The topic of this week's column is The Fishing Buddy. Now the theory of a Fishing Buddy (FB, for short) requires explanation. Although having someone to fish with is (as the name suggests) an important use of an FB, it is by no means the only use. Everybody should have an FB whether they fish or not. Let me illustrate. Imagine you had an opportunity to take batting practice at Fenway Park. Imagine further that standing at home plate, facing down an intimidating pitching machine, you manage to connect and send the ball sailing 420 feet. As soon as the ball is out of the park, you turn to see if anybody is watching. Imagine your dismay if not a single person was there to witness the feat. A considerable amount of your satisfaction would disappear.
But if you had an FB, this tragedy would not have happened. Why not? If you had an FB, you wouldn't even have been wasting your time hitting a baseball in the first place. You would have been out fishing. So suppose instead you make a beautiful cast and hook a fat 15" brook trout. As soon as you land it, you turn to make sure somebody is watching. If your FB is there to witness it, everything is fine. A good FB, however, goes well beyond this duty. Because in all likelihood, you didn't measure that fish properly. Unfortunately, however, it may take you two days to realize this. The fish, as you later remember, was thrashing around too much for an accurate measurement. It was likely closer to 18" than to 15".
Now you may have some ornery relatives or distance acquaintances who--if they deign to respond at all to your correction--would argue that the faulty measurement was probably in the other direction. A good FB, however, will understand completely (having themself made the same mistake on more than one occasion) and will not argue with the corrected length of the fish. "Actually," your FB might say, "it barely fit in the net. It was probably 19 or 20 inches."
Another important use of an FB is to provide excuses. If you are fishing alone and misplay a big fish, there is nobody to blame but yourself. But if your FB is with you, you can blame them for having netted it improperly, or for bumping your rod, or rocking the boat, etc. The specific nature of blame doesn't matter, as long as you yourself are not at fault.
An FB provides an even more important type of excuse too, as illustrated by my own FB Bill Frey. Bill and I were fishing Goshen Dam one evening, and somehow the time slipped by more quickly than usual. By the time we found ourselves paddling to shore, it was already past the time our wives were expecting us home, and we still had a good hour of paddling, canoe-loading, and driving left to do. Fortunately, Bill had shown the good sense to lock his keys in his pickup. It took us a good 15 minutes to break in. Maybe even 18. So when I arrived home a full two hours late, I had the perfect excuse to explain my tardiness: "Bill locked his keys in his car," I told my wife. "It took as a while to break in." I assume Bill also managed to cast the blame on me (though I'm not sure how). Anyway, you can probably imagine similar non-fishing uses of an FB,
Fortunately I've had several excellent FBs in my life. The summer I moved to Vermont from the flatlands, native Vermonter Randy Butler acted as my first local FB. To help welcome me to the state, he took me to Bristol Pond (a.k.a. Winona Lake) one evening for some great bass-fishing. We've gone fishing together several times since then, and he's shared with me some of his favorite spots such as...
Well, I'd better not mention Randy's best fishing holes in print or he won't be my FB anymore. In fact, one of the best characteristics of my current FB Dave O'Hara is that he can be trusted to keep a secret. Such as the location where I caught that 22" brook trout I mentioned in the second paragraph. When Dave moves to New Mexico in a few weeks, I will mourned the loss of an FB. But at least I know he won't be making known my favorite spots before he leaves. And hopefully when I visit him out west he'll have discovered some great new spots.
Two other uses of an FB were illustrated by my friend Keith Kelly. A Montana fishing guide from the time he was a child (and now a manager of the outstanding Eagle Nest Lodge on the Big Horn River), Keith came east to Middlebury College where I met him his freshman year. He took several classes from me, mostly as an excuse for us to go fishing together. The month he graduated, I took him fishing to Rapid River in Maine (one of my own favorite places). It was shortly after ice-out and the water was high. Keith, used to big Montana drift boats, was uncomfortable in a canoe. I assured him that they were perfectly stable when handled properly, and that in 30 years of canoing I had never once capsized. Nonetheless, that evening I was out in the canoe alone while he was resting (safely) on shore. I happened to be borrowing his very favorite fly rod, a beautiful 1oz, 7', 4 wt. (Note that a good FB will lend you not only a fly rod, but a lawn mower, car, CD collection, etc.) Anyway, the canoe somehow managed to flip itself in the middle of the river--I'm sure Keith was to blame though I've not yet figured out the details--and I was dumped me into the icy current. Keith saw my predicament. Being the good FB that he was, he ran to the shore and with a terrified look on his face and panic in his voice shouted, "Where's my rod?"
I was, of course, holding his rod for dear life. It was the first thing I grabbed when the canoe went over--probably for the same reason I once crashed into a hockey net and broke my arm rather than risk damaging the blades of my new $150 hockey skates. Nonetheless, his question was the exact same one that any fisherman would have asked of me. And in Keith's defense, I must admit that after he found out his rod was not lost, he also enquired of my own wellfare, and whether or not I was drowning out there over my head in the cold river. (I suppose he was wondering whether, in order to save his rod, he was going to have to come out and help me.)
Anyway, Keith's response probably saved my life. Instead of drowning, I swam ashore dragging the canoe as well as the anchor--the anchor hadfallen out of the canoe and gotten stuck in the mud, but I didn't realize I was dragging it until I got to shore--and throttled Keith for his lack of trust.What kind of an FB did he think I was to lose his best rod?