A REAL MAN knows when to shoot the bull.
Barbershop stools, open car hoods, outsides of women’s dressing rooms (where, presumably, you are waiting for a significant other).
These are the sorts of places that call upon men to be men, to offer up some sort of solidarity to other males present communicating that: A) You know a thing or two about a thing or two, and B) Everyone else is full of B.S., including other men not present.
If a man walks up to one of these places without asking a question, making an unnecessary observation or sarcastically insulting another man present . . . well, he is no man.
No man indeed.
So when I sat down next to the Anderson Lake boat launch Wednesday morning, among the company of three other men casually tending to their fishing poles, I knew exactly what was at stake:
Talk or bare the shame of silence.
“Anybody caught anything yet?” I asked to nobody in particular. (Propriety deemed I be the first to talk as the new guy.)
One of them looked back, “Just one.” He then pointed a finger over to the gentleman sitting on the tree branch.
And with that, the three of us began to chatter.
Talking points
The discussion hit on all the necessary angles:
• Fishing was hot Saturday (74 anglers caught 246 fish at Anderson). Everyone agreed. Grunts of approval followed.
• Supposedly Anderson has bass in its waters.
One skeptic reserved the right not to believe it until he sees it.
The fourth fishermen present, a man of few words, offered that he once caught one no bigger than his index finger.
Grunts of approval followed.
• I talked about some pretty birds I saw in the marsh on the lake’s south side, including one with a red streak on its wings.
The skeptic told me it’s a red-winged blackbird.
We both agreed they are pretty. Grunts of approval followed (And, yes, it’s manly to talk about pretty birds).
• Rumor had it a 24-inch rainbow trout was caught earlier in week.
This, of course, prompted the skeptic to chime in with his doubts. (After all, he did not see it.)
The one who offered the information then defended it, saying it came from an outdoor guide not known to bandy about B.S.
The man of few words, then chimed in, “Was the guide [fill in name here]?”
The arbiter of info says, yes, it was, indeed, him.
The man of few words then backed up the assessment, agreeing said guide definitely does not pass along B.S.
Grunts of approval followed.
By this time, another young angler came along, more than willing to add his own thoughts.
He looks over at my dormant fly rod — I made a pathetic attempt with some woolly buggers in Anderson’s marshes earlier in the morning — and asked why I’m not fishing.
I explained my failed enterprise, then he offered up a spot on his boat.
“I like it better with two people, anyway,” he said.
He likes fishing. I like fishing. Let’s go fishing.
It was agreed.
(Note: I definitely would have been less of a man had I declined. The gauntlet had been thrown.)
Little did I know this would lead to a once-in-a-lifetime catch.
Boater beware
Lake fishing almost always lends itself to a constant dialogue.
If you’re fishing power bait — or employing any other method that calls for little exertion — there’s usually lots of downtime.
That’s part of the reason why spring and lake fishing go hand-in-hand.
It’s a lazy day best spent basking in the sun while drinking a beer (or soda), shooting the bull and intermittently tending to a fishing rod.
It was certainly no different for my new fishing buddy (Sandy) and me.
Knots, fishing tactics/holes, big fish stories, love interests, tales of youthful indiscretion . . . these are the sorts of things any man’s man can relate to.
And we had little trouble finding common ground on those subjects.
That, however was hurt slightly by the fact that A.) My spin rod skills were embarrassingly rusty, and B.) I fumbled with my own knots and anchor for about five minutes too long. (True man task failures.)
After Sandy caught a fish, and I was still skunked, the question of alpha male status had been more than decided.
In fact, it was starting to look as though I wasn’t even fit to be his new fishing partner.
Yet in the excitement of another bite, Sandy lost sight of his second rod while a fish pulled it into the water.
He desperately clawed at it with his other rod to keep it from sinking, but to no avail.
It had sunk some 30 feet out of sight to the bottom, with little to no idea where it might end up.
For all we knew, the fish was dragging it all over the lake.
And there was no way either of us was jumping in to save it . . . not in notoriously toxic Anderson.
Distraught over the possible loss of his rod and reel, Sandy perilously tried to get it back, dragging his gear through the approximate area it sank for a half-hour.
Like any Chicago Cubs postseason run, it was an exercise doomed to fail.
Wing man
Yet being the wing man, it was clearly my duty to make the same effort.
So I cast out in the general vicinity, reeling then feeling for the slightest tug, then repeating.
That’s when redemption tugged at my line.
I reeled in cautiously and said nothing, fearful of getting Sandy’s hopes up only to bring up a twig.
Then, suddenly, there were two distinctly separate lines coming out of the water.
Sandy jumped up in excitement, grabbed the other line and began to tug furiously.
I had not caught a fish, but a fishing pole . . . Sandy’s fishing pole, redeeming our wounded masculinity in the process.
After all, real men don’t lose their rods.
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Matt Schubert is the outdoors and sports columnist for the Peninsula Daily News. His column regularly appears on Thursdays and Fridays. He can be reached at matt.schubert@peninsuladailynews.com.