Apocalypse Now: When Even the Sheepshead Won't Bite

     I'm ready. And I expect you are too-- ready to feel a warm breeze on your face and to feel line slip through your fingers as a fish takes the bait.

     The fishing opener might not be as big of a deal as opening day of gun-deer season-- because fishing season lasts so much longer-- but it's close.

     Part of the reason it's so exciting is that we're enduring another long winter. Of course, I'm not referring to first-ice, fresh-snow-on-the-evergreens winter, with deer season just concluded and venison in the freezer. I mean the mid-February kind of winter, where you sit on the ice all day for a wind-flag on the tip-ups and a perch you could read a newspaper through. It's leave-for-work-in-the-dark and come-home-in-the-dark winter-- the kind where you kick at the frozen slush clods clinging to your vehicle and break a toe, thus ruining the weekend's planned rabbit hunt.

     I get through winters like a lot of outdoorsmen-- with a little ice-fishing and a little rabbit hunting. And, of course, I watch fishing shows on television. You know the kind-- walleyes the size of spaniels are the norm on every cast, motors never conk out, and nobody ever botches a net job with the fish of a lifetime on a buddy's line and then has to endure the long drive home with that fact sitting cold between them like a marital infidelity.

     When I tire-- usually quickly-- of watching fishing shows, I pull out my fishing journals. I've kept them since I was a kid. It's fun to relive memories, whether of ancient times or the season just past.

     A highlight of last season was a particular trip to Port Washington, a location my wife, Lori, calls my "Happy Place." On the day in question, I caught a huge brown trout shortly after arriving-- a great start to the day.

     Things got worse in a hurry, though, when Lori arrived and I had to explain that I'd blown the week's budget on a $54 electronic scale and a visit to the taxidermist. Happy Place, indeed.

     Older journal entries take me farther back, to Menasha, where I grew up a few blocks from Lake Winnebago. I was obsessed with fish then, same as now, and spent every available moment on the water.

     Looking back, it was a kind of paradise. Apologies to my hometown-- it was a wonderful place to grow up, and I'm sure it still is-- but I believe that's the first time anyone has ever used the words "Menasha" and "paradise" in the same paragraph.

     It was impossible to get skunked, or at least it seems that way to me now. If the walleyes wouldn't cooperate, then the smallmouths would. If the bronzebacks didn't bite, there were always white bass. If the white bass weren't willing, there was always the lowly sheepshead. If the sheepshead weren't biting, though, then you had best get your spiritual affairs in order, because that is the first sign of the impending apocalypse.

     Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to a trip I made to Lake Winnebago last summer.

     "Should be a sure thing," I told my co-workers. "After all, I grew up there, and even if conditions are a little tough, well, I am an extremely talented fisherman."

     I didn't actually say the last part, but I certainly felt it. Hey, I thought. I'll ask my dad if he wants to go. Ya know, it would be kind of a nice thing to take the old man out, fill his freezer with walleye fillets, and just generally repay him in some small way for being such a great father over the years. On top of being an extremely talented fisherman, I'm also a genuinely giving soul.

     The night before our trip, I packed an arsenal of equipment into my boat. I neglected nothing. Heck, I even replaced a trailer tire that was looking worn. In addition to being an extremely talented fisherman and a genuinely giving soul, I'm also exceptionally well-organized.

     I hit the road under a sky filled with bright, crisp stars, or at least stars which were bright and crisp once I left Madison and they were no longer so tightly regulated.

     I enjoyed the time to myself. I sipped coffee to the hum of the radials, and listened to the o-dark-thirty radio themes of spiritual salvation and home hairball remedies.

     In Fond du Lac, the sky began to split with lightning, and as I drove through the little towns of Pipe, Calumetville and Quinney, I looked to the west and saw dawn breaking over a lake pounding with waves.

     O.K., I thought to myself, this is a little tough. I downgraded my assessment of the day's possibilities to maybe four walleyes apiece instead of the full bag.

     Dad looked skeptical at the door when I rang the bell, with the Weather Channel screen sprawling like a green amoeba behind him, but we headed to the launch once the sirens abated and the last barnyard animal had cleared the roof.

     In the water at last, I pulled the starter cord on my 9.9 outboard and it roared (well, popped) to life-- and promptly quit.

     You know that little hose at the back of an outboard that squirts the water out after it has cooled the engine? Apparently it's crucial that the hose be outside of the motor, and not inside of it.

     My father, who built a houseboat in our backyard in his early 30's, quickly figured that one out. His son, who at almost 40 is reasonably adept with a mechanical pencil, did not.

     As we cleared the High Cliff harbor and headed south toward Stockbridge, the wind had abated somewhat. However, it was at this point that I admitted to myself that while I was familiar with the west side of the lake-- or, more specifically, with a tiny section adjacent to where I grew up-- I didn't know a darned thing about the east shore.

     "All right," I said to the fishing deities. "I'll make you a deal. Two walleyes apiece. They don't have to be huge, you understand. Then, maybe throw in a jumbo perch and an undersized bass and we'll call it a day."

     We trolled and we jigged. We casted and we drifted, until at last, the extremely talented fisherman and his father called it quits and headed back to shore.

     Final score?

     Me?

     Do I have to come right out and say it?

     Dad?

     One sheepshead.

     Apocalypse narrowly averted, and another notch in the belt of Boy Genius.