Already there are signs of autumn. I drove up north yesterday, and some of the trees there are starting to change color. The waterways - lakes and rivers alike - are getting thick with weed growth. Yellow jackets are getting ballsy. There's a different tint to the sunlight than there was a month ago, or even two weeks ago. There are more geese in the sky now, assuming their tell-tale 'V' formations. Lot of chatter too, as though something's happening, or about to.
I hate winter, but I'm not worried about it right now. In this blessed stretch of summer on high, I've happily been the grasshopper, not the ant.
There was quite a few people fishing on the Chippewa today, and about a hundred yards upstream, near the rapids, a great blue heron doing a little fishing of its own and exhibiting some interesting behavior. It was a partly cloudy day, and I noticed that when the sun was behind a cloud, the heron's head lowered down into a motionless, ready-to strike position, but when the sun was out and shining, it eased back to its original posture - a mysterious, pencil-thin, upright repose. I watched this go on for about an hour. That the bird may have figured out that it shouldn't cast a shadow over the water when it's hunting is astonishing to me.
I caught a northern today. Not the one I'm after, but I have a feeling the two are acquainted. I love catching northerns. Outside of perhaps the musky, the northern pike is the true north woods ambassador. As the alligator gar belongs to the Gulf states, or the piranha to the Amazon, the northern pike is 'our' fish, a highly evolved ambush predator, kingpin of boreal waters. This would seem to truer now than ever since, according to Wikipedia (hey, I'm not writing a school paper here, so sue me...) there is apparently now a 'southern pike', a fish once thought to be a color variation of the northern, but designated its own species in 2011.
The fish I landed today was small, another 'adolescent', but he put up a hell of a fight, particularly once I had him out of the water. He nearly swallowed the lure - a hunter orange spoon - and though his teeth were small, they were very much there, and I had to go deep with the pliers; not an easy task when the animal's thrashing wildly.
I interrogated him thoroughly about the fugitive who made off with my lure; I employed my best, 'Vee hahve vays of making yu tawk...' but nothing. This fish had nothing to say about my real target. Completely defiant.
Beautiful animal though.
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NORTH WOODS AMBASSADOR - No fish, outside of the musky, deserves that title more than the northern pike. Its evolution into a fast and efficient hunter commands admiration and respect. What this small example lacked in size, it made up for in fight.
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