Afield: Sometimes the fish wins

BRAINERD, MINN. - We've all heard the angler's proverb: "Fishing was great, but catching was lousy."

That adage crossed my mind last Tuesday when, just after sunset, I trudged through the darkening woods toward my truck, spinning rod in hand, my tail tucked between my legs.

I had just spent the past three hours wade-fishing a local river. My plan was to tangle with a tail-walking smallmouth bass or two. Also, in my fishing vest I carried a stringer, and if a decent-sized northern pike had seized my offerings, its fillets, coated with just the right amount of lemon juice and pepper, would have found a spot on my charcoal grill when I returned home.

But neither happened.

Some amount of thought went into my decision to fish that evening. Earlier in the week, I had set aside Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning to go fishing. On Tuesday at mid-day, the weather was cool -- only in the 50s -- and the sky crystal-clear. A gusty northwest wind whipped tree limbs back and forth. Not exactly ideal fishing conditions. But the weatherman predicted frost for Wednesday morning, and so I chose to fish Tuesday.

I had never wade-fished that part of the river, although I had fished it from a boat on two occasions. Logs and dry weeds were piled in the shoreline woods, evidence of early high water, but now, after an exceptionally dry spring, the river was low and clear.

Not long after I began fishing, a lone whitetail doe walked down the opposite bank. Then, without a glance in my direction, the deer proceeded to wade across, bobbing now and then as the swift water moved her a few yards downstream. But she never had to swim. When she reached my side of the river, she stretched her neck high and nipped a few maple leaves from a branch overhanging the water before ambling into the woods and out of sight.

As I fished my way upstream, I was surprised at the lack of fish activity. I saw no swirls, no wakes, not a sign of energetic smallmouth bass. At one point, I spotted a pike cruising in the clear water. The fish was perhaps 5 or 6 pounds so I flipped a tube jig ahead of it and, you guessed it, the pike bit me off. I felt neither a twitch nor a thump. What I did see was a swirl and my limp line waving in the wind. I'm aware pike are toothy critters, but how they can bite fishing line -- even the newest braided lines -- so cleanly I cannot fathom. A second pike performed the same feat a bit further upstream.

As the evening wore on, I tried various proven smallmouth lures to no avail. I casted a spinner bait, a surface chugger, a walk-the-dog lure and a shallow-running crankbait, in addition to the tube jig which saw the most use.

Now the sun was just below the trees. There was a log -- roots, trunk and even a few remaining branches -- lying in the water mid-stream. If there was a smallmouth anywhere, it would be snuggled up next to the log. I lobbed a tube jig to the upstream end of the obstruction and twitched it toward me.

Wham! I set the hook hard, but the fish was running in my direction. I reeled as fast as I could and set the hook again. This time I rolled the fish, a smallmouth roughly 16 inches long. An instant later, my lure pulled free of bass' mouth.

I made a few more half-hearted casts. The sun was now gone, the river was black, the wind had died. Only the water spoke as it rolled around and over boulders. I listened but I couldn't understand the river's language