Backblog #1: Fishing in Bemidji, MN

Some important stuff has happened in the last few months or so that I thought I should comment on, so I'm going to take some time and cover my blogging backlog a bit in the next few days, time and memory permitting.

My first makeup entry has to be about my trip home to Bemidji, MN.  About a month ago, Liz (G.F.) and I flew up to the great white North for a week long trip.

The nice thing about summer in the great white north is that it's actually not white at all.  It is in fact green as can be, with blue lakes and bluer skies.

And bugs.

But overall, a paradise to be sure.  We were fortunate to have great fishing weather and took advantage of it on two occasions (both within the bounds of Liz and my 24 hour licenses).

The first trip out proved to be a bit of a debacle, as we ended up spending an hour trying to start the boat motor to no avail. Much to my father's dismay and embarassment, we were eventually forced to row out a short bit from the landing in an attempt to salvage the evening. In spite of our makeshift fishing location, however, I managed to catch a rather large walleye. Dad caught another, though smaller, walleye as well. We ate both the following night.

We went out to the same lake the second evening with a newly serviced motor (oily gas was the culprit) and were able to travel out to what has always been a decent spot. There, Liz hooked what we assume must have been a northern pike, because it snapped her line clean up at the reel after an intense fight. Later, my dad caught a rather large northern after a similar battle, further cementing our theory. The northern was released, as he was too big to be pickled well and would be of more use to the lake's ecosystem than he would be to us. (Big predators prevent the lake from being choked out by tiny, inedible fish.) There were many bullheads caught on both outings as well, but those were thrown back as they taste like dirt, bottom feeders that they are.

Fishing was never a great interest of mine as a kid growing up in Minnesota. Though the grubbiness of the activity never bothered me (unlike Liz, who refused to touch a leech to bate her hook.) I would usually get bored almost immediately upon settling into the quietude of the rural evening.

However, and I'm not sure when it happened, but somewhere in the six years since I've moved to Los Angeles, I have grown to love fishing. I love the relaxation, the rural air, the sound and smell of nature. I love the idle conversation with my dad, which often climbs into higher philosophical subjects, as our conversations always have. I love that all of this is interspersed with the hopeful promise of the catch, the momentary thrill of a fish pulling down your bobber, the strategy of setting the hook, and the eventual battle against an alien, and most primitive of creatures.

It is a dialectic of the crude and the beautiful, of the physical and introspective. And, though I still for the life of me can't remember how to tie a hook no matter how many times I'm taught, I look forward to my annual fishing excursions almost immediately upon returning to LA every year.

Next in the Backblog: A little piece of heaven...