Today was, to sum up in one single word, brutal. The plan was to wake at 5am and set off for a morning fishing trip. At 5am, after only 3 hours of sleep, I awoke to find a driving rain, temps in the low 40s, and 20mph winds outside my window. Seriously disappointed, I staggered down to Kazu’s room and left him a note on his white board (I was supposed to wake him…), then went upstairs and collapsed back into bed. The reason for our early departure was that we both had to be back for a dorm-wide dodgeball tournament at 1.

Six hours later I rolled out of bed and settled into my computer chair to go through the usual morning routine of email and checking the news. Not five minutes later Kazu shows up at my door, telling me that dodgeball was canceled because of the rain, and suggesting we go now. I hadn’t even bothered to look out my window when I got up–it had become a beautiful day! So after some hastily-made plans we agreed to book it and hit the road in 15 minutes.

Kazu went to retrieve his car and I gathered our tackle and made my way out to the bus-stop where I was to meet him. Naturally, once I’ve left the shelter of the AP House, the weather shifts for the worse. The wind picked up, cutting away at my pathetic jeans & tshirt, and then as a final insult, it began to rain. Kazu pulled up as I was hiding under an awning, and I dumped the gear in his car and then headed back to my room for my trusty custom-made fleece(thanks grandma!), my last and best resort in inclement weather.

Kazu and I have a good system worked out with regards to our fishing trips: I buy a meal for the both of us, and he provides the transportation and gasoline. If his objective is a lake farther away than normal, before we leave he takes me to a restaurant that’s more expensive… In other words, we keep it even!

Not 5 minutes later on the way to the restaurant, the sun reappears and seems here to stay. As we settled into a delicious traditional Japanese lunch(I had rice, egg pudding, fried pork, miso soup, etc…), the weather only got better and we exalted in our good fortune. We were headed back to the large impoundment we fished last time, and despite it being a Saturday, we hoped that the horrible early-morning weather had driven away the crowds we ran into last time. As such, the meal, while delicious, could not be eaten quick enough, so excited were we to get going…

The day sounds slightly less than brutal so far doesn’t it? Had we known what was ahead we might have quit there…

Once back in the car we headed off into the hills to reach the impoundment, and drove straight into a nice black storm cloud. In the direction of the impoundment we could see a scrap of sunlight, but the closer we got the harder it rained! The next 20 minutes in the car were passed with a spirited argument about the behavior of bass during a rainstorm, whether they want to eat or not, what lures would be best to use, etc., all of which was occasionally interjected by increasingly profane Japanese exclamations directed at the deteriorating weather conditions. Finally we reached the parking lot, readied our tackle, and strolled merrily down to the lake despite a soft drizzle on our backs.

I had just enough time to capture the moment in reasonable comfort before all hell broke loose. It was in the mid 40s when we got there, and not 10 minutes after we arrived the wind and the rain came, came hard, and came to stay. What had simply been an unseasonably cold day, became an exercise in sadomasochism. For the four and a half hours we fished–it rained for four of them, and a bitterly cold driving rain at that.

Fishing is not a high-energy activity, mind you. With all the standing involved, if you don’t have adequate clothing, you’ve got little opportunity to warm up by moving around. Furthermore, the scrambling along the banks that we did have to do was made significantly more treacherous by the continual rain, as the rocks became slick and the clay became liquified. I can honestly say I’ve never been so voluntarily miserable in my entire life.

Having no gloves, my hands went numb almost immediately, making a simple task like threading a plastic worm on a hook take five minutes of frustration instead of five seconds of efficiency. The painful stiffness of my fingers and their unwillingness to perform the intricate tasks commanded of them brought back vivid childhood memories of trying to load shotguns shells into my .20 gauge in freezing temperatures inside a Louisiana duckblind with my father.

Occasionally though, our persistence was rewarded with brief moments of intense beauty. In a scene that would make the Buddha proud, after suffering through two hours of 40 degree rain, we were momentarily blessed with a stunning double-rainbow.

If you weren’t able to see the second rainbow in that picture, look for it in this one, above and to the right of the main one. You can also clearly see that the rainbow terminates in the middle of the lake, our pot of gold to be sure.

It was nearly three hours after we’d arrived and we hadn’t caught anything but near-hypothermia, when Kazu landed the first bass of the day.

You may remember from this journal, that my initial attempt at withdrawing something scaly from this impoundment had been a complete failure. The sight of Kazu landing a bass, combined with the state of the weather and strong memories of my previous inadequacies, left me less than hopeful that I would catch anything.

This was an important milestone too, for not thirty minutes earlier when the rain briefly turned into snowflakes (I am not kidding in the least), I had decided that there is a fine line between hardcore and just plain stupid, and that today that line would be decided by the number of fish caught. As Kazu had caught one, he officially earned his hardcore badge, and things were looking pretty stupid for me.

Not 4 minutes later, from the same spot, Kazu caught another small bass, making the score 2 to pathetic failure. Faced with embarrassment compounded by brutally miserable weather, I searched deep inside memories of fishing days long since past in search of a solution to my troubles. Amidst the wind, the rain, and the flurries I meditated, and then remembered an axiom so reliable, it should be written in gold as the first law of bass fishing: where there is a dock, there will be fish.

As it so happens, the impoundment in question has but one dock.

Full as it is with pedal-powered story-book watercraft, it is not the most masculine place to be seen wetting a line, but desperate times… The dock itself was fenced-off, so in order to fish from it I had to trespass, and this restored a small fraction of my masculinity. Even so, fishing amongst swans-in-tophats and smiling dragons is still leaning towards ridiculous/humiliating.

And yet, on my first cast, I landed a gorgeous 4.5lb largemouth.

I should mention that I was alone on the dock until this point(the previous picture of Kazu was taken chronologically afterwards), no other people present being humble enough to venture among the happyboats, but the sight of my triumphant catch brought them over quickly. After taking my picture Kazu tossed his worm under another boat and caught this pretty(but smaller) bass as well.

A few minutes later a park employee came by to kick us off the dock, but the damage had been done!

We fished for another 45 minutes or so, once again in a steady, chilly rain. But raindrops alone cannot dampen a man’s spirits, especially if he’s just caught a delicious bass!

All in all, Kazu out-fished me 3 to 1, again, but this time I was able to make a compelling argument for quality over quantity, as the weight of my only bass outweighed his three combined! As we finished, the weather broke and it was nice once again (of course, this always happens when you’re done), and we were treated to a nice sunset as we trudged back to the car, utterly spent.