Fishing

I've always considered fishing to be one of those activities of which I have fond memories from my childhood, neatly fixed in place like a butterfly or beetle collection, with everything neatly pinned down with needles. However, one of the great joys of fatherhood is that you get to revisit all of those collections in the closet of your mind and upend them. And so it was with fishing. Jonah has been pestering me to go for more than a year now, and last Sunday afternoon I finally caved in. We went fishing.

I couldn't have timed it better; we arrived at the lake armed with six worms, the fishing gear left by the previous owners of our house, a son who fervently expected to bag himself a fish, and a father who grew increasingly worried that we actually would catch something as I watched the guy next to us bag three fish in the first 30 minutes or so.

Thankfully, my utter incomprehension of what serves as bait in Japan and the setting sun meant that we didn't end up with any fish. Unfortunately, the disappointment on Jonah's face was enough to stir some guilt in his father that I had pretty much rigged the whole enterprise to fail, and in a moment of weakness I offered to take him again this Sunday and to stay until we caught a fish if he wanted.

So yesterday we went to a real fishing shop where Yuki got the attendant to explain to us what kind of setup we needed for success. It turns out that a sabiki rig (multiple hooks leading off of one line) is necessary, and the recommended bait was "shiro esa" or "white bait."

If you're interested in how to pronounce "esa," the correct pronunciation is contained in this sentence: "Essa freaking bag of maggots!"

Which is what I said when we got to the car and I inspected our purchases more carefully. Yes, I spent 120 yen, or $1.50 in USD on a plastic bag of maggots, packed in sawdust. To top things off, the guy at the store said that "esa" was a little big for the fish we were after, and so he recommended cutting them in half with scissors before baiting them onto the hooks.

So this morning came and after breakfast we headed up to the lake, fishing gear in hand. I quickly realized why the esa was kept in a sealed bag—once you open it, the maggots can crawl out and about, so it becomes important to make sure that the opening you've cut is upright, or you're going to have white worms advancing across your fishing dock.

The second thing I realized is that maggots are not worms—when you cut a worm in half, you end up with two worms (see Superfudge by Judy Blume for a more detailed description). However, when you cut a maggot in half whatever makes up the squirmy squishy bits comes oozing out. And, as the father in the childhood memories of fishing equation now, it's my illustrious responsibility to get the two globs of goo onto the hooks.

By the time four of the five hooks are baited, Jonah's managed to throw about a dozen rocks into the water, although I've successfully kept him from stepping on the bait bag or upending its contents onto the dock, and it's finally time to cast the dubious rig out into the lake and start the waiting part of the morning.

Thankfully the book I brought to read, with my dried maggot-goo hands (there's no sink handy out there) is a borrowed one.

I was pretty impressed. Jonah lasted all of 90 minutes, from 10:30 to noon, with me recasting the line five or six times, before he said he was ready to go to the park. I explained that if we left, we were done with fishing for the day, and after securing his agreement that he was completely done with the affair, happily fishless, I began the process of putting all the gear away. I tossed the half-maggots into the water and got all of the rig packed up, but was left in the end with a plastic bag of 20 to 30-some live maggots, wondering how to go about disposing of them. My solution was to leave them in the empty bucket I had brought in the hopes that I wouldn't be needing to keep any fish in it. I set this an the ground behind the car, noting that some of the more adventurous of the white bait had made their way out of the plastic bag despite my best efforts and were on a quest to find their way out of the bucket. My thought was that if they made their way onto the parking lot pavement, that was all well and good, but I didn't want them swimming around in the back of my car.

Then we were off to the park. Yuki joined us for lunch then she went into town (graciously offering to clean up the fishing gear and take it with her in the car). Later in the afternoon I came home with Jonah. When Yuki returned from her shopping, what did she present me with? An opened plastic bag of maggots in sawdust, with the opening I had cut taped shut. She said it cost money, so she didn't want to throw it away.

Sigh.