If you're like me, you like to share your fish photos with non-fishing friends and family, and if your friends and family are like mine, they kindly look and say things like, "Oh, that's a big one!"
However, it's a one-and-done comment. They're curiously incurious about how, where, and when I caught it. And whereas I appreciate their brief, game efforts to get excited about my gamefish, I know that a flat photo of a still fish in a lip, or grip, or on a bump board doesn't convey what really happened.
It’s different for other anglers. Show me your fish photos and I can extrapolate:
Long before your camera clicked, I can hear your mind ticking through the possible places to cast.
I can follow the arcing beauty of your cast line.
I can feel your anticipation as your lure alights or plunks into the water.
I can feel that anticipation grow as you twitched your lure.
Then I can feel the tap of a bass sampling your lure, or I can hear your bass busting through weeds to crush your frog.
I can see you straining to turn that bass before it reaches a tree or lily pads.
I can feel your boat pivoting under you as the bass's power turns it.
I can hear you gasp and your partner holler, “It’s big!” as your bass erupts from the water, a perfect crescent of power and fury, its head tripled in size by its flared gill plates.
I can hold my breath as I see you fumbling for your net while still maintaining tension on your fish.
Sadly, our friends and family can't see, hear, and feel all that from a photo, which is why we anglers form our own family, related not by blood, but by passion. As sophisticated as photography has become, with digital, computerized cameras automatically adjusting to our photographic and situational shortcomings —such as moving the camera while pressing the shutter button or shooting in low light —cameras still can't capture what we experience on boats and on riverbanks.
To better capture the moment, I think we have to go back 75 years… or find a box of 75-year-old Field & Stream magazines from the 1950s. The artists who painted those covers could do what no modern camera would do; They positioned us inches away from a leaping largemouth as it tried to throw a lure. Those artists even took us underwater where we could see a smallie surveying a bait. And they painted beyond the bass and bait, showing us the backdrop to our bass brawls, a sky streaked with pastel light or a Sun-dappled shoreline.
However, it doesn't take a collection of old fishing magazines to know the complete picture. All anglers have a box of even more vivid images in their memories, for no matter how skilled those painters were, bass fishing isn't just one sense or one moment. It's a sensory feast.
When I drive to my pond, bass fishing isn't just about catching bass. It's easing down my long driveway, my car's tires crunching the gravel. It's walking through the woods with my water shoes, making my feet feel like a cat's paws. It's walking on my boardwalk with the reeds tickling my calves and easing into my rocking canoe. It's reaching the ghostly pond, all shadow and fog, and trying to discern where the weeds end. It's hearing the loons sing and owls hoot and even distant cattle lowing. And this is all before my first cast.
I wish there were a machine so sophisticated that I could capture the scent of drying leaves and place that into a fish photo, as well as the rustle of reeds when the wind stirs or the singing of spring's peepers, but a photo is a thin thing, literally and figuratively. If a photo were a slice of cheese, it would be translucent. If you want to really taste…and savor…the big block of cheese, you have to step onto the bank or into the boat. You have to feel the bass's power as it surges; you have to ride the waves across a gray lake.
If the water doesn’t call to you, you’ll have to make do with our gossamer-thin photos, but to be frank, they’re a nearly flavorless wafer compared to the banquet that lies behind them. Want to sample the sensory feast? Well, come along; Let’s go fishing!
