Fishing for White Perch: I Love Maine Reason #3,204

I went out fishing Friday night, and it doesn’t get much better than that. The weather was perfection. Not hot. A little breezy. Sure, it poured in a torrent for about 20 minutes, but we went to shore and stayed in the car during that, and when we went back out, the fish were going crazy. I would literally put my hook back in the water after catching one, and have another bite five seconds later. If I’d used dynamite, I couldn’t have fished any faster. I even tried using a spinning lure (which you’re typically only supposed to use when trolling), and they bit on that, too–no trolling required. We were in a canoe with an outboard motor attached to it, so there was no paddling involved.

I’ve been trolling before–I used to go with my grandfather and cousins every summer. (For those of you who don’t know, when you’re trolling, you’re in a boat, going slowly through the water, with your lines trailing behind you, doing their best to attract fish.) Anyway–I’d gone in Utah often, but this blew Utah out of the water. There were no other boats on the lake. No jet skis being obnoxious. No power boats roaring by you. There were only two man made structures on the lake: old ruins of cottages. Loons were swimming by and calling back and forth to each other. I saw a mother loon, baby loon on her back, not ten feet from the boat, staring right at me. You just don’t get that in other places–at least not other places that I’ve lived. It’s like your in a place civilization just hasn’t managed to completely crack open and spoil.

I caught 30 or 40 fish in about two hours. Let half of them go, but there’s no limit on white perch in Maine, so I kept the rest. Of course, I realize it’s not always going to be like that, but I would have been happy even just catching one or two fish. It was a quiet evening in a canoe with a friend, chatting back and forth, enjoying the scenery, and appreciating the quiet. Catching a boatload of fish is just frosting. (Although fish frosting is a nasty image. I don’t eat the fish. That’s Denisa’s job.)

Experiences like Friday night make me wonder why in the world more people don’t live here. The lake was not more than fifteen minutes from my house, and it only took that long because the roads weren’t great driving there. Granted, some people don’t like to fish or do stuff outdoors, but if you do . . . you really ought to come visit me sometime.

More times like that, and I might even start to like summer.