Fencerows: “The Lake Winnebago Political Society and Fish Club”
By John Luthens
John Luthens displays a Lake Winnebago crappie to the only other member of his fish club.
The green waves of Lake Winnebago broke upon an unpredictable, Wisconsin spring. It was an election year, so perhaps it was to be expected. The wind refused to be pinned down to a straight-line direction, hurling from the northwest and switching to the east. Air temperatures hovered in the 50’s, with showers of cold rain from leaden skies that kept the water sluggishly cold.
The Lake Winnebago Political Society and Fishing Club cast forth; day by day along the shoreline, gaining an inch of summer and giving back a yard. Smug politicians say that you can’t fight city hall. Even the common man knows that you can’t do anything about the weather. We fished. It was the only certainty we knew.
Tom and I are charter members of the Winnebago Society. The sad truth of the matter is that we are the only members. We could not storm city hall. We have bags of fishing tackle and rods of war that would set the metal detectors off into a howling frenzy. We’d stick out like a sore thumb in the circles of civic government. When it comes to political limelight, minnow buckets and fly rods don’t make for juicy, front-page headline copy. We’re better suited to meet in the back-page channels and bays.
When Mother Nature finally voted to toss a curveball, and the weather softened with bluebird skies above, the Society tumbled forth to greet the newly-hatched geese and mallard ducks. We have seen their parents hatch, and their parents before them. It’s a calming comfort, being caught up in a bipartisan circle of unchanging nature.
A flashing school of crappies came into the bay and disrupted the evening’s bird watching. The Winnebago Society came to order as the sun hissed into the water with fiery splendor. And like a candidate jockeying for delegate position, the glow refused to go quietly.
“Where are you catching them, Tom?”
“Never mind, I’m catching them where I’m casting.”
“What are you using?”
“Never mind that either!”
I broke out my fly rod and took a handful of crappies on a clouser minnow imitation. I lean to the liberal side of fly fishing, while Tom believes wholeheartedly in the staunch conservatism of leaf worms and minnows. A distinct, wet sharpness of water rose from Winnebago and mixed with the rich smell of earth and the faint hint of lilacs to come. A more picture-perfect debate forum has yet to be invented.
A heavy weight slammed into my fly as I stripped it over a rocky bed. I knew I was hooked to a whopper. The fish never showed itself, shooting out for the depths of the lake and ratcheting line like a sailor trying to take down the rigging before an impending storm. I gave it my all, but to no avail. With a snap of the fly, my trophy vanished into the darkness.
I was excited. It took a few minutes to regain my breath. Tom sauntered over to see about the commotion. Losing an unseen fish is even better than catching one. These are moments the Winnebago Society lives for.
“I think it might have been a big walleye for sure!”
“You think? Or you’re sure?”
“I don’t know for certain.”
“Then it was a log. Or else you hit a tree with your back cast. Quit bothering me. I’m busy doing real fishing over here.”
It was nearing full dark and the polls were about to close on another successful Society meeting. Tom claimed victory, emptying all 5 gallons of his dented and scratched ballot-box of a live-well bucket that had previously served time as a container for rusty parts. Slab-sided crappies hit the ground as he danced a jig.
After a careful recount, he had indeed caught the most fish. He claimed to have been using a Gulp minnow, but I slandered that nonsense. I had reason to believe it was a bloated castoff that he’d picked from the rocks. I’ve seen him do it before, and I told him so. It got a bit heated, and the society was forced to campaign on separate sides of the bay until it was time to adjourn home.
Temperamental parents might call that a timeout, but I’ll kindly have you know, the Lake Winnebago Political Society and Fish Club is for mature voters and mature anglers only.
John Luthens is a freelance writer from Grafton, Wisconsin. His first novel, Taconite Creek, is available on Amazon or atwww.cablepublishing.com or by contacting the author at Luthens@hotmail.com