Confidence: by Alexi

     I've fished the Sedges behind IBSP a lot.  I've also fished it thoroughly; so much so, that I feel like I have stirred a fish at each and every point, nook, corner, crevice, flat, rip, hole and so on...Where does this get me?  Incidentally to the same logical point as if I had caught fish no-where.  What I mean is: when I was in my kayak trying to find some bass with Nick the other night, I had a sudden realization that we could go to any number of about a thousand spots where I would have an equal sensation of utter confidence that I was going to catch a fish on the next cast (on the next cast.)  And that sums up the thing that separates the obsessed and dedicated fisherman from the person just trying to enjoy themselves.  At the risk of a misquote someone may have once said: "What's amazing about Steve is that he thinks he's going to catch a fish with each cast." Well, that's just how it is for us.  Cast and cast and cast.  And that is how, the other night, Nick was able to land his first back bay striper:

"Well played" I said, because he had some light test mono on a shitty reel attached to a fine St Croix rod that I was letting him borrow.

As John Gierach writes in his Novel Still Life With Brook Trout:  "Once you've played a few fish well, especially some big, strong ones in tough spots, it begins to look a little more like applied common sense---let him run when you have to and pull him back when you can---but it's still something you have to learn out on the water with live fish and real current, snags, rocks and weeds."

Back bay striper

     We put a lot of work into the kind of fishing we do.  Nick heard that fish rise and feed at his feet.  He had the confidence it took to cast over and over again, stealthily and with precision until BAM! Fish on!
    Me? I had all of my two fish on the troll with a weedless bass assassin.

fish 1

 

fish 2

(Yes, these really are two different fish.)

We fished a little more in the morning. I had a follow all the way to my boat on a topwater lure, but it didn't commit to it, and Nick got to see what it looked like where we had been fishing at night twice now in the daylight.  It was a Saturday morning and the people, and the boats, and the dogs, and the kids all came out as we headed in...

The End