Fishing Story # 1

Shot Joey a text. Said I was going fishing at the pond. He said he’d meet me there. I was going to hook him up with a big cat using sweet corn and bread chum, but I accidentally, after waiting for some time, caught his fish. With the water now murked decided it was time to go and try the lake with Paul instead. We found him ankle deep on the end of the pier smoking a cig and handed us over the report - just sheephead (slang for freshwater drum). But hey, Joey has never even caught a sheep before. Joey, having Autism, has really never caught much before, that’s why I take him fishing. 

Paul and i had flip-flops and shorts, the usual summer lake fishing attire. Joey had jeans and hiking boots. i told him not to venture out past the ankle level so his feet would stay dry, for the last half of the pier has been under water all year due to the highest water levels the lake has seen in 15 + years. 

We could see the storm front rolling south from the Canadian (north) side, like a blanket of genie smoke. But, as an angler you fish until the very last moment - and sometimes a few moments beyond if they’re hittin’ and this storm, though lightening (meaning no walleye) was going to just pass. We felt the pressure drop, temp drop, but the water was another story. We had all our gear at the wave crest edge on the pier. And when I looked over at Joey I said, ‘Thought I told you not to go deeper than your boots. You’re wet over the knees!’ I’m so used to being submerged in the water that I had not realized that the waves were touching my shorts. Paul’s too! That is when it hit me - THE GEAR! We all ran towards the shore trying to catch the tackle box, the net, the extra rods, Paul’s radio, and my vest that I had left behind paranoid I’d drop my iPhone into the drink. My cellphone was completely submerged and has yet to work. Paul’s radio went down to Davey’s locker, also his hitches. But he said he went back the following day and found most of it again. I had gone back in the morning to see if I could find anything of mine, but without luck. So Paul lost a radio. I lost a cellphone, a scale, and some other small items. Joey didn’t catch any fish and I hoped he was jaded from every fishing the Lake again.

But the jist of this story is that I have never seen Lake Erie rise a foot of water in less than five minutes before. just when I thought I had seen it all! Not a single rain drop, but the barometrical pressure was enough to push down on the top of the nearly perfectly calm water so it rose more than 12 inches in an instant. I’m not sure if this adventure ruined it for Joey. Of course, his first time and he’s introduced to a freak of nature! But that is what I love about my eerie lake, you never know what she’s going to throw at you. Predictability is just boring.

What should have been Joey's fish.

• Freshwater drum, Aplodinotus grunniens, a medium-sized freshwater fish of North and Central America