“No Fish Friday” or

“Buddhism and Fishing Don’t Mix”

By J. Mathis © 2018

Holding the tip of my fishing rod low, I reeled the Texas-rigged Zoom watermelon seed lizard as slowly as I could through the submarine vegetation, hoping to escape detection by the Micropterus salmoides, the largemouth bass, plying the shallows of the big lake at Hickory Creek Ranch. Suddenly, the line pinged as if struck by a humid hammer, and then it gradually tightened.

“No, no,” I whispered. “Let it go, stupid fish, if you know what’s good for you.”

Trying to warn the piscine predator of the danger, I gently drew the rod back until the line was firm, and plucked the copolymer strand with two fingers, much like a black-and-yellow argiope spider strumming her giant web to locate the wounded cricket that some sadistic eight-year-old had tossed on it.

“Let it go, Gertrude.”

I wiggled the rod tip, hoping the bass would detect the unnatural movements of the unnatural vinyl salamander and spit it. Instead, the line jerked hard and pulled tight against the reel’s drag, and I knew the fish had run hard and buried the hook point in its jaw.

One of my fishing partners, Rob, was close by and noticed the action. “Got another one?”

“Uh, yeah,” I squeaked. The fish made a series of back and forth runs like a terrier chasing a ping-pong ball, then tired and came in with all the resistance of a microfiber washcloth.

I said to Rob, hoping he was busy with his own rig, “I think this one’s too big to keep.”

He wasn’t preoccupied enough. “Let’s measure.”

I dragged the shiny football-shaped fish, likely a small breeding male, through the heavy shoreline weeds, and lifted him by his thorny lip, knowing he’d never make the 14-inch length that would save him from the filet knife. I thought about accidently dropping and stomping him to squeeze out a little extra length, but he wouldn’t have survived that any better than the knife.

I tugged the 3/0 Gamakatsu EWG worm hook from his mouth cartilage and handed him to Rob. My new acquaintance slapped the flopping finny fellow on a gold-painted aluminum measuring stick and gazed at it with one eye closed.

“Nope. Thirteen and a half.” He tossed the fish into the big white painter’s bucket. “I think that’s six culls for you.”

More bad karma. I could see my life counter rolling over into the negative like the numbers on a gasoline pump metering in $2.75 86-octane, spinning well into four figures and counting …

#

My anxiety all started with an innocent adult educational exercise, the Great Courses, classes taught by college professors on a wide variety of subjects; history, cooking, music – and religions. I’d always had a curiosity about world religions, particularly Buddhism, which I knew little to nothing about. Most of my exposure was gleaned from long-forgotten TV documentaries, and symbolized by the gold-painted statues of the chubby guy with the bald head and naked belly, posed in the Lotus meditation position at the entrance to nearly every all-you-can-eat  Chinese restaurant in the U.S.A.

Buddhism. Yeah. Peace, love and understanding.  And karma. And reincarnation.

So while driving from Houston to Crockett, I had the CD for this Buddhism class in, and the Ph.D professor who taught the class related that one of the beliefs was that we might come back in another life based on our karma, essentially the good and not-so-good things we’d done in previous lives.

You’re starting to see where I’m going with this, right?

#

So while my partners Ron, John, and Rob were pounding the ponds, trying to hit the magic numbers of 100 bass caught and 25 fish less than 14-inches in length culled (i.e. slaughtered for dinner), I started to feel a little funny about the whole thing. What if there was something to this reincarnation thing? Was my life being measured by how many of nature’s creatures I was taking to their unnatural end? Was it worth taking a chance?

So I started “adjusting” my technique. I swapped my favorite Spro “Cell Mate”-colored Little John crankbait for the ugliest, dumbest, least-fish-catching lure in my tackle bag, a forty-year-old Cotton Cordell Big O that I’d sanded paper thin and painted hot pink on the sides and peanut butter tan on top, and then sprinkled with Mardi Gras colored glitter. The thing was so light, I couldn’t throw it twenty feet downwind with a sunfish spinning rig on 4-pound test line. Take that, karma.

Ron was standing next to me on the bank, watching me replacing my proven “crappie killer and bass buster” lure for the chubby monstrosity that resembled a seventy-year-old Wayne Newton if he’d drank too many mai-tais and passed out in the noonday sun at the Golden Nugget pool.

Ron raised his eyebrows. “What the hell is that?”

I winked.  “An old favorite. Gar-own-teeeeed.”

The lure hit the water like that same ping-pong ball I mentioned earlier, then rolled over slowly in a placid death spiral just below the surface, capable of enticing not even a stupid adolescent bass to strike.  My hyperventilating eased. My karma was safe.

On the third cast, with the sound of a cast iron sink dropped from 40,000 feet into the pond, and I mean a real sink from the 50’s and not one of these modern ones pressed as thin as that same metaphorical ping-pong orb, something big and dark and angry sucked my spiral-spinning Wayne Newton under. The line pulled tight and fight was on.

And what a fight! She boiled and breached and power-dove, and my fearful panic fell away in the adrenaline rush. This little sister was way over the size limit, too large to cull for dinner. She was a pure catch-and-release lady. And how much bad karma could I generate from merely annoying an expectant sunfish, albeit one that would measure 21 inches and 5.7 pounds. Piscine anger I could handle. Fish blood and guts, not so much. I mean I had tried my best to wave her and her friends and family off. Once I dragged her in, I was going to suggest she see her optometrist. Seriously.

After an amazing battle, she gave up and I leveraged her from the heavy weeds and dragged her to the bank. John, who’d trotted around the beautiful green stock pond and wedding photo site to help if needed, pointed at her.

“Look! You caught TWO fish!”

I felt the hot sun burn my tongue as my mouth fell open. The big breeder female was jaw-locked on the treble hook on ol’ Wayne’s backside. But on the hook attached to his Buddha belly hung a second bass, this one all of 10-3/4 inches long. If you fileted about a dozen fish that size, they might make a decent sandwich at Captain Jacque’s Seafood Emporium in Breaux Bridge.

I whined, “That one’s really small. Can’t we just toss it back in?”

“No, the club wants at least a few hundred more culls out of here. This lake wasn’t managed for years.”

I swallowed hard, seeing the negative karma meter rolling again. “OK,” I squeaked.

So you can guess how the rest of the day went. I tied on a hideous purple, hairy-faced double-spin hornet that would scare off a rabid barracuda, and added three more 12-inch fish to the cull bucket. I clipped on a two-ounce “Mesmerizer” jig, which looked like a Lego version of a concrete brickbat, cast it halfway across the lake, and let it sink to the deepest part of the channel, a Bends-inducing 12-feet of murky green water, and I let it lie. I’d scarcely laid the rod down and sidled up to my SUV to relieve myself of the two cokes and an Icy-White Powerade, when the custom seven-foot Shakira graphite stick pivoted rod tip to lake and pulsed like a high-school band director’s wand counting out the beat to the dreaded crowd favorite “Perfidia.”

“Drag the whole thing in!” I thought, as I hurriedly zipped up, bladder still urgent, narrowly avoiding an unfortunate accident of closure that no one would ever have heard about later.  But the rod lay where it was, the ineffectual pulsing clearly indicative of a bass of modest girth and questionable dining habits.

The karma numbers rolled on.

I snagged them on a 24-inch banana yellow rubber snake. I hammered them on a bright crimson cabbage-head squid lure that looked like something Lady Gaga might wear to the Oscar’s red carpet, in exactly the same color and size, if she added a couple strips of cherry-red duct tape. I pierced a half-eaten Gala apple on a 8/0 treble catfish hook, and tossed the fruit into the breeze-tussled ripples. Doomed bass circled the mottled-pink floating dome like makos around a sun-bloated humpback. The irony of me catching when I didn’t want to was like a hormone-addled 20-year-old who’d just taken his pre-seminary vow of chastity and then getting stranded at a Cougar convention.

I could do no wrong. And the karma counter rolled on.

Later, I sat on the edge of the dock, afraid to dangle my feet too close to the water, watching the others cleaning fish. They tossed the little triangle fish heads and the sloppy guts into the lake, delighting hordes of turtles hovering just below the surface and giggling in their bubbly turtle-talk. It’s an ill wind that blows no reptile no good, they say.

After the cleaning was through, Ron gave me the final results: 101 bass caught; 32 culled.  “Looks like you’re going to get the discount for reaching the cull target.”

“Yeah,” I said, my mind seeking spiritual consolation. Nirvana was far, far away, it seemed. I envisioned Buddha’s golden smiling face where he sat in the doorway of the Beautiful Jasmine Buffet, among the plastic models of moo goo gai pan, shrimp with lobster sauce, and Szechuan beef.

But it’s all good really. Life goes on.  And on.  And on, maybe. But if this reincarnation thing is really a thing, I’m pretty sure I’m coming back as a crawfish-flavored Whopper Plopper. Move over, Newton.