It’s time for me to get my new fishing licence.
I could do it over the Internet but I’m always looking for an excuse to pop by the local fishing tackle store.
I’ve purchased a total of 52 licences in my lifetime. My father paid for my first fishing licence. It was a present on my 16th birthday. He also gave me a Woods canvas shoulder bag with leather trim to carry my fishing gear. The following year, my younger sister saved up her allowances and gave me the money in an envelope with a birthday card to pay for the licence. She has given me the money each and every year since to buy my new licence. These days it only cost her $5. One of the perks of growing old – more for her than me I think.
From the metal Wheatley fly box my father gave me to the high-tech, hermetically sealed hard plastic boxes they sell now-a-days, I have stuffed them all into that Woods shoulder bag I’ve carted around since I was, well, let’s just say I’ve carried that bag with me on many a fishing trip.
As someone who is not only a creature of habit, but also an angler whose whole fishing experiences are, more often than not, governed by sheer luck, I should mention that at some point back in my mid-twenties, I once pinned a small Leave It To Beaver badge with a fading picture of, yes, Jerry Mathers as the Beaver, into the inside flap of the bag. I though it might bring me luck. It did and, subsequently, the Beaver and I have gone on many a fishing trip together. (For those of you who don’t know who Jerry Mathers is, he was the star of a television show back in the late 1950s and early ’60s.)
Some day, if I ever get the opportunity to actually meet Jerry Mathers, I think I’ll ask him if he wants to go fishing. Maybe I’ll bring along my deluxe, six-CD set of every Leave It To Beaver show that ever aired for him so sign. Although I am sure the two of us would have all sorts of other things that we could talk about. I’ve always felt the two of us have a lot in common.
They say habits are more a statement about a person than a reflection of their character. I don’t know.
The first thing I do when I arrive at a lake to go fishing is take my wrist watch off and put it, and my cell phone, in the glove compartment of the vehicle. I am making a statement.
The second is to walk down to the end of the dock and take a good long look out at the lake. In part, I am looking to see if there are any fish jumping, or insect hatches coming off. In another way, however, I am also looking out at the next few days of my life. In those first few moments of looking out at the lake I am, in actual fact, and in my own way, communing with nature, with the fish, the dragonflies that are buzzing in and out among the reeds, and all the song birds that are sitting among the reds and bullrushes, singing and chirping and communicating back and forth with each other. Sometimes I feel like they are trying to communicate with me – trying to tell me to relax, to leave my worries behind and just enjoy the warmth of the sun on my face, and relish in the fact there are plenty of fish swimming around looking for something, anything that might even closely resemble a mayfly or pass for a caddisfly pupae making its way to the surface.
I wonder if Jerry has ever sat in a boat out on a lake somewhere and just watched in awe as a trout slowly rose to the surface to take his imitation fly pattern, and then held his breath as it took off for the far end of the lake.
I wonder if he is a dry fly fisherman, a stream fisherman, or the kind of a guy who just likes to put a line in the water and troll it around as the sun shines down and know that the livin’ is easy.
I am sure that Jerry, and I call him Jerry because I feel like I have known him most of my life, is the latter.
I wonder if Jerry and I ever will get to go fishing together?