116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
The last cast on 2024
Wild Side column: Fishing pole goes into storage after one last outing
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Mission accomplished, barely.
On Thanksgiving eve, with a polar plunge looming over the Midwest, I figured that afternoon would be my last chance to catch an open water fish before the river froze.
With the water in the Wapsipinicon registering 36 degrees — 2 degrees cooler than the air — and knowing I would have to cross it three times to reach my destination, I pulled on my least leaky chest waders, intent upon catching one last fish to close the open water season.
How hard could that be for an angler who never gets skunked, I asked myself.
The first two crossings, through knee-deep water, went smoothly. The third, though, water that came within 2 inches of overtopping my waders almost defeated the mission before I’d made a cast.
Rather than turn back, however, I kept slide-stepping downstream, feeling for the bottom with my lead foot, until I could safely and dryly complete the crossing.
The late November milieu, reminiscent of a pre-Kodachrome photograph, underscored the dark, dim, dwindling future of open water: white sandbars between barren black trees and charcoal water; black and white eagles and gray herons against a milky sky; oak leaves on the ground and bounding deer lending sepia tones.
My mental algorithm, sifting 60 years of personally collected data, predicted my best chance to catch a fish on a cold late November day would be in a deep nearly current-free pool commonly referred to as an over-wintering hole. Forty fruitless retrieves of three different barely moving lures cast doubt upon the utility of my algorithm.
Oh for 40 convinced me of the futility of more repetitions. I retraced my steps to the pickup, reviewed the tough conditions and almost resigned myself to a fishless last outing for the open water season.
Almost but not quite. Revived by the comfort of a warm pickup, I decided to try one more overwintering hole.
At the next spot I stood on a spit of sand and fan casted to the deepest water in the middle of the river. After the plastic-minnow-tipped tungsten jig settled to the bottom I slowly dragged it across the sand just fast enough to activate the paddle tail, providing ample opportunity for a fish — any fish, come on, fish — to eat it.
On almost every outing there comes a point where you’ve caught enough, you can’t catch any or it’s getting dark, and your internal voice says five more casts, three more casts, one more cast and I’m done.
Then, with the words “last cast” passing silently between my ears, in a gesture of quitting, I neglected to retrieve the jig after it settled to the bottom. Half a minute later, when I raised my rod tip to start the retrieve, my 3/32-ounce jig felt much heavier, and I set the hook.
The thrashing smallmouth bass, caught three hours before the temperature fell below freezing and stayed there for six days, was indeed my last fish of the 2024 open water season.
Three hours, miles of hiking and wading, 75 excruciatingly slow retrieves and one bite, so feeble I didn’t even feel it.
If you like to fish and hate quitting as much as I do, you may make a dozen or more “last casts.”
You can equivocate on the last cast but not on the last bite. In concert with the weather, the fish will decide when the fishing’s over.
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