A week or so ago I found myself on the deck of my little bass boat making some pretty amazing casts. They weren’t very far but they were unbelievably accurate. I was putting a small football jig right at the edge of a bunch of structure. It was pretty cold (although there was no wind) but I was on the boat casting away and that was all that mattered. Every once in a while I would reel in an old fan belt or piece of lumber and once I even snagged an old tire. Garbage in my fishing grounds wasn’t really a big deal because I was out fishing and, once again, that is all that matters. My beautiful wife finally broke my angling reverie.
“What in the heck are you doing on that boat?! And this place is a pig sty!” She said, in the doorway to my garage. “Please get down from there before you get a concussion from one of the rafters.”
“And honey,” she looked at me with that twinkle that tells me she wants to me to do something or we get turkey loaf for dinner, “Please snow blow the driveway. It’s coming down fast and really piling up out here.”
I plopped down on my boat seat with a pout and let my fishing rod drop to the deck. I’m a relatively intelligent man and I understand that I have responsibilities to my family and society in general. So what would make me hide from those responsibilities? What would make me, a grown man, stand in the cold on a boat deck inside a garage for 20 minutes pretending to be fishing? I’ll tell ya:
It’s April.
This year I hate April. Some years I love her. In those years when the winter is mild and April brings ice-melting temperatures and great pre-spawn fishing I love her with all of my heart. In those years I hit the woods early and start scouting for turkey tracks. In those years I wake up and exclaim, “It’s April!!” But in years like this, years when we see snow in October and ice on the lakes by mid-November, years when I actually have to start my snow blower between Fool’s Day and Easter, I hate her. I mean, I really detest her.
Oh, look. It’s April. Jerk.
Don’t get me wrong I love the winter. I love television, snowshoeing, ice fishing, television, sledding and television. In January I look out at the frozen surface of my local lake and get as excited as a congressman in a gentlemen’s club with a fistful of tax dollars. Snowshoeing is one of my favorite pastimes and I really do love watching television. Those are some of my favorite things.
In the winter months.
But see, April isn’t a winter month. April is spring and spring means being done with snow and ice and starting to tune up the outboard. It means putting new line on reels, sharpening hooks and replacing spinnerbait skirts. It even means digging out that extra super mondo full choke tube and patterning the shotgun for spring gobblers. It most certainly does not mean snow blowers, gloves, and school closings. This year April is being kind of a jerk.
I understand this is probably my own fault for not recycling a water bottle or reusing my paper towel or some other thing Al Gore tells me I’m awful for. I’m no environmental scientist but I’ve seen enough disaster movies to know that this April is all because of something I did…or didn’t do. I get that. But why punish my hippie neighbor that recycles everything. That lady doesn’t waste anything. She even grows her own “medicine” in her basement. Why punish her, April?
It was honest to God 40 degrees yesterday so I put on a t-shirt and headed down to the lake to watch it melt. There were snowmobiles on it! At the very worst people should be paying divers to recover their snowmobiles and ATVs from the bottom of the lake, not fishing confidently from their seats. All because April decided to be a jerk this year.
I want to go fishing so badly I can actually smell the crud-water that pork rinds come packaged in. It’s like perfume at this point in the season. Chanel #5 never smelled so sweet to me. Soon, those lakes will be open and the walleye will be cruising the shallows looking for baitfish (or my stick bait). The river will open up and nasty, monstrous pike will be waiting in the holes for my giant, white spinnerbait. It won’t be long after that and the big ol’ bass will be slowly prowling the boat docks and submerged timber eating everything they can get their fins on. That day will come. It’s going to happen.
If April will get off her high horse and get it together.
As of right now the only lake with enough open water to get my boat up on plane is at the end of my driveway. It’s deep enough to launch my boat and use the trolling motor but I would look pretty stupid out there. I know this because this morning my neighbor yelled over that I looked pretty stupid sitting on my boat while it floated in the driveway.
Thanks, April. I think all of my sportsmen friends will agree it’s time you took a lesson from that sweet, pleasant May and started getting with the program.
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