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There ought to be a law.
A constituional provision. An amendment. Something
to keep bad weather restricted from weekends.
I mean, come on! Last month and a half have been
murder for me in terms of work. Finally seeing
light at the end of the tunnel, I was so looking
forward to a weekend of relaxation with a fly rod,
chasing bream and bass out in the basin.
But the weatherman had a sad story to tell. A huge
band of thunderstorms and associated cold front
was on its way, don't you know, and there was an
eighty percent chance of rain on Saturday and Sunday,
with winds in the fifteen mile per hour range.
This put me in severely bad humor. To make myself
feel better, I went and bought a bunch of tackle.
I put all this in my bags and immediately realized
I didn't have enough money left to pay the electrical
bill. This is not uncommon for me. A man's got to
have his priorities.
Between rainstorms on Saturday, I worked a bit on
my boat and sulked. I kept checking the radar on
The Weather Channel, and the storm front was just
getting bigger instead of diminishing. Later in
the day, the forecast began calling for twenty-five
mile per hour winds Sunday! Completely disgusted
at this point, I just gave up the ghost.
I spent Sunday morning puttering around the shop
and yard, but suddenly something occurred to me.
There was hardly any breeze at all. In fact, the
sky was overcast, and though temperatures had
dropped a few degrees, not at all a bad day for
fishing. I waited until early afternoon, decided
the weather man was a complete idiot, and headed
out in the boat.
I arrived at a small canal off an industrial
waterway, dodging huge, long barges and tug boats
along the way. The water looked cleaner than I
expected it to, but no sooner had a No. 6 Clouser
hit the surface than a ripping gale of northwest
wind pushed the entire boat into an overhanging
clump of tree limbs. It took me five minutes to
work myself out of the grasping branches, fighting
the wind, and by the time I freed myself, I narrowly
managed to capture my rod, which was still tangled
in clutching limbs, before it went overboard. But
I also noticed the boat was full of caterpillars
after the incident, and promptly found a San Juan
worm to let the wind place any spot possible except
one that was wet.
Thus began a stubborn two hours of fishing in the
wind. Trying to cast, light a cigarette, sip Diet
Coke, mend line, keep the boat on course and out
of the trees, set hooks on strikes, all this
amounted to an exercise in futility which knows
no comparison. I ended up resorting to spin tackle,
which offered little improvement in strategic
advantage. I did manage a few fish, though, and
my girlfriend caught a few more than I did.
On the way out, the game warden stopped me to
check for a fire extinguisher in the boat, and
my fishing license. I offered up my license and
showed him the extinguisher, noting that a fire
didn't have a snowball's chance in hell in this
wind. He also wanted to check the livewell. He
probably didn't understand why I was laughing
so hard when I opened it up for his perusal.
It was late evening by then, and the temperature
was dropping. The ride home was invigorating,
which is a macho way of saying it was cold as
tarnation. It was one of those times when you
just don't know if you want to cruise at low
speed to cut down on the biting cold, or just
open her up and get it over with. By the time
I got the boat trailered, home, cleaned and
stored away, I felt like I had been fishing
all day, though it had only been a few hours.
I collapsed to the sofa, exhausted, and turned
on the tube, which was still on The Weather Channel,
and the weather man was promising, "It'll be a great
weekend next time, sunny skies and no rain!"
I threw the remote at him and told him where he
could tie his hackle.
There ought to be a law. No bad weather on weekends,
and no predictions of great weather a week in advance
after a weekend of torture. Don't think there's
someone up there controlling the weather? Ha.
There is, and he plays indoor sports. ~ Roger
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