A Great Day on the Water
Sometimes nothing goes right, and it just doesn’t seem to matter. The original plan was to start out at tide fall. According to the charts, that meant about 11am at the mouth of the Magothy. But of course it was closer to one o’clock when Mike, Dale and I finally launched my skiff.
The high tide, we noticed, was stalled, but perhaps ready to fall as we stowed our gear and motored out into the river channel. Intending to methodically work every area where we had ever found fish on the Magothy, we started right there. Marking small schools holding on the bottom, we presented minnows and bloodworms for almost an hour. No takers.
This was the first trip of the season for Dale, though Mike and I had been out. We all knew that the likelihood of finding fish was questionable. It was a bit late for yellow perch and early for the whites.
Soldiering on, we fished up the river in familiar-looking locales. At first we blamed our lack of success on the absence of tidal current, then the lack of grass shrimp (we only had bloodworms, minnows and butter worms), followed by the fickleness of spawning perch and the time of day (mid-day is the least productive period).
Since denigrating each other is an alternative sport when things aren’t going right, we eventually speculated on the presence of a Jonah. Named after the Biblical Jonah, swallowed by the whale, and ever since identified with bad luck on the water.
Moving upriver, we fished all the way to Beachwood Park, where it was obvious from the many listless anglers along the shoreline that no one was catching fish. Our luck remained stalled — as did, incidentally, the tidal current.
Dale and I were about to bestow the Jonah on Mike when he hooked up with a fat and feisty yellow perch, which he battled to the side of the boat. Consumed by envy, Dale and I were relieved when the ned spit the hook as Mike tried to derrick it into the boat.
He explained that he had purposely freed the perch out of concern for our self-esteem. We loudly protested that preposterous claim. Then Mike went on to hook a small sunfish, then a pickerel — at which point his luck and his boasting grew unbearable.
Dale and I were conferring aloud on the best way to heave him overboard when I happened to glance at my watch. Already it was 5pm, and Mike had promised his wife that he would meet her for dinner at that hour.
We persuaded all of our spouses, who had been patiently waiting for our return, to join us at a waterfront restaurant halfway down the Magothy River on Mill Creek. It would take them, we hoped, as long to get there as it would our skiff.
Dinner was delicious and the adult beverages especially welcome and warming after the chill of the late-afternoon run. Mike, Dale and I entertained our dinner companions by trying to convince them just how one lost yellow perch, a tiny sunfish and a barely legal pickerel constituted a fantastic fishing trip. They believed us. It was obvious we’d had a great day on the water.