JIE HAN
Gargoyle assistant editor
Posted Saturday, May 3, 2008

IT WAS 6 O'CLOCK on a beautiful Saturday morning. The sun was out and shining brightly. Smells of frying eggs floated around the house. A beautiful, crisp day.

And it was freezing.

Even though I had been asleep for the past 10 hours, or around 1.4 school night's worth, I still didn't want to get up at the crack of dawn. After all, I still had a lot of sleep to make up.

But the first fishing trip of the year was calling. I mean, I doubt even you — yes you, sleep-deprived you — could resist a siren's beckonings toward the rocks.

So, still half asleep and wondering what was going on, I somehow managed to put on my clothes, brush my teeth, and eat a fried egg. Halfway through breakfast, I realized how cold it was. And unfortunately, I couldn't wear a T-shirt and shorts on the trip, unless I wanted to turn into a nice, hard, human-shaped popsicle.

By the time 6:30 arrived, we were on the road with a full carload of fishing supplies, cooler, iPod, and food.

By the time 7 o'clock arrived, we were still on the road.

By the time 8 o'clock arrived, we were disappointed with how low the water level was in Lake Shelbyville. Well, mostly my dad, the expert on these sort of things.

We had gone to the bait shop across the fishing area, where a stream flowed from the lake and where my dad had checked the water levels. Though the shop was closed when we arrived (who in their right minds would be up before noon on Saturday???), it opened a couple minutes later when the shop owner, who was frying bacon in her shop, spotted us peeking in the shop's window.

We got two dozen minnows and a dozen worms, after negotiating through the tangle of an overexcited dog, a very shy and defensive black kitten, and various other observant cats whom we didn't care to pet.

For the next eight or so hours, our metabolisms started slowing down to winter hibernation mode. However, unlike bears or my mom or other smart intelligent animals, we didn't have a shelter. Unless you count the fact that the lake/fishing spot was in a big ol' hole walled in by cement and rocks.

Oh, and just some advice for people going to fish out in 50 degree or so weather — it's not a good idea to dip your hands in cold water repeatedly when it's blowing cold wind. I still can't feel my fingertips all too well.

Also, remember to smother yourself with sunblock, even if the day is cloudy and the sun is out for only half an hour and the wind blows in cold wind and the temperature seems about freezing. Because your exposed skin will turn a nice lobster red, like my dad's and mine. Or maybe it's just me — same thing happened to me last year, but it was slightly above freezing and it actually rained for a bit. I guess I didn't develop any sunburn resistance at all.

In the end, it was all worth it. My brother caught the most, just letting his line sit until a fish tugged on it. I caught a few smaller fish, when I wasn't busy rearranging rocks to change the directions of a mini-waterfall or taking and deleting images from my digital camera (I forgot to put my 2GB SD disk back into it, so I could only have 12 images in the camera's internal memory).

My dad also caught a bunch, including the one-and-a-half-foot-long walleye, the largest of the day. We each almost caught a muskellunge, aka muskies, but our fishing lines weren't strong enough to get them. They were perhaps three feet each, but we couldn't have kept them anyway — Illinois law says that they must be four feet or longer to keep. We also snared four walleyes, but only two of them were over the 14-inch mark.

Other than those, our cooler had some bass, two huge carps, a couple of bluegill, and lots of
perch. It was a pretty fun, exciting day for all of us.

Well, when the fish were biting at least.