The person that did the barn wasn’t home or just didn’t come out. If we would have had more time I certainly would have liked to talk to him, if for no other reason than to clear up where he caught them. My brother concluded they were from the Wisconsin River since that is the closest body of water; I say the Mississippi. So that part is still open to discussion.
After a quick stop in Fennimore for fried cheese curds (wowOwow), burgers with everything and bottled water, we arrived at the cabin. I couldn’t drive up the bluff because of the severe erosion from the spring rains. Jeff and I jumped on the tailgate of Jared’s 4-wheel drive and rode up that way. Thank God I had my feet up on the bed. At one point, on a hairpin turn, the tailgate hit the ground. My legs would have been crushed.
I curled up on the futon, stuck my leopard travel pillow under my head, and escaped off to dreamland as Jared said something about meeting with the septic man and shooting guns with Jeff. Bye bye.
An hour later was reveille. Time to go fishing.
At the gas station in Gays, Jared bought a sport’s license about three feet long. I went for a 4-day out-of-state fishing license, a two-inch square. There was a problem. They said my social security number didn’t match my birthdate. C’mon. I was born in Wisconsin. I just acquired a new passport. How critical is a fishing license? An hour later, after showing every I.D. in my possession, we were finally on our way.
We came out of the bluffs to the Mississippi, Hwy 35…the Great River Road, and hit a desolate bait shop with two placards “Business For Sale” and “Vote BUSH.” I didn’t really want to buy anything there but my eye caught a camo facemask half-price, so I bought it. I was thinking about my deer back home. (Another story I won’t bore you with now, later though.)
I wanted to go to the jetty north of Ferryville, Jared had other ideas and turned south ending in upLynxville.
As we pulled up into the fishing area, there was a thirtysomething man dancing on a big snake. Ohmigod. A boy in a brown van next to the man was yelping “Dad! Dad!” I looked in my rearview mirror and saw the man pick up the limp snake and throw it in his van. I hate snakes.
The river was empty except for 3 boats. The fishing pier was totally ours. We think most people were scared off by the weather report. Even Jacob the fur trapper had warned us away. He told us that one year a sudden fierce storm came up, slapped boats and people into the air, gone.
The pier is a series of 10’ x 15’ 55-gallon drum rafts wired together. It is like standing in a small boat. You feel every wave. I hook my leg onto the loop of a metal ladder (like the kind you find on pools). I can see the last raft ripping off the rest, Jim with his long pole and Huck squinting into the sunlight. (With only 3 ½ hours of sleep you will imagine many things.)
The worms suck. They are small, dehydrated, and even a few have sores. Still I have nibbles right from the beginning. I caught a beautiful blue gill, my favorite eating fish, although we were doing catch and release, and mostly waiting for one of the huge cats to come into shore. Jared and Jeff are catching lots of fish…blue gills, drum, perch, sheepshead, and some other fish we don’t know the names of. Jared especially like these soft silvery fish and started using them for bait. That’s the way real fishermen do it: catch small fish and use them as bait for bigger fish. Jared said there is everything in the Mississippi, even eels and clamshells with real cultured pearls inside.
On this sunny evening the water is grayish brown and teeming with life. Schools of tiny fish flit about, weird worm larva wiggle in on a wave, occasionally a bloated 2’ carp comes by, dragonflies skim the surface, and in the distance egrets and heron scoop up dinner then make a fretful squawking sound. Strange, since the birds are silent waders along the Fox River where I live.
I confess. I am not really a good fisherperson mostly because I make noise when I get a bite and try to set the hook. Jared called me Curly as in The Three Stooges. But when I try to control myself I am concentrating so much on being quiet that I lose my focus on fish and another one gets away. The funniest thing was that all of my noise attracted the fishermen in boats and although they could go anywhere on the river, they would pull up near the pier because they thought we were catching the big ones. Ha! We were surrounded by a flotilla of skiffs.
We ended up fishing rather late into the evening…with that soft billowy breeze and the sun warming our skin and the fish biting like crazy you forget about time and about being in a remote area where the stores close at 7. Heck, the whole county only has 17,000 people.
We had to drive 25 miles south to Prairie where civilization would still be awake. Jared had promised to make us a big catfish dinner no matter what. Now don’t laugh, we bought farm-raised catfish at K-mart. We bought hush puppy mix too, although earlier in the day I had purchased all of the ingredients (using a recipe I printed out off the Catfish Institute website the night before we left) at Michelson’s, and 3 choice russets for fries. Still I suggested Chinese at a restaurant I noticed on the way down since it would be about 11 if we drove back to the cabin and cooked.
Everyone liked that idea.
It was sweet driving back up the coast, a brilliant gigantic orange sunset and the vast river sparkled a beautiful robin’s egg blue, just the same color as my nail polish. What a splendid night, swinging up and down and curving left and right through the bluffs. Back at the cabin, Jared put on music (volume 22 is his fav) and we danced and ate Chinese and leaned on the balcony with giant moths hitting us and bats zooming around our heads and the whole aliveness of the forest coming at us. New moon, very dark. It was spooky. It was beautiful. I could just imagine the deer deep in the forest arm-in-arm dancing like the Rockettes to Crystal Method…left kick, right kick…mouths open…aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhaaaaah…secret transmission coming to you…we got it
