Operation A-hab, Day 12: Summer's holding on, but the river has changed her clothes

Still warm...not hot, but warm. Around 80 degrees this afternoon, but there are unmistakable signs of autumn. The sun shines with less authority now, and there is color in the trees on both sides of the river that was not there just a week ago. I read somewhere that it isn't cold weather that gets the leaves turning, or birds migrating for that matter, it's the change in sunlight. I don't know if it's true, or how true, but it's a nice thought. And the river water is remarkably clear today, providing me a bird's eye view much deeper down than I've had. Don't know if that has anything to do with the imminent change of seasons, but it definitely makes for pretty fishing.

I'm glad to be out here today; I've been busy with work and other things lately, haven't been fishing as much as I'd like, and last week, of course, I got chased off the river by a gang of hornets at this spot. No hornets here today. Lots of flying insects, water striders, quite a few white butterflies, more seagulls than I've seen all summer, a bald eagle...all basking in the warmth...but no hornets.

I was called out by someone recently, someone who did not believe me when I told the story of Big Missy. This guy has fished this spot/area for years and claims he has never caught - or heard of anyone catching - northerns of three feet or larger in these waters. I wasn't entirely sure if his skepticism was authentic, or if he was just being a negative dick about it. There are plenty of those in the world.

In this case, though, it doesn't matter. I have the truth on my side; I'm positive as to the size of what I pulled to the surface, and the exertion it took to do so. I'm slightly less sure of the species, but given it's size, there are only a few things it could be. A musky, a pickerel, or a northern. It wasn't a sturgeon; no bony ridges along the body, and the color was all wrong. Based on its markings, I'm about 95 or 96% sure it was a northern..

He also expressed skepticism that the particular fish I'm after is still around. This was surely just him being a dick. Granted, it's been almost two months since I had the big girl on the line. Pike, like any predatory fish, follow food sources, and they also prefer cooler water, which means that during this month's surprise heat wave, which lasted several weeks, she and other big animals probably sought out deeper water. But I have found no compelling evidence that pike migrate or travel extensively, and am fairly confident that Big Missy's entire life has been/is being/will be lived close to the stretch of river where I first hooked her. They are solitary and territorial, and the fact that I've caught other northerns in this same spot might suggest disbursement. But there's no reason to think she didn't send the others packing. There's no reason to think she doesn't rule the roost around this specific stretch of the Chippewa.

Finally, he expressed doubt that the fish would survive with a spinnerbait lodged in its mouth. I can't argue this point, really; it's a distinct possibility that when Big Missy bit through the line and wobbled back down into the depths with an inflexible chunk of bent wire in her mouth, she sentenced herself to certain death.

It's also possible, as I've pointed out myself, that someone may have caught her already. Possible.

But this guy was taking the whole thing too seriously. I don't think he quite understood what I meant (or how I meant it) when I said I 'want my lure back'. The intrinsic whimsy of that went over his head, and he became in that moment the type of obnoxious blowhard that wrecks the pursuit of just about any hobby (or any whimsy). There's always some jackass around whose job it is to make sure you wind up disillusioned.

I love to fish, always have, but only in the last couple of years have I started going out more, and only this summer have I set out on an auto-didactic quest to learn as much as I can, to tailor my presentation to specific fish and certain conditions, to 'do it right', as it were. It's been, and remains, a learning process, and it's paid off. I've caught more fish this summer than ever before. But I've never claimed to be a master fisherman, and this blog is not designed to pass me off as such.

What I am is a good writer; and I like trying to turn anything into a story if I can.

CHANGE IN THE AIR - Though the temperatures are still warm, the sun shines with less authority now; there is color in the trees. Autumn's lingering around.

THIS PRETTY MUCH SAYS IT ALL - A fisherman about twenty yards upstream from me had his three poles thrown out with live bait. The fishing was so slow, in the span of about a hour he went from sitting and staring out at the water, smoking a cigarette, to reading a book, and finally just lying back on a rock and going to sleep in the sun.