Lord, grant us some cooler weather

Kim caught a Flathead catfish and Kay netting the fish
photo courtesy Dave Richey Outdoors ©2012

The idea of going fishing today was just an idea. It quickly faded as the temperature crawled steadily upward from 85 degrees to top out in the mid-90s.

The heat index in Traverse City was 105 degrees, and I had a doctor's appointment. There we were -- Kay and I -- in a car when the air conditioning decided it wasn't going to push out any more cool air. At best, it just kept the warm air circulating around.

Kay and I were in thick stop-and-go for a minor accident meant less circulating air, and the 15-minute ride to the sawbones took a half hour. I quit thinking about fishing in 100-degree temperatures.

Me and high temperature levels have never gotten along well

It hurt my head to think about being outside, on the water, fighting the heat, the broiling sun, the reflected sunshine off the water, and gave it up as a lost cause. Memories of countless days like that came to mind, and most of them were in the late 1960s and through the 1970s when, as a free-lance outdoor writer, it was write and sell stories or starve. There was no choice one summer. We had to tough it out.

That summer, Kay, my daughter Kim and I traveled all summer hoping to catch fish. We were all over Canada, northern Michigan and Wisconsin, and throughout the mid-south. Everywhere we went that summer the temperatures were in the 90s or higher, and fishing was horrible.

We spent a great deal of time on the water from before dawn until 9 a.m., and from 7 p.m. until dark, and it was still sweltering. I remember a northern pike trip to Quebec's northern area, set up shop behind one of their new hydroelectric dams and fished the flooded timber. We barely caught enough fish to eat, and for those of you who read the outdoor magazines, no one is interested in hammer-handle pike stories.

We fished for jumbo walleyes in some of the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) lakes in Tennessee where 10-pound walleyes were reasonably common. We never saw one, nor did we catch a walleye. The unbearable heat took the fish deep, slowed their metabolism, and it was another busted trip.

There was a big-bass bite going on in a Georgia lake for a bit in the spring, but by the time we got there, no bucket-mouth bass had been caught in two weeks. The weather hovered near 100 degrees, and then at mid-day, it warmed up.

I was as brown as mahogany, and we dipped our hats and shirts in the water and put them on again. Thirty minutes later we were dipping them again. We'd start the day with two 10-pound blocks of ice in our cooler to keep beverages cold.

The old-fashioned cooler gave up its ghost in short order

Forget it. We had melted water within three hours. Coleman had yet to invent their famous cooler that keeps things cold for nearly a week at a time, regardless of the outside temperature.

We went to North Dakota to fish their reservoirs, and did catch a few early-morning sauger and walleyes, but the fish were small. The bigger photo fish were conspicuous by their absence. Another story idea shot down.

We came home, fished for Lake Michigan salmon, and early morning and last-light seemed to be the only productive times. We did manage enough big kings for a feature story, but all of the other feature stories for Outdoor Life, Field & Stream and Sports Afield were a complete bust.

Strange thing, this free-lance outdoor writing business. Get the story and great photos, and everyone wants to buy stuff. If you can't catch cold in the heat, and the photos are of small fish, no one is interested. It turned out to be absolutely the worst summer of my writing career. It was a major skunk job for that summer. This year is much the same.

Fishing skunks are never fun but broiling heat makes them worse

Were there some hot tips? Everything was hot, but the tips were only lukewarm. Fish early, fish late, fish when the sky was overcast, put in the time, sweat a lot, and go home empty-handed. Get up early the next morning and try it again.

Fishing, normally a contemplative sport, became very boring that summer. The scarcity of willing biters, and constant battering of a hot sun on our bodies, slowly took its toll.

We finally cancelled some of our summer trips, and doubled-up on the fall trips in hopes of recovering some lost income. It worked, up to a point, but one thing about a broiling hot sun, you can never make up everything you've lost.

We well remember that summer when we boiled in our own juices. I mean, really, how could we ever forget such a pitiful summer? Such trips, hopefully, are a once-in-a-lifetime affair. But, if things don’t change soon, this could be another scorcher, and as I grow older, my appetite for heat vanishes.

I wouldn’t mind a foot of snow about now.

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors