by Paul H. Thompson

Created on: July 15, 2008   Last Updated: July 17, 2008

Awakening alone late Easter morning, I arise full of purpose. My family is gone, out of town visiting relatives. All is silencethe house, the world itself it seemsbroken now and then only by church bells beckoning the faithful. I am not among them.

Tomorrow is Tax Day. I've put it off the drudgery of filing my return long enough and now the pressure's on. When the coffee kicks in, I break out the calculator, dive into the pile of schedules and start crunching numbers. Here I am, wholly rooted in the secular on this highest of Christian holy days. Rendering unto Caesar. The work goes wellto my benefit evenand by mid afternoon I've inked the final document. Relief, release, a job well done. Time to go fishing to shake off the tedium and gloom.

The sky is uniformly gray. Threatening rain, maybe. Maybe just dull and brooding. I'll risk it. I drive to a spot under a Meramec River bridge, following rumors of a white bass run. The bank is trashy, the water fast and chocolate. Not too promising. Besides, I'm not up for waving around a fly rod and making myself a spectacle in front of the three sullen river rats there with their poles stuck in the mud. I hit the highway again heading west. Cars moving east have headlights on, an ill omen.

When I reach the next stopa tiny tributary some miles upstream that I'm told holds good numbers of black bass and scads of bluegilla darkened eye has formed directly above me in the stolid gray ceiling of the world. As I ease down the steep bank, the first raindrops hit me. I get off one cast into a shallow pool and the storm rips loose, the bridge giving meager shelter against the slanting blasts of rain and wind. I drive home in the downpour, soaked. Maybe I won't get my Easter bass.

A hot shower and dry clothes work wonders on a man. And so with the storm passed and daylight still strong, I head out again. I'll try the newly stocked smallmouth lake opened this year at the wildlife area. Conservation agents dug out the lake to add depth, added large chunks of rock to improve the habitat for the smallmouth bass and have kept the place closed to fishing until this spring to give it a chance to flourish. The fish thrives better in free-flowing Ozark streams, but this experiment was worth a shot. The spirit of science, the fisheries biologists hope, will triumph over nature's mysteries.

I arrive with the sun still an index finger high in the sky. It throws a glare on the water, the light breeze breaking the surface with angles like cut glass.

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>