The Big Water

Our trip to South Dakota this past summer brought back memories of a long ago summer when I fished from the shore for northerns and caught enough of them that I was a hooked fisherman. Hooked enough that I bought a Fish-‘N’-Float outfit in Chicago that would allow me to fish out on the big water instead of just from shore. By “big water” I mean the Oahe Reservoir, one of the bodies of water on the old dammed Missouri River. And I don’t mean “damned,” although that muddy river that gave my hometown its name, Mobridge, was often damned whenever the winter ice would break up and then the river would flood the land along its banks. Or damned whenever one of our young citizens chose to swim in it and go down never to be seen again. I used to fish with throwlines when I was a boy, catching a wild assortment of fish, most of which were inedible—carp, sturgeon, catfish, bullheads, eel, golden-eyed herring, suckers, shiners. But the Fish-‘N’-Float let me go out to do hand-to-gill battle with deep water denizens like northerns and muskies. It was a truck inner tube inside a canvas sleeve, with a seat in the middle. I always wanted to hook a really big fish and have him tug me along. But it never happened, and the outfit went the way of all such toys from our past, and I never renewed my fishing there on the “big water.” Now, I’d like to go back and try again, before I’m too old to put my feet in the water and cast out a line, waiting for the strike that so seldom comes. Like Frost, that swinger of birches, such a journey for me would be good both going out and coming back again.