COLUMN: Fishing is not about catching fish

I check the clock again.  Surely it’s not 7 a.m. already.  But a glance at the gathering light in the windows of the river cabin suggests that the clock is keeping good time.

I splash water on my face and trade my boxers for an old bathing suit.  I slap a cap over my bed head.  My son is sleeping in the next bedroom and when offered the choice of coming with me or going back to sleep, chooses the latter option.  He’ll join me at a more teenager-friendly hour.

I drag my kayak 40 yards from the side of the cabin to the bank of the Little Pee Dee and slide into the water.

The sun has already cleared the tree line.  I had hoped to be on the river sooner than this, but it’s still early enough that mist is rising off the surface.  It’s a short trip; I’m only going across the river to sandbar on the Horry County side.

I spend the next four hours on that sandbar, fishing.  I catch nothing.  It doesn’t matter.

And I don’t think I’m unusual in that respect.  One of my favorite bumper stickers says, “A bad day of fishing is better than a good day of work.”  I have the added advantage of not hunting or fishing regularly, so I don’t expect to come home with any trophies.

Neither did I grow up in the woods.  My dad is a city boy, raised in Brooklyn, NY.  So although he taught me almost everything I needed to know about being a decent human being, he couldn’t teach me to hunt or fish.  When I arrived in Marion in 1993 at the age of 30, I had never held a shotgun in my hands and the only fishing I had done was at camp.

 So I’m a late comer, and not a very good shot.  But I do now own two kayaks, a pair of shotguns, a fly rod, and a tangle of other fishing gear.  Whenever I get to the woods or the river, it has a freshness and excitement about it that I hope will never fade.

That sandbar feels so good because it allows the world to come to me rather than the other way around.  I’m a hard charger and spend most of my time going places and doing things; I often pay less attention to my surroundings than they deserve.

However, this day, with my feet anchored in the sand, I remain fixed as the world goes by.  The mist burns off.  The soft glow of morning lights the opposite bank.  By 10 o’clock, the sun is warming the back of my neck and rendering the water around me the color of sweet tea.

I wade in up to my diaphragm.  I whip the fly line above my head in amateurish loops but I don’t care that my technique is poor.  The slight tug of the current, the rhythm of my casting, and the play of the sunlight through the cypress trees are like a balm.

The arc of the day runs past me like the water through my shirt.  It seems I can feel the world turning on its axis.

I suspect all outdoors people have felt what I felt on that sandbar, but it’s hard to put into words, so you don’t often hear it expressed.  We love to talk about that eight-point buck or that 80 pound catfish, but those quieter moments, the moments that chills run off your shoulders and down your back like gentle rain and you’re glad that God put you right where you are-well, those moments, we keep to ourselves.

Most of the time, when I ask my son or a friend to go hunting or fishing with me, I’m actually asking them to provide company as we both sit quietly and watch the sunrise or the day move past.

It would usually be correct for me to say, “Come on, let’s go.  You know how awfully beautiful it is in the morning in the woods.  We can listen to the owls hooting and the mourning doves cooing.  Might even see a bald eagle.  Don’t bother to bring your gun (or rod).  We’re not going to get anything.”

But it’s easier to say, “Hey, let’s go fishing.”