Child-like outlook keeps fishing adventures fresh

I remember when I was 18, Len Juric and I spent a night fishing and sleeping in a small boat on Lake Zurich. I think we got more sleep than fish, but we didn't want to miss a minute of time on the water.

I also remember a week on Alaska's Rocky River when every day I would awaken at 4 a.m. and sit on the front porch of the log cabin staring out into the darkness. My fly rod sat behind me in the pegged rack ready to go again for another great day of silver salmon fishing. I was adult acting like an eager 12-year-old.

When my father would take me to the Peshtigo River for a walleye and smallmouth jaunt, I would sit in the boat long after he and my mother went to bed. I had to hear the loons and other creatures of the night serenade us visitors.

It was one of my better bonefish days on a Florida Keys flat. I had caught and released over a dozen muscular bonefish following almost a full day of scanning the shallow water and making cast after cast to those skittish critters. I didn't want to call it a day and head back to the motel, because who knew if tomorrow would ever come my way?

I've never pretended to be anything more than an average angler obsessed with spending as much of my free time as possible on and in the water.

I have become seriously addicted to wading in both salt and fresh water. One friend chides me for investing so much of my time using a fly rod. I tried explaining to him that after 50 years, I have finally found my niche and want to make sure I perfected this segment of fishing.

The annual trips to the sub-Arctic reaches of northern Canada afforded me late-night pike fishing. With an orange sun still giving off its brilliance at midnight, coupled with outlined groupings of passing ducks, what could be more elegant than casting a jumbo surface lure to a huge clump of cabbage weeds and watching a denizen of the deep rise to the challenge?

Knowing full well that sun would only sacrifice a small portion of its light, even at 2 a.m., I gently held on to those moments because I was just a casual visitor, an interloper to the locals, and had to store those memories to last me for quite a while.

“Lucky me,” people would say to my face when they expressed envy that I have traveled the continent — and world, for that matter.

But the closer-to-home memories have an even stronger sense of poignancy.

There was that fortuitous moment, quietly standing on a rocky shoreline with fly rod in hand as a large cow moose and calf sought to grab a drink of cool lake water and sample some lily pads for a bedtime snack.

And when I sat on a rock outcropping at my campsite in the Sylvania Wilderness Area just over the Wisconsin-Michigan border watching the shooting stars appear just after the sun went down at 11:30 in the evening, I knew I had the best front row seat.

At one point on a brief trip to Minnesota's famous Trout Run not far from Rochester, I took time out from stalking brown trout and sat on the bank to marvel at the way the sunlight filtered through the trees and danced on the hills.

All of these little skirmishes, love affairs with the elements, have contributed to my obsession. I know the clock is ticking, and because of that I continue to fill each adventure with drive and energy, be it a local run to the Chain, or to some exotic trout stream where very few go.

Ÿ Contact Mike Jackson at angler88@comcast.net, and catch his radio show 6-7 a.m. Sundays on WSBC 1240-AM.