spring run

As I headed North on I-75 back toward the airport on Sunday morning, I passed over the Maumee river. I had just sat on the bank of that river the previous evening for an hour or so and watched walleye jump as the sun went down. Quiet, peaceful on the surface, but underneath, teeming with half a million randy walleye in for a long romantic weekend from the business of Lake Erie. As it began to get dark, a single fisherman made his way back to the bank empty-handed, shed his rubber britches, made a call on his cell phone and climbed in his pickup and drove away. Ah, just me and old man Maumee (named by a Miami Indian with a pipe in his mouth or with a decidedly West Virginia accent – just ask me to say “Miami”). I sat and listened to the silence of the lazy river, thought about the windmills, and called Allison to my side via Verizon wireless. We talked and then I sat for a while longer until I was afraid it was too dark to read the street signs back in Bowling Green. Ah, I’ll find my way, I thought. So serene. Quiet whisper.
That wasn’t the view at all Sunday morning as I crossed the river. No less than 300 fishermen standing shoulder to shoulder under the bridge. I see no way they could have not been stepping on toes, tangling lines and jagging their jigs. Probably down there arguing that chartreuse twister tails catch more fish while the next guy swears by yellow. No its pink. Some of them think it really doesn’t matter – any colored twister tail will catch a big walleye. Someone gets untangled long enough to hook one, and everyone switches to that color. No one is absolutely sure about his lucky twister tail then.
Of course, I’m just surmising about the activity beyond the obvious community chaos I witness from a distance. All I see are hundreds of fishermen and no fish.
So I drive on up the freeway fairly certain that real truth is found in a mountain stream with live bait.