In the United States, bass fishing has become a veritable industry whose factories are the many tournaments where the catch is calculated in total number of pounds rather than in individual fish. Only production matters.
The winner of one of these tournaments, organized in the Thousand Islands, on the St. Lawrence, thus caught 102 pounds and 9 ounces of bass during the four days of competition. Of the 90 registered anglers, 55 brought in more than 20 pounds of fish per day. If you choose to go to Lake Erie instead, the president of the New York Bass Nation can guarantee that you will catch between 30 and 50 bass per day, 15% of which will weigh more than four pounds!
As we can see, this professionalization of angling produces a debauchery of statistics and a technical discourse which, with its orgies of numbers and its sharp analyses, is reminiscent of NFL football.
I already knew the delirium
consumerist of big business » decoys expressly designed to lure our freshwater brawler. The fisherman is a much more curious creature than the fish he pursues, and I can no longer poke around on my phone without finding myself faced with a list of the ten best frog imitations, a study on the comparative merits of ” jerkbaits » and « crankbaits or a presentation on the art of dredging the bottom of the lake with a fake plastic crayfish. Here I am falling prey to a legion of influencers who want me to buy braided line, fluorocarbon leaders and a seven-foot-long rod, instead of my current 78-inch pole, and why? Because the pros.
Do you remember the bamboo pole with black thread wrapped at the end, and the simple hook weighted with a sinker and dressed in a worm that was presented to the brook trout? Far from the joys of childhood, performance anxiety awaits our bass fisherman.
But I was far from it on June 15, when I was gliding down the Magog in my fishing kayak. It was the opening of bass season and I had taken my leave, knowing that the small mouths would still be around the spawning grounds and that the males, after refraining from hunting to watch over the eggs and fry, would be starved.
So I was going to prospect a few spawning grounds located on rocky bottoms which, lacking the indispensable cheap sonar on sale everywhere, I could only suspect the existence. And I had every intention of throwing, on the way, my lure directly under the wharf of the spa establishment which has appropriated a piece of shore in this sector, ostensibly encroaching on a public good that the presence of this wharf transforms de facto into a haunt of bass. At worst, my crankbait bristling with treble hooks would crash into the beautiful white terrycloth bathrobe of a user evacuated in his deck chair.
For the moment, skirting the wooded bank, I only encountered the kingfisher in undulating flight, devoted to its own pursuit. As I crossed a grassy area to get closer to a remnant of a wharf surrounded by some emerging rocks, having changed the monofilament of my reel that morning, I made a first cast out to sea to check the range of my reel . I had attached a Big O to the end and it barely touched the water when it was deep in the throat of a pike weighing about five pounds. The latter, as if he had understood the object of my quest and wanted to please me, began to leap out of the water like a bass. Still, I had, at the end of my line, a big mouth rather than a small mouth and bringing a fish that size back on a boat that looks like a pocket handkerchief is no small feat.
Even using pliers, I was not going to be able to save this little monster, this digestive system surrounded by scales that is a northern pike. This one, not content with having completely swallowed up my lure, suddenly closed its jaws on my fingers that had recklessly ventured into the middle of its shark teeth. On the vestige of the quay where I had docked the kayak, the blood that was pissing from my torn hand mingled with the blood that was squirting from the skull of the fish that I was in the process of slaying with my paddle. Perched on a branch a little further, an osprey contemplated this murder scene with a knowing eye.
I am writing this text in France, the land of pike dumplings à la lyonnaise. Yesterday, on the terrace of a café, on the magnificent square shaded by a medieval church, a friend from Poitiers told me about his last salmon catch. He was living in Newfoundland at the time. And there, in the Salmonier River, on the Avalon Peninsula, he hooked an Atlantic salmon weighing about five kilos. He fought, brought it back to the edge, passed through the landing net. Then he took a good look at it. It was a superb fish. A perfect moment. As he went to pardon his prey, this fisherman was himself touched by the grace. How to immortalize the intensity of such a moment? He swears to me that he stopped fishing that day.
His fishing story changes me from the rantings of bass pros who count the flesh with the regularity of a machine.
The next day, I stung two of them, which, less voracious than the pike, fell off the hook as they jumped out of the water. It bit, I was happy. The essence of fishing is there, in hope.
The day before, I had come home with my pike and my hand wrapped in a makeshift bandage, when an unusual cry drew me outside again. My osprey was there, tracing circles, high in the sky. His way of telling me: see you tomorrow.
This column will be back on August 26.