2016 Nov 22^nd

A head cold has caught me by surprise; it isn’t likely fatal; it is annoying. Here is another true story from “A Double Dozen and Six.”

                                                              Warm Enough

Steelhead fishing in March at the mouth of Michigan’s Platte River is a cold business. The winds come off Platte Bay from the west with nothing but low sand dunes to break their force before they are in your face. If that weren’t enough, ice in table-top chunks float past your insulated waders to remind you that March is not a civilized time to fish this river.

I am here with Jonas. He is in his mid-seventies, small, bright eyed, pleasant and talkative, usually with a bulge of Redman in his cheek. He retired some years ago from the maintenance crew of the college where I teach. While he was there we talked about steelhead fishing every time we saw each other and we talked about how we would have to try it together sometime. If we were ever going to do that it would have to be soon. We took my camper and headed north.

Steelheading on this river is best done at first light, even then it is crowded enough so that a prudent man arrives an hour earlier. We were prudent. It was dark when we pulled into the parking lot at the river mouth. I struggled into polypropylene long-johns and the insulated waders and finally multiple layers of the new micro-fibers that went under the Gore-Tex parka.

Jonas was well protected too, but with equipment more befitting a retiree than an employed single faculty member whose only real expense was steelheading. Jonas had slipped his wiry frame into heavy wool long-johns, then thick woolen socks, and finally stocking-foot waders. Wading shoes were an over-priced, unnecessary, luxury by his standards, so he wore huge white cotton socks over the wader feet and tucked these into out-sized black tennis shoes. Perfectly serviceable. Two thick, hand-knit, wool sweaters came next. To provide a little extra protection against snagging the waders, and against the wind, he pulled a pair of heavy coveralls over the whole works.  His fishing vest topped the coveralls.  Next came a fresh mouthful of Redman.  A billed cap with the ear-flaps pulled down and he was ready.

We walked toward the river. I stepped out on the shelf ice and then into the knee-deep water and began throwing my spawn bag upstream and letting it drift down, bumping along the bottom.  Jonas stood on the ice about ten feet upstream and to my left.  Most of the other fishermen who had gathered by then were standing in the river.  Jonas was the only one on the bank, and, of course, that seemed quite reasonable as, looking at him, there was not a sign he was wearing waders.  He was just an old man in coveralls and tennis shoes, clearly out-classed by the equipment and skills of everyone else, particularly the well-dressed fellow on his left.  I had seen the man emerge from an expensive car with out-of-state plates.  He had everything, even neoprene gloves.  His noodle rod was custom-made and he had a brass multiplier reel that probably cost more than the rod.  Jonas is an outgoing, friendly guy, but his attempts at light conversation with the pro on his left began by getting monosyllabic responses and went downhill from there. I hoped the bastard would get hung up on the bottom.

Just then Jonas had a hit.  “Fish on.”  Everyone was watching him now.  His rod tip went up.  The fish ripped line and broke water about fifty feet down river.  It was a nice fish but not spectacular.  Jonas moved downstream along the shelf ice, keeping his rod tip up and the line over the heads of the other fishermen.  I followed behind him with the net.  It was impossible to beach the fish.  There wasn’t any beach.  It didn’t take long in water this cold and the steelie was ready to net, but of course Jonas would do it himself.  He stepped carefully into the thigh-deep water and expertly slipped the net under an exhausted six-pound male.  Then he was back up on the shelf ice, fish in one hand, rod in the other, coveralls wet from the thighs down, sneakers squishing water onto the ice, and a broad grin on his face.

After the fish was safely tied up he resumed his spot.  The well-equipped fisherman to his left stared at him slack-jawed and stopped casting.  I thought he had never seen anyone net his own fish before.  That wasn’t it at all.

He turned to Jonas, “Aren’t you cold?”

“Naw,” said Jonas proudly.  And then, patting the chest of his coveralls, “Hell, I got two wool sweaters under here.”

The man didn’t say a thing, just slowly shook his head.  I’d love to hear the story he tells at some exclusive club about the old character he came across in Michigan who waded the Platte in March in coveralls and tennis shoes.