My wife’s becoming a fish snob.
It started last spring in Florida when she hooked a sting ray and handed me the pole.
“It’s just a ray,” she said disappointedly.
“What do you mean just a ray?” I thought to myself as I tightened the drag and began reeling. “It’s a big ray.”
Fifteen minutes later I had the creature alongside the boat and snipped the leader.
Barb wasn’t even watching. She’d picked up my pole and was casting off the bow.
I’ve seen it before – a lack of interest in the fish that happen to be biting. On the Yellowstone River it’s mountain whitefish the fish snobs find so disgusting. While a whitie may rise to the same fly as a trout, if hooked and landed, it’s a sure bet he won’t receive the same careful release.
This morning it was small northern pike that Barb found particularly distasteful. The walleye weren’t biting and the big northerns had made themselves scarce, but the hammer handles were willing and eager.
“Should I get the net?” I asked as Barb’s rod bowed and the monofilament cut through the water.
“No,” she answered, her voice dripping with disappointment. “It’s just another little pike.”
It may be that I’ve spent too many fishless days on the water to be disappointed in whatever decides to bite my hook. Or perhaps my sights aren’t set high enough.
Whatever.
If it wasn’t for whitefish, I’d often have no fish at all. Juvenile northerns beat nothing hands down and I figure big rays are good practice for big anything.
I no longer keep everything I catch anyway, so what does it matter?
Sure, a whitefish won’t fight like a trout, a little pike has the same teeth and slime as a monster and the Crocodile Hunter was killed by a ray, but I’m a needy enough angler to appreciate them all.
Barb isn’t.
She sets the bar a bit higher than I do.
Pike must be at least as long as your arm to interest my wife, whitefish are unceremoniously returned to the river as quickly as she can extract her fly and rays aren’t even worth Barb’s bother.
Consequently she usually catches more fish than me. I’m too easily distracted by the small, the ordinary and the mundane.
Bite my hook and I’m flattered.
Like a wink from a pretty girl, who’s simply humoring an old man, the bite of a less-than-stellar species is much appreciated.
Especially when fishing is slow.
Barb’s not so easily impressed.
She’s becoming a bit of a snob.
Parker Heinlein is at pman@mtintouch.net