Not So’s Ya’d Notice!

Something from the tackle box:

       I command you to preach God’s message.  Do it willingly, even if it isn’t the popular thing to do.  You must correct people and point out their sins.  But also cheer them up, and when you instruct them, always be patient.  The time is coming when people won’t listen to good teaching.  Instead, they will look for teachers who will please them by telling them only what they are itching to hear.  They will turn from the truth and eagerly listen to senseless stories.  (2 Timothy 4:1b-4 CEV)

       I love to fish.  Sometimes I fish from shore, sometimes off a dock, or sometimes out of a boat.  But what I like to do best, wherever the lake or stream bottom is firm enough to allow for it, is to wade right out into the water while I fish.  To my way of thinking, it’s extra special to be at one with the water that you’re fishing by getting right into it.  It’s a spiritual thing with me.

a good spot to fish jordan lake

       One of my favorite places to wade and fish is just a short half-mile trip from the parsonage where I live, the Veteran’s Park and Chapel on Jordan Lake, right where the M-50 highway enters the village of Lake Odessa and makes a gentle curve around the northeast shoreline of the lake before heading on west through town.  It’s a good place to fish, at least before the algae blooms take over in the heat of late summer.  I fish there a lot every spring and fall, as I can go on a whim and be there in just a minute or two.  Lots of folks I know will honk and wave as they drive into town from the east and see me fishing down there. 

       It’s sort of known as being my spot.  (If you need to see pastor Mark, and he isn’t in the church office, you might try the Veteran’s Chapel Park down on the lake.  He’ll be the one in the old straw hat, out in the water a ways, working a buggy whip.  Just holler out to him and he’ll wade on in – if it’s important.)  Although I fish the Park more than any other person I know, I’m often not alone down there.  The Veteran’s Chapel Park is a pretty popular place for folks who don’t have a boat, or any private property access to the lake, to do some fishing.  There’s really only a couple of other place to fish from shore on Jordan Lake without landowner permission, and the fishing isn’t often good at them, so fishing folks know about the Veteran’s Park, and they use it.  I get to meet some interesting people there sometimes. 

       A few years back I went down to the Chapel on an early spring evening, before the water had gotten warm enough for me to be comfortable wading without boots or waders to keep my feet and legs from getting wet, which I don’t bother with once the water warms up a bit.  I was wearing a pair of knee-high boots that day, because I figured that I would just work the sandbar for an hour or so before going home to a late supper.  You see, there’s a big sandbar that starts at the large drain culvert, just down-shore from the Chapel, and runs out into the lake in a long crescent shape curving south and east for quite a ways.  It’s not a very wide sandbar, but if you know where it is, and the water is not to rough or high, a tall man like me can wade out on it for a good thirty yards or more before the water will even get up over your knees.  So that was my plan. 

       Anyway, when I get down to the Park there’s only on other fisherman there, a little boy, who I’d say was about nine or ten years old at the most.  He’s standing on top of one of the picnic tables that he had pulled right up to the water’s edge.  From this makeshift platform the lad is casting some kind of crank-bait out as far as he can, and then slowly reeling it back in, trolling for bass.  Which is not a bad tactic for the site as the bass do come to feed on the smaller fish that make their home in the shallows there.  I could see that the youngster was doing a pretty good job of it, too.  He could get that lure out there quite a ways for a little kid, and he knew how to work it back in with some herky-jerky-twitching action on his retrieve.  I marked the kid down as a genuine fisherman in my book. 

a makeshift fishing platform

       Now, I always like to hob-knob with other serious fishermen when we meet on the water, just for a minute or two, before settling down to my own fishing.  So, before I got in the water myself, I walked over to his picnic table platform and said, “Hey there young man.  Ya gettin’ any action here tonight?” 

       Well, he gets this cloudy looking scowl on his face, thinks for a minute, and then gruffly blurts out, - “Not so’s ya’d notice!” 

       So I just said, “Well, - keep at it. – Ya never know when they’ll come cruisin’ through here.”  Then I walked on down the shoreline to where the culvert marked the end of my sandbar, got in, waded out about twenty yards from shore to where the water was pretty close to the top of my boots, and started working some of the deeper waters around me with a rubber worm for some bluegills.

       I’d only made three or four casts from this spot when I hear this splashing in the water behind me.  I turn around, and here comes the kid.  He’s got his shoes off, his jeans rolled up just as far as he can get them rolled up, and he’s working his way down the sandbar towards me.  He comes up right beside me, makes a cast with his spinning gear, right parallel with my fly-line, looks up at me and says, “So, - Ya gettin’ any action out here tonight?”

        All I could think of to say in reply was, - “Well, - - not so’s ya’d notice!”

       To which he confidently replied, “Well, - keep at it. – Ya never know when they’ll come cruisin’ through here.” 

       I looked at him hard for a minute, as he concentrated on his next cast and retrieve.  Then I just said, “Yup,” and kept on fishing right next to him. 

       If the boy hadn’t been called in for supper by a mother’s voice, emanating from a rental cabin just down-shore a ways from the Park, we might have gone on like that for quite some time.  Apparently, the boy thought that I was as good of a fisherman as I though that he was.  Or at least that I knew enough about what I was doing out on that sandbar, that keeping my company would be worthwhile.  Who knows?  I’m sort of glad he got called in for supper before he could discover otherwise. 

       I never ran into that boy at the Veteran’s Chapel Park again.  Maybe he was just an out-of-town kid on vacation for a week at the lake with his family and never would come back.  But I keep and eye open for him whenever I go down there now, just to see if he’s working that sandbar again, because, from time to time, you can do pretty well fishing off that spot.  I know, because I have, and I told him so. 

last night's catch off the sandbar

 

Something to take home in your creel:

       We all learn about pretty much everything from someone or something else!  And the true value of what we learn depends, to a very great degree, on just who or what we learn it from.  What we ultimately gain out of our learning depends on the verifiable veracity of what those “else’s” in our life really know, can teach, and so pass on to us.  Choose your own teachers and resources wisely.  Teach your children to choose their teachers and resources wisely.  Don’t take just any old “else’s” word for anything, though it may sound ever so good to you, without looking into it a bit deeper. Listen to and take heed of those who actually have gone there before you, and have then put some time into thinking about where they’ve been.  Then listen to and take heed of contrary opinions, from others who have done the same, even if you don’t like what they have to say.  Weigh all of it together, before putting on your boots, or rolling up your jeans, and wading in.  Otherwise, you might just find yourself following someone or something else – out to fish in deep water – just to get stuck and sink in a mucky bottom that they told you would be good footing.