Gone Fishin’

He began with frogging. Then jigging. By noon, he said, he’d be hula popping. I kept nodding, as though these were natural things for a man to say while I was drinking my first cup of coffee. Or ever.

Frogging, he explained, involved lures shaped like frogs. Or maybe it was actual frogs. Or maybe the lure was pretending to be a frog pretending to be injured. I can’t say I fully grasped the concept.

It was still very early in the morning. And while I was up before anyone else in the house, our neighbor Phil had already finished fishing. Yes, I’m pretty sure he was talking about fishing.

He said he was jigging, which was not a dance—though rhythm was involved. And also feel. Feel was very important. The best fishermen, I learned, have feel. Feel is not quite touch, nor is it emotion. Feel is feel.

When Phil brought up the Whopper Plopper, I stopped trying to understand and started staring into my cup of coffee.

Now, if you’re gonna hula pop, Phil explained, you’d better do it before the sun hits the lily pads. That’s when the bass are shallow and hungry. After that, it’s all finesse fishing, and if you don’t have finesse, well, you might as well pack it up and go antiquing with your in-laws.

I told him I had no idea what finesse fishing meant. Phil said that’s how he could tell I don’t have any.

Finesse, he said, is about downsizing your gear, whispering to the rod, and letting the fish come to you. Phil said that if you’re doing it right, the fish come to you spiritually before they come to you physically. You don’t cast. You present. You allude.

But sometimes, Phil said, you have to stop being polite and crankbait. That’s when you rip a fat-bodied lure through the water like you’re on the clock. “You ever hear a crankbait rattle?” he asked. Then he made a sound like a blender trying to swallow a fork.

I nodded and drank more coffee.

Then he moved on to spinnerbaits, buzzbaits, and something called a blowup, which in fishing is apparently a good thing. He said the Whopper Plopper is the best for blowups. “A Whopper Plopper plops,” he said. “That’s the point.”

I suspected he was making all of this up, so I pushed back.

“Back in my day,” I told him—though he was clearly older than me—“we just had a hook and a worm.”

He looked at me like I was making that up.

Which I was. Technically.

Phil asked, “Are you trying to catch a fish in the 1800s?” I shrugged, uncertain. He went on, “These are modern fish. They’re on smartphones. You think you’re gonna get their attention with a worm?”

I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

“These fish,” he continued, “have swiped left on worms for years. You want to catch a fish today? You need drama, pageantry. You need a lure that rattles like a maraca and glows in the dark.”

I nodded. I no longer knew what was true.

Phil told me he caught six that morning. “Six? Really?” I said. “Well, let’s have a look. You got them in a cooler or something?”

He squinted at me, confused.

“You fry ’em up in a pan?” I asked. “Or are you more of a broiler kind of guy?” I was about to tell him that I mostly cook fish in my air fryer—because I’m a modern man—when he looked at me with great, deep pity.

“You don’t keep the fish,” he said softly. “They’re catch and release.”

He didn’t have to say it, but the message was clear: I still didn’t get it. I was talking about fish. He was talking about fishing. At least I still had my coffee.

Perez.pdf

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Beyond Reason

by Rob Perez