Rocky

AMC has been showing the Rocky movies a lot lately.  In honor of the upcoming school year, I dedicate this blog to grading each of the six Rocky movies.

1. Rocky A
One word: Oscars.  'nuff said.

2. Rocky II C
They had to make it.  America demanded that Rocky finish the Great American Dream.  Predictable ending.

3. Rocky III D-
Known as the one with Mr. T.  Honestly, how does this movie progress Rocky's characterization?

4. Rocky IV B+
East versus West.  Good versus Bad.  It could be said that this movie is what brought down the Berlin Wall.

5. Rocky V F
Rocky demotes himself to street fighting his protégé?  It's because of how bad that this movie was that a sixth one had to be made.  It had to be.

6. Rocky Balboa B
Ties up loose ends.  Plus it brings Rocky full circle: the end when he gives the champ all he wants, Rocky doesn't care whether he won or lost, just like in the original.  He's above all that, which is a great way for him to go out.  Just as long as they don't make a seventh movie!

Journal: Lake Kamuchawie, Manitoba, 2014, Day 8

I too would look this content if I had caught 6 trophies, including the Manitoba record!

 

Day 8 “Secrets”

            On the last day I caught only one fish, a pike in Monster Cove that may have reached thirty inches if put in traction.  The sun shone all day long, which should have warmed the northern coves, but that cold front held on, as did that eastern breeze, and the coves never really warmed up, and the fish stayed deep where they were out of reach.

            Spending eight days up here has taught me some of the lake’s secrets.  For example, southern, eastern, and western coves don’t hold fish this early in the season.  Then, if it’s a good-looking northern cove but you’ve only managed to pull out a hammer handle or two in the inlet, there will be no big fish further in.  It’s quite simple, the big fish would have cannibalized the smaller ones on the way to his nap in the sun back in the cove.  Scientifically speaking, the water needs to be at least sixty degrees to get the hogs to come up from the depths.  If it’s not, it’s a better use of your time to head back to the cabin and play horseshoes.

            I learned to take it slow while piloting a boat in unknown water.

            I learned that a cabin and all the creature comforts of home are all dependent on the fuel supply.  One bottle of propane is in actuality a three-hour egg timer for how long before you become a cave man.

            I learned that northern pike know that they are on top of the food chain.  That’s why a pike will follow a bait all the way up to the boat, ignore the fishermen looking down  on him, and then thrash whatever lure had the audacity to swim in its home.  That's also why a pike with the tail of a five pound lake trout sticking out of its gullet will still go after your lure.

            Considering that last point, I learned that I should never, ever swim in these waters.  Picture Canada’s version of Jaws.

            I learned that when you are on a boat in the water in a northern lake, islands look just like the mainland.  You better take a map, a GPS, a compass (especially for cloudy days) and still pay attention to where you are.

            I learned that we are subject to God’s weather schedule   Staying dry means staying warm, (a lesson I have relearned many times between deer hunting and trout fishing in the mountains) and that everything, the fishing and the fisherman’s comfort level, is dependent on what the weather decides to do. 

            Still, we received the sunshine we prayed for and reaped few benefits.  I find it somehow fitting that we were baffled on the last day when we expected to catch the moose snot out of them.  It’s fitting that a monstrous lake such as Kamuchawie, with its maze of islands and boneyards of dead trees was unwilling to give up all her secrets.  The next party will have flown in the next day after the float plane flew us out, and they will have found success and had their share of head-scratching moments.  And just when they think they have it all figured out, like we did on day six, the northern pike will turn on them, just like they did on us numerous times this trip, the last day especially. 

            We will all go to our respective homes with our thirsts quenched, but also with an immense hunger for the secrets that hide uncovered beneath the surface of the water that we were only able to scratch.  As for myself, I did answer one question: I am not too old to fish.



Journal: Lake Kamuchawie, Manitoba, 2014, Day 7

That must have been one big fish!

 

Day 7 “The Skatch”

After an unsuccessful morning of trolling the bay to the northeast of our cabin, a morning when I snapped a bait casting rod in half while casting (I so wanted to make up a fish story to go along with the busted rod,) the two boats split up.  Dick and Bryce ran over to Secret Lake while Chris and I ran over to the Skatch (Saskatchewan) side of the lake to check out a skinny cove we had pinpointed on the map.  Dick and Bryce had had success on it a few days before, and I told Chris that I wanted to say that I’ve been in Saskatchewan.

The cove turned into a small mud-bottomed stream with plenty of depth (3-4 feet) and no current.  The stream becomes no wider than the length of the boat.  To add to the difficulty, large boulders lay strewn throughout its course, making navigation a nightmare.  To add to that, mostly cloudy skies and a little ripple from the wind obscured the navigator’s view in the bow, so that we couldn’t see a boulder until it was almost under the boat.

I’ll admit that at first I had to wonder if it was worth working our way so far into this stream until Chris hooked and released a forty-two inch, twenty pound chunk of a northern on the fly rod again.  We would motor upstream twenty yards, catch a few, move up again, until re ran out of real estate.

The lily pads were just starting to come to the surface.  We figured in a few weeks the whole inlet would be choked with them and boats would be cut off from such miraculous water.  I say miraculous because there was no way such large fish should have been in such a tiny stream.  I’m sure the forty-two incher planned to eat the smaller pike that made their way up the stream.  Since we didn’t catch many small ones, we assumed the big ones were gorging themselves, cleaning out the creek.

Grass lined the bank and stretched out for five feet from land, making great hiding spots for loons and hungry pike big enough to eat them.  We got creative with our approach.  Chris tied on a topwater lure that looked like a yellow and red drift boat and amused both of us when a big swirl in the grass announced another monster hookup.  I figure that the big pike use this grass as a garage to park tail first so they could see anything swim by and ambush it, whether that is unsuspecting prey or watercraft.

Half-way up the stream, it finally dawned on us to film these big pike crushing our baits.  Chris shot film of me catching one on a buzz bait while I filmed him catching one on his last red and white squid fly.  This was a visual keepsake to remind us of just how violent these fish are.

When we returned to camp, we started a camp fire to make a vegetable stew, since the stove’s propane supply was empty.  In fact we were working on our last tank of propane for power, which had to last us yet another night.  We had been rationing the propane as well as possible since the first day, saving it only for washing dishes and taking showers.  We were quickly becoming cave men.

As the stew cooked on the open flames, Chris shot video of what can only be considered a Yeti who was pushing over dead trees and yelling.  Since the Yeti was just over the ridge, they never got a look at me…um, er, I mean it.  Checking for footprints was inconclusive.  Perhaps a you tube video will surface and give more clues.



Journal: Lake Kamuchawie, Manitoba, 2014, Day 6

A New Manitoba Record!

 

Day 6 “49 Is the New 43”

            “Forty-one may be a trophy, but thirty-five will absolutely rip your arm off,” I said as Chris hauled in the first of three forty plus-inch fish he would pull in that afternoon.  Monster Cove was absolutely on fire!  After a successful morning of trolling for lake trout, following by an unsuccessful venture down the river that runs out of Lake Kamuchawie, we had our usual late lunch at 3:00 and didn’t get out of the cabin until after 4:00 that afternoon.  The good news was that the clouds had finally parted and we aimed at making a killing with the pike.

            First a note on the setting accompanying the boat ride to Monster Cove.  On the way to Monster Cove are the four small islands that give boaters a visual reminder that there is a reef to cross.  It’s like boating through the closing jaws of a monster.  On the other side of the jaws of death, all the trees are burned from the ’05 fire.  They stand upright like white bones sticking out of the ground, ominous femurs from a slaughterhouse that warn others not to enter through the gates or face the consequences of the monsters beyond.  Not that we listen.

            As if to punctuate that point, there is a reef with one white rock the size of a watermelon sticking up out of the water right before the entrance to the slaughterhouse, a depth charge left over from a long ago Canadian war perhaps.  Twice at cruising speed I’ve focused on the teeth of the reef and missed the depth charge by mere feet.  But if your boat makes it through to the other side and into the boneyard unscathed, ahead lies Monster Cove, a place with pike as scary as its name. 

            For the first time in days we had sunshine, and for the first time since we were dropped off nearly a week ago, there was no discernable wind.  It was by far the best day we were to have on the entire trip.  Monster Cove took on a mirror reflection of the bones lining its banks.  This led us to believe that topwater lures would again be the ticket.  They weren’t.

            Apparently the gurgle…gurgle…gurgle of a Top Raider, or the clack…clack…clacking of a buzz bait only disturbed the peaceful nature of this graveyard.  The fish didn’t find them appealing, and I didn’t want to waste time being an intruder in nature as opposed to part of nature, so I again went to the in-line spinners and wigglers and spoons that casted like cow bells and must have sounded to the fish like dinner bells.  We boated no fish under thirty-two inches, and Chris caught his fish of the trip, a forty-three inch monster pike that inhaled a spoon that looked to resemble a fish’s red gills. 

A fish that big takes a team effort to land., one on the rod and the other on the net.  As soon as the fish is netted, the anger drops the rod, grabs the slimy fish-handling gloves, the mouth spreader, and the hook remover.  While the net man does everything he can to keep the monster from twisting and turning in the net and getting tangled, the man with the tools says a little prayer and puts his hands within reach of the monster’s razor-sharp teeth.  Measurements, weighing, pictures, and reviving the behemoth, and it’s a five-minute rest in the boat as the scene is replayed over and over, and high fives are given out as heartbeats slowly come back down.

Then Chris’ fish of the trip was replaced by a behemoth forty-nine inch Laestrygonian pike.  Chris had casted another long, ugly-looking fly and was stripping it in slowly, tantalizingly, knowing that the hovering motion was too much for these monsters to resist.  When the pike hit the fly, Chris set the hook and knew immediately it was a good one, but he truly had no idea what he had on the line. 

While Chris was fighting the monster, the glare from the sun kept him from seeing it.  I caught a glimpse of it and made the mistake of saying out loud, “Holy cow!  That thing is fifty inches!”  Immediately I wished I could take it back because I didn’t want to put more pressure on Chris.  I know that if Chris had said that to me and I hadn’t seen it yet, I would probably go jelly-legged.

We sat for fifteen minutes afterwards just shaking our heads and repeating in as many different ways as we could, “That fish was forty-nine inches!” as if one of the wordings was going to help our unbelieving brains register the fact that we landed and released a four-foot beast on a fly rod.  Chris immediately retired that fly.

Chris confided to me afterwards, “When you said he was fifty, I told myself, ‘Ryan doesn’t know how to judge length,’ so that I could calm myself.”  I suspect that when he himself finally saw the monster, there were no amount of Jedi mind tricks that were going to slow his heartbeat.

Unless you’re talking about the size of the fish, monster pike fishing is not a numbers game, like, “I caught thirty fish today.”  Each monster takes as many as five minutes to land, as many as five minutes to release safely, and usually five minutes or more to rehash  the battle with high fives.  That’s fifteen minutes per fish on average if they are biting well.  Despite this, we boated a lot of fish that day, and all of them huge. 

It will be a day long remembered, but we were to get some interesting news a week after the fishing trip.  Chris applied for a Master Angler Award, sending the picture and the measurement in the Manitoba wildlife department.  We knew that we had a lake record in that forty-nine incher.  But when the officials e-mailed Chris back, they informed him that he now owned the Manitoba Provincial Record for a northern pike caught on a fly rod!  I shot a progression of pictures of Chris holding up that massive fish, and in each successive picture his arm is slumping.  It was so heavy that it was impossible for this former college football player to hold it up!



Journal: Lake Kamuchawie, Manitoba, 2014, Day 5

Apparently moose can swim.

 

Day 5 “When the Wind’s out of the East…”

            When I saw the high wispy cirrus clouds yesterday, I had a hunch storms were coming.  This morning everyone slept in a little longer.  I know I was exhausted from yesterday.

            So after French toast, we got out on the lake around 10:00, met by a drab, grey sky.  We graphed fish in the channel just south of the cabin, just south of the ancient Cree petroglyph, but I’ll be darned if we could get a hook into them.  The cold front sealed their mouths closed.

            After a late lunch, we ran our boats south through the rain along the eastern shore to a cove just southeast of Roper Island.  We had had pretty good luck a few days before, but now with the rain and the wind out of the east, we were uncomfortable, and not catching fish.  The rain even found a way around my Gor Tex rain jacket on my lower back and neck area.  Whereas the other day the fish were way back into the cove in three feet or less of water, these pike held in a staging area halfway into the cove, prompting the theory that pike move in shallow on warm, sunny days and retreat on cold, cloudy days.  Between the four of us, we managed maybe ten fish tops.  Not good fishing at all for northern Manitoba.  At one point I told Chris that this might be a good James Patterson day.  He asked me what that meant, and I told him that he’s the author of the book I was currently reading.  After the day was over, I was sticking to my statement.

            On a side note, we watched a moose swim across the lake on the way back to the cabin.  I’m sure we scared the living daylights out of the poor thing.  When we motored up close to her, she was only twenty yards from the shore and swimming for all she was worth.  As soon as she climbed the bank, she disappeared in the thick underbrush the way the fish had disappeared from us.  This was by far the most excitement we had all day.



Journal: Lake Kamuchawie, Manitoba, 2014, Day 4

So, you're saying there's no fish in this cove?

 

Day 4 “Day of the Dead

Last night just before the float plane came in, our guide took us to the cove just north of our cabin.  I had asked him about it and he tried to convince me there were no fish in it, so to prove his point, he decided to spend his last fifteen minutes with us satisfying my curiosity.  Of course the place was loaded with northern pike, including a trophy forty-four incher.

Naturally we went right back there this afternoon after chasing lake trout in the morning.  And naturally with Dick and Bryce in there this time, the place was mostly dead.  We managed a few fish, and after hitting it really hard, we moved back to Monster Cove.

Following the theme of the day, Monster Cove was pretty dead as well.  Fish that crushed whatever we offered the last few days would follow our baits to the boat and then spook at the last second, leading me to think that we were good teachers, educating the fish what not to do with negative reinforcement in the form of a hook to the mouth.

Bryce hauled in the fish of the day, a mean wolf at forty-two inches, but other than that and a few other nice ones, it was “Cast, cast, cast, change lure, repeat.”  My shoulder ached and I found myself setting my rod down more and more to rest and recuperate.  Thoughts of that oak in my backyard entered my mind.  I had hauled enough really big pike into the boat over the first four days to definitely be satisfied with my production, meaning that only boating three today wasn’t a bad thing.  Since I was operating the boat, I found myself more occupied with fighting the south wind than the fish.

The lone big moment for me came when I pulled in a thirty plus inch pike on my rainbow trout casting spoon.  I had bought the spoon way back in 1996 when my high school buddy and I went to southern Ontario.  I had enough money for three spoons that trip, the aforementioned trout spoon, a red and white Daredevil knockoff, and a five of diamonds knockoff.  The rainbow trout spoon was the only one I hadn’t had any luck on, meaning that after today’s fish, I could finally give it an honorable discharge.



Journal: Lake Kamuchawie, Manitoba, 2014, Day 3

Pike like mice flies, apparently.

 

 

Day 3 “The 'Secrets' of Tipping”

            I woke feeling great today and hoping to take full advantage our guide Rusty’s knowledge.  I really had very few complaints about him.  He was very knowledgeable about where to find the fish, gave us all sorts of suggestions on how we could fish better, and even took direction from us when we wanted to get closer to the shore to cast to something that looked “fishy.”  I say I had a “few” complaints, because he “smoked like a chimney” and “drank like a fish.” His words.  Normally I wouldn’t have a problem with this.  After all it’s his right to smoke and drink.  But, one, we had to share a boat with the chimney, and two, he drank three-fourths of Bryce’s ninety dollar case of beer, without even asking.  I suggested to Chris that Rusty had already drank his tip.

            Rusty ran Chris and me over to Secret Lake that morning.  There’s a ten minute portage through a part of the forest that was burned back in 2005, and half of the dead trees lay across the path, making a ten minute trip into twenty.  Yesterday I had leaned on one of the upright dead trees behind the cabin and accidentally felled it.  The roots were dead.  I wished the dead oak in my backyard was so easy to fell.

            Secret Lake was much smaller than Kamuchawie, maybe a mile in length at most.  Finding the channel wasn’t hard.  Finding the walleye was.  The only secret about the lake was that the fish were all small.  In the course of the morning we pulled out numerous pike south of thirty inches and only three walleye for our shoreline lunch.  Luckily Dick and Bryce had managed to catch a few lake trout to help out.

            That afternoon Rusty got us into some pike.  Using the wisdom that the north coves warm up faster than the southern ones, we fished all likely-looking places.  I had been having ninety percent of all my luck fishing in-line spinners with gold blades, so I took the opportunity to try out other lures.  The red and white Daredevil didn’t produce anything, nor did a few other weedless spoons I tried.  Then I tied on my hammered copper-colored Red Eye Wiggler, an impulse buy at ten bucks that everyone on the internet said was the only lure to have for northern pike.  I bought three.  It was much larger and heavier than my in-line spinners so I opined conventional southern wisdom, “Big bait, big fish.”

            Chris replied, “Big disappointment.”  Then we started catching fish like crazy,  southern style.

            We made our way to Monster Cove where thankfully Dick and Bryce were.  I say “thankfully” because they had had a rough few days on the water.  Their guide, Ernest, for whatever reason, didn’t like to get them in very deep into the coves where the pike were, and they had spent much of their time trolling and not catching fish.  To that point, all Ernest had contributed to our group were a few extremely racist jokes, the only time he even spoke.  I believe social convention still required Dick and Bryce to give the guy a tip.  When they did, I had the same feeling I have every time I leave Pizza Hut unsatisfied. 

            Anyways, Dick and Bryce were only halfway into the cove and had already boated three fish in the ten minutes they had been in there before us.  We motored in and Chris pulled out the fly rod and started whipping around a mouse pattern the size of my shoe.  Apparently monster pike like big rats too.  It convinced me that with these carnivorous fish, I could take off my Nikes, attach a treble hook, and catch lunch.

            The cove was big enough for three boats to cast comfortably, but Ernest still backed Dick and Bryce out when we pulled in. 

            We said goodbye to our guides that evening as they flew out and we settled into the idea that we were now alone, sixty miles of trees, water, and rock from the nearest town.  On the one hand, we didn’t have someone to give us tips on how we could fish better or to take a hook out of a toothy critter’s mouth.  On the other hand, nobody would be drinking anymore of Bryce’s beer.



Journal: Lake Kamuchawie, Manitoba, 2014, Day 2

Nice view, eh?

 

Day 2 “The Headache Returns

            In June in northern Manitoba, the sun sets around 11:00 at night and rises just a few short hours later.  In the course of “night” it never does get too dark.  Knowing that a lack of sleep is one factor that set off my migraines, I went to bed before it got dark, slept seven good, hard hours, and still woke up with a migraine.  I pounded the ibuprofen and coffee and went back to bed for a few hours while the others went out to round up some walleye for a shoreline lunch.  Thankfully, this would be the end of the five day headache.

            Being alone in a place that is truly wild, truly miles and miles away from civilization, gives a man pause to think.  I was mindful of soaking up every ounce of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, a request from my wife in a card she gave me with the instructions, “Open when you are beginning to get homesick.”  My head righted now, I sat on the front deck, looked out at the lake, swatted a few mosquitos, and pondered how I might fulfill my eight year-old son’s request for me to “catch a tuna.”

            Rusty had told us about a seven-foot pike which had been seen just off some rocks on a point we fished, and at the time, Chris and I thought he was joking.  Later on when he brought it up again, we realized he was serious.  On a lake this big (20 miles long) and this remote, I suppose it were possible there could be a seven-foot northern pike.  Or perhaps it was Ezra’s tuna.  Either way, I had no intention or ambition to catch it.  The thirty inchers from yesterday were tough enough to boat, not to mention the trophies!

            The guys came back around 1:00 with three lake trout, one a true trophy at thirty-six inches.  The guides showed us how to bonelessly fillet our fish, and after a typical shoreline lunch (in front of our cabin, a minus for cool points) we ran back out to catch pike.  We soon figured out that any cove that ended on the north shore and had a sand bottom with weeds or grass on the edges was going to be prime pike habitat.  Throw in a few blow-down trees along the bank and you can throw a party.

            We came in at 8:00 to spaghetti and then went back out to dredge the depths for lakers, but not before Rusty enthralled us with a cultural fact.  “Hey, you ever eat moose nose?  It’s really good.  You just have to boil the snot out of it!”

 

Monster Cove

            The highlight of the day came when we again visited “Unnghh Cove.”  This time Chris brought his fly rod and while he tied on a pike fly that looked like a squid, I caught a forty-three inch pike on a #5 gold blade Aglia.  This was my largest pike of all time, but the record would soon fall.  In the meantime Chris tossed his squid imitation.  He stripped it in and left it about five feet short of the boat while he messed with the coils at his feet.  When he lifted the rod to recast, a monster pike swiped at it and missed.  Dejected, Chris said, “Awe man!” only to have the fish take another swipe at it and connect.  When Chris finally brought him to net, the monster measured forty inches.  Not to be outdone, I took the fly rod, stripped in the squid next and caught a forty-four incher.  Ten minutes, three casts, three trophy pike.  From that point on we renamed  it “Monster Cove.”



Journal: Lake Kamuchawie, Manitoba, 2014, Day 1

One of many monster pike we hauled in on day 1

'Unnghh' Cove

            We arrived at out remote outpost via the north’s verison of a pickup truck, a DeHavilland Beaver, which our pilot, Matt, said turned “fuel into noise.”  We hurried as fast as we could to gear up, awaiting our guides who also had to be flown in.  Just as with any trip with men, we all tried to hide our excitement, keep it cool, despite each knowing that we all were too giddy to even put away our socks.

            When it comes to camping with this group of men, I go from man of the house to an uneducated freeloader, which is nice, knowing that there is someone at camp who knows more about lighting a pilot light than I do, and another who can cook more than hamburger helper, or another still who plays MacGyver with 550 paracord.  My only hope is that I would be able to contribute to their betterment in some way as well.

            Rusty and Ernest, our Cree Indian guides, arrived on the next float plane.  They had extensive local knowledge of massive Kamuchawie Lake, which sits mostly in Manitoba and partly in Saskatchewan.  Dick and Bryce loaded up in a boat with Ernest while Chris and I loaded up with Rusty and we each went our separate ways.

            Uncle Dick’s fish stories were immediately put to the test.  Our guide drifted us around beautiful northern pike habitat on the north end of the lake for two hours with only a couple of fish taking an interest in our baits.  When fishing is bad, I have a tendency to look up from the water and take in the scenery.  The old joke that in Canada there is nothing but trees, rocks and water was mostly true.  Seemingly around every corner is a curious bald eagle, flying over the boat, perhaps hoping for the strange visitors to toss out a cleaned fish.

            We slowly putted through a strait with four small islands jutting out of the water, drawing images in my mind of Homer’s Clashing Rocks, popping out of the water at different places in different moments, just trying to punch a hole in their ship.  It had been such a struggle to this point to not just catch a fish, but in dealing with the obstinate oak and the ensuing headache to end all headaches, that I wouldn’t have been surprised had Charybdis herself been waiting on the other side of the reef, ready to suck us down in her whirlpool.  A few mythical monsters and some bad fishing seemed like nothing in comparison.

            Then all of a sudden, all my troubles turned into the fish story of a lifetime.  We pulled into a northern cove.  Using a #5 gold Mepps in-line spinner with a fox tail, my brother unknowingly made the famous hook-set noise, “Unnghh!”  While he fought his pike, I spotted a small pine that had fallen in the water, creating the perfect ambush spot.  I casted to it with a gold weedless spoon, and just like that, God threw me a bone.  It was my first fish of the trip.

            Chris hooked into a few more with that spinner, and I remembered that my mama hadn’t raised no fool, to quote uncle Dick.  I switched to a #6 Blue Fox in-line spinner and caught three just like that.  The late afternoon sun casted shade from the pines on the western edge of the shore, so we hammered them in the shade.  Then we hammered them in the grass line out in the sun.  Then we hammered them in the middle of the cove where there was no discernible cover.  Then it didn’t matter what we tied on.  If a cast didn’t produce a pike, we had to wonder what we were doing wrong.  At one point Chris took some grass off his hook, tossed it over the side, and a pike viciously hit it.  This naturally gave birth to thoughts about topwater lures.

            Before we knew it, we were arrogantly throwing topwater lures the size of ducks, mimicking ducks.  The bad days of fishing back home are when we count strikes, not fish.  I soon decided that there are few bad fishing days in northern Manitoba.  The whole time, our humble guide, Rusty, smiled as he unhooked our fish and couldn’t help but laugh with us when my loon imitation drew strikes that looked like surfacing humpback whales.

Journal: Lake Kamuchawie, Manitoba, 2014 Prologue

The guys departing for Kamuchawie Lake

            The week before leaving on the fishing trip of a lifetime to northern Manitoba, I decided to cut down an oak with a hand saw.  Okay, it wasn’t a whole oak, just one of its three main stems which branched out about ten feet off the ground.  Either way, the limb was a good eighteen inches in diameter, according to my mental fishing ruler which has a tendency to make eighteen inch fish out of twelve inchers.

            The oak was dying a slow death, and rather than let it fall on my children as they played on their swings, I decided to break a sweat.  It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I just turned thirty-nine, felt twice as old, and just heard Toby Keith sing, “I’m not as Good as I once Was” on the radio.

            I shimmied up the tree, reached as high as I could, and started a process that would take two hours and five Advil to complete.  Knowing I would be casting a thousand times a day and possibly hauling in thirty-inch lake trout and forty-inch northern pike, this seemed a good test of my shoulder’s strength.  As it turned out, my shoulder hurt for the next week and I developed a migraine that lasted five days and ended up putting me in the emergency room a mere forty-eight hours before we flew out.

            Three days into the headache, we departed.  It was indeed evident that I wasn’t as good as I once was.  Still, my pride compelled me to prove nature wrong.

            This was a family fishing trip amongst the men, and quite frankly, a surprise to me.  At Christmastime, everyone quieted down as it was my turn to open my gift.  I pulled out a white binder with a Canadian flag on the top.  As I leafed through the binder, I quickly realized that a lot of people, my brother Chris and my wife most notably, had pooled resources to pay the way for this schoolteacher who couldn’t possibly afford such a trip.  For years I had to endure countless stories and pictures of the behemoth monsters uncle Dick had pulled out of these northern waters.  Now I was about to put these stories to the test.

Firsts

I think one of the hardest things about losing a parent is all the firsts a person has to go through.  For me there have been many.  First deer season without Dad.  First time my car broke down and I couldn't call for help.  First time the plumbing broke down and I couldn't call for help.  First birthday without him.  First Christmas without him.  First time his birthday came around.  First fishing season.  First birthday.  First anniversary of our last hunt together.  First anniversary of his death.

Lots of firsts.  To tell you the truth, I had hoped the one year anniversary of Dad's death would help me put the pain behind.  Didn't happen.  I didn't really stop hurting until somewhere around the second anniversary of his death.  Then the pain just wasn't there daily.  Maybe just every other day.

Well today is Memorial Day, roughly 2 and 1/2 years after Dad has passed.  For some reason FX has decided to broadcast Frequency, one of the movies that we all used to watch together.  Well, count tonight as another first--the first time I have watched this movie without Dad around.

The plot behind the story makes it even tougher to watch: a dad dies too young and his boy finds a way to communicate with him through a ham radio and a strange frequency that connects 1969 to 1999.  Through the course of the movie the two talk catch up and even find a way to prevent the father's death so that they can grow old together.

If only.

Hope springs eternal each year about this time for college basketball fans.  And I think it's especially notable that today marks two occasions: the first day of spring, and the first day of the NCAA  basketball tournament.  On this first day of spring, everybody's brackets are still without flaw.

But just like those March winds and April tornados, there will be chaos.  I look at my Kansas Jayhawks' chances and make my choices with both my brain and my emotions.



There's two ways to look at KU each year.  There's the idea that KU always has a puncher's chance to get hot and win the championship, like the '88 team that finished no better than 4th place in the Big 8 that year. 


The problem is that if I were to pick them for the championship that year, that would have been met with scorn and ridicule as an emotional pick.

Then there are years like 1997 when Kansas was by far the best team in the nation.  With Raef LaFrentz and Paul Pierce, Jacque Vaughan and the like, they were the odds-on favorite to win it all that year.  That's when they ran into a hot Arizona team in the Sweet 16 who had underachieved all year and caught fire at the right moment.



They were easily my pick to win it all, and I was scorned for making an emotional pick. 

Had the Jayhawks been able to hit 50% of their free throws in the 2003 championship game, we would have had another banner.  So forget about 2008.  That miracle was a makeup for the 1997 and '03 seasons.

So when the first games start today and higher seeds begin to fall, I will keep a close eye on my bracket.  The real question will be whether my pick of Kansas to win it all was rational or emotional.  With this team, it's hard to tell.