with Jerry Jones

       After Jerry had pulled up five or six nice fish, while my bobber hadn’t even twitched on the water, I got another pole out and rigged it up to jig up off the bottom, just like I had been advised to do in the first place.  I may be headstrong, but I’m no dummy, after all.

       I was soon catching just as many and as nice of fish as Jerry was fishing off the bottom.  I even landed a bluegill that was a full ten inches long, which is as big of a bluegill as I’d ever caught before. 

       All this time I also kept that other line out there, hanging right in the middle of that upper school of fish from a bobber, with the same hook and bait as I was catching fish with coming up off the bottom.  You know, I never got one hit on that line the whole time we were out there. Fish showing ten feet down on the fancy fish-finder or not, Jerry knew what he was talking about.  -  It was his lake after all. 

Something to take home in your creel:  

       God has given most of us a whole lot of abilities.  We’ve been given eyes to see with and ears to hear with.  We’ve also been given minds to think with and hearts to perceive with concerning the things that we see and hear.  And we are expected by God to use these abilities, - which are his gifts and not our own concoction, - to get through life in a way that pleases him in the end, - a way that’s best for us and for the world around us as well. 

       For much of our what life throws at us, the gifts we’ve been given by God for getting through it all suffice on their own.  We can see into the water of life around us and, if we’re paying attention, we can figure out what the situation calls for, all on our own, just using the gifts God has given us for that purpose.  It may take some critical observation and deductive reasoning skills to do it really well, but most of life is not rocket science.  Not even close.  You see what ought to be done, and you do it, because you know what is called for without direct orders.

       The apostle Paul even tells us that it works this way, - sometimes.  He writes: Some people naturally obey the Law’s commands, even though they don’t have the Law.  This proves that the conscience is like a law written in the human heart.  And it will show whether we are forgiven or condemned, when God has Jesus Christ judge everyone’s secret thoughts, just as my message says.  (Romans 2:14-16 CEV)

       You’ve been given the ability to understand the world around you and how you should relate to it.  You’ve been given a brain to think with and a heart to perceive with.  The kind of life you live, and the resulting soul you end up with as a result, is, in large part, up to you, - - but not completely! 

       There are times and situations in life that call for seeking information that comes from beyond just using the abilities that God has given us to get through things on our own.  We are well advised to do so, however well we’ve developed our natural competencies and capabilities to get by.  Maybe even - in spite of them. 

       When Peter, Thomas, Nathaniel, James and John decided to go fishing in our scripture passage, I don’t figure they felt like they needed to be told how to fish!  They were fishermen by trade, and they were fishing on their own lake.  Nobody could see into those waters any better than Peter, James, John and the others who went out.  Except, of course, the one who had created those very waters for his own purposes, and who could see, understand and know, what even the most experienced fisherman equipped with the finest boat and gear – right down to a high definition, color screen readout, state of the art fish-finder – could ever see, understand, or know. 

       Even if you do know what you are about in life and are headed in the right direction, as far as you can tell.  Even when life is generally going well for you and you’ve got no real complaints, other than maybe not as many fish as you would like.  Even if you are confident that you haven’t done much of anything wrong with your life, much that God would take exception to, let alone condemn you for.  Even when life is going smooth, so smooth that it might even seem a bit dull and unfulfilling.  Even if all of this is the case and more, always, always, always, be tuned in to the One who authored that good life of yours in the first place. 

       Listen for the voice of God that says to you, “Now try fishing off the other side of your boat for a change.”  Listen for it with a willingness to obey that voice when you hear it, and then see what happens when you do! 

the mess of fish Jerry and I caught on Rainbow Lake this past summer.