The Walleye King
by Gene Hill
If you threatened to pull out my fingernails with pliers and then strapped me to a lie detector I would probably admit that I like to fish. I, of course, do not associate with dedicated and well-known fishermen for the same reason I do not frolic with anyone featured in the FBI's Most Wanted list. I have enough problems with my own credibility gap being a trapshooter, bird hunter, and dog raiser.
So last summer, under a ruse so complicated it would make an excellent theme for a novel on international espionage, I was lured to an isolated lake in Ontario. My companions, being true fishermen, refused to allow me my customary evening stroll beneath the towering pines. They insisted instead that I engage in games of chance with a deck of cards while they breathed their whiskey-laden breath in my face--in spite of my well-publicized aversion to distilled spirits. Their manners paralleled their rude costumes--ill-fitting garments stained beyond all recall with parts of long-expired fish, bug ointments, and various malodorous chemicals created to make their strings sink or float.
It seemed I had barely gotten to bed when I was roused, given some food, and placed in a boat with the most wretched of the group, a small, dark-haired man whose shifty glance reminded me more of a ferret than anything else. The guide, whose good fortune it was to speak only Algonquin, crouched over the outboard, as much repelled by my companion as I was. After a short run, sufficient to leave me soaked to the skin with freezing spray, the guide made it known that we were to begin fishing.
My companion responded by flinging a huge half-pound spoon within a sixteenth of an inch of my eyebrows and began a litany about "this being the life," while I crouched in a constant state of terror. My partner, proving himself an accomplished fisherman, had contrived a method of casting that left me no area at all to fish except the barren depths on the other side of the boat.
After he had boated three or four undernourished, moronic walleyes, he began a tedious discourse, punctuated by the frequent opening of beer cans, about his legendary way with the walleye. He admitted, reluctantly, that I might, if I wished, refer to him as "The Walleye King." He had been constantly changing my lures for me in an effort to be helpful. I saw it as a transparent device to keep me from catching any fish at all--even though now and then when he ended up with a backlash I managed to throw a plug on the side of the boat that he virtually monopolized. It was valiant, but futile.
As noontime approached the guide indicated that we were to cease fishing and head for lunch on a nearby island. My boatmate (let's call him Jim) responded by finishing the other half of the single beer I had been nursing all morning and, swinging his rod around like a saber, knocked what was left of my pipe tobacco into the bilge.
Lunch itself was uneventful, provided you'd been raised on a farm and were used to the swilling of hogs. After Jim's theft of a number of beers from the other boats he and I started out again and essentially repeated in the afternoon the recreational activities of the morning.
In deference to my younger readers as well as those men and women of normal sensibilities, I will not recount the activities of the evening. As often as I could, I escaped from their rude badinage and stood outside on the porch caught up in the splendor of the summer moon, the fragrance of the evergreens, and the mystical enchantment of the voices of the loons. These sounds were contrasted with the noises of my companions, rough-edged with shouting and worse, as they recounted capturing tons of trout, salmon, and smallmouth bass under conditions that would have rebuffed a Tartar. The smallest number I heard all night was 14--whether it was the weight of an eastern brook trout brought to creel or the point spread on a gin rummy hand, I have no idea.
To say that I faced the coming of the next dawn with mixed emotions would be the understatement of the century. Jim, whom I'd drawn in my boat again, was a good deal more subdued than he'd been the previous day and, except for supervising the loading of half a brewery on my back (to be carried to the boat), he seemed almost tolerable.
The Algonquin stayed in his seat and silently watched as Jim commandeered the best and the softest cushion while I risked a bilateral hernia wrestling the ice chest and its contents into the boat.
After an hour or so I grew more and more uncomfortable from the heat. This was because I had turned the earflaps down on my hat and was wearing a heavy scarf after having bad dreams all the previous night about a set of No. 6 treble hooks sunk deep in an important artery. With that crowd, I felt sure that first aid and last rites would be synonymous, and I wasn't about to rely on luck.
Under the best of circumstances, Jim's coordination was never what you would call outstanding, and today was some sort of a new low. He had one bad backlash after another, and finally got his reel into a mess that looked like it would require a welder's torch to clear up. At last I had a chance to exhibit my deft touch with a casting rod, and my instincts about the correct lures began to pay off. Lunker walleye after lunker walleye was added to the stringer, and now and then a respectable bass. Jim, having given up on his backlash, was reduced to sullenly trolling a June Bug Spinner on the 10 or 12 feet of usable line he had left.
At lunch I felt it was my duty to divulge my knowledge of the finer points of casting and of the lifestyle and eating habits of the walleye. That my companions said nothing I took as evidence of their rapt attention. I further insisted on constantly referring to Jim as "The Walleye King" in token of my good sportsmanship and my willingness to let bygones be bygones. I made it clear that the reason I had by now caught twice as many walleyes as Jim was merely due to my mastery of the technical side of Canadian lake fishing, and that luck had nothing to do with it.
Using my high school French, I graciously translated a great deal of this for the benefit of the guides. They nudged one another and roared with laughter at my remarks as they cleaned up the luncheon site. Even Jim remarked about how easy it was to blend two cultures given my gift of tongues. Everyone laughed, and with soaring spirits, we took off across the lake.
The guide had put a new line on Jim's reel. But, seeing how chagrined he was at my mastery of the sport, I insisted on spending the rest of the day pointing out the subtleties of trolling to him. And I even went so far as to enjoy part of a can of beer. By now Jim had recovered his effervescent good spirits--largely because I insisted that he tell me the secrets of his side-arm casting technique, and because I promised him I would master it on the chance we might some day fish together again.
As we readied for bed that night I found myself struggling with a major problem. Would it ever be possible for me to bend my personal credo of "the whole truth and nothing but the truth" enough so that some day I could sit down and write about fishing the way the professional writers do? My last thought that night was to promise myself that I'd get hold of, say, Ernie Schwiebert and find out how he made the moral compromise. He doesn't seem to be suffering unduly.
