The Rain Man

 

I am the Rain Man. Not the one in the movie, but the one who walks about in a soft, spring rain with a fishing rod in his hand. That’s the one. That’s me.

I will lay my twenty-dollar bill up against yours, and bet you that fishing is always better in the right kind of rain. 

The right kind of rain? Yep. That would be the one without wind, or very little of it at the most. Steady rain, not driven by wind. The kind of rain that makes you think that throwing a topwater onto the surface of a rain-dappled, ebony lake at dark is like throwing naked sticks of dynamite into an open campfire. That’s the kind of rain I’m talking about. 

We got that type of rain in this country the night before last; no tornadoes or hail hooked to it. I got out into it right in front of my house, down in the rock rubble of Upper Baker’s Branch. I have over the years caught every available species of fish Lake Keystone has to offer right in front of my house.

Well, now wait a minute: I have not caught a walleye in front of the house. The Branch is not deep enough for walleye, although there’s no doubt one or two have wandered up into it by accident. I never saw them. 

I hit the rocks in front of the house about an hour before dark. I had been to a baccalaureate party earlier in the afternoon for the significant son and grandson of significant friends. It always seems to rain around graduation time in this country. I do not know what God has in mind with that. 

A soft rain was making concentric circles as far as either one of us could see. I knew I was going to catch fish immediately, I just didn’t know what kind. Nor did I care. The best fish is the one that pulls hardest. 

I was throwing a motor oil and chartreuse colored tube jig rigged below a small red and white bobber so that I could adjust the jig’s depth in the rocks. There are always fish down in that rock rubble, but you’ve got to get down there “among ‘em” as Jerry Clower used to say, to catch them and/or risk getting hung up in the source of your pleasure, which, suddenly, strikes me, as being a metaphor for life. Maybe. 

Jerry Clower? Fish? Bobbers? Metaphors? This could be one of the side effects of fishing in the rain; part of God’s plan, maybe. 

The bobber-jig rig keeps you out of the rocks and in the fish. 

The first five fish I caught were all fat, clown-colored green sunfish, a fish I have loved since a boy. Were I in charge, it would be the state fish of Oklahoma and not the sand bass. These were all fine looking representatives of the species, always found around rocks, and had they been larger I would’ve taken them home to eat. 

The next fish was a black bass, probably just under a pound, that popped the cork/jig, jumped twice, and then got thumb-lipped right back to where he had come from. Hopefully I would see him again next year, a little bigger. Him, not me. 

The next two fish were crappie, black males, that acted like they were taking my jig on a cruise around the lake before finally pulling the cork under. They were not big enough to keep, either. Held up in the evening light, they glistened and shone as prettily as any rainbow trout I have ever seen. God never made an ugly fish, not one. Not even a catfish. 

That’s what the next two fish were on the jig: catfish, channel cats. Keystone channels seem confused about their color make-up. You will catch them on either a light-colored olive gold (really), or an impressive, steely, battleship grey. I don’t know why. Both color phases are speckled all along their flanks with eye-catching, black-velvet spots. A prettier fish than this? Not a black crappie, not a trout, nor any other fish that swims. 

These last two were big enough to keep, and I did, one going about a pound, and the other about a pound and-a-half. “Breakfast fish” Uncle Fritz used to call them up on the Gasconade outside of Herman. 

It was almost dark when I strung them on the chain stringer, and headed uphill in the soft rain falling on me, and all around me. It was so quiet, you could hear the rain pipping and patting the leaves in the dark. 

I had forgotten to bring along the little flashlight to search out the spring copperheads in the trail. They’re always there, whether you see them or not. So thick are they out here on the Branch, that I’m convinced that I nearly step on them all the time in the dark, and never even know they are there. You need a flashlight. 

I was, for no apparent reason, thinking about Linda, and how thrilled she would’ve been to have made Grandson Kie’s baccalaureate and graduation dinner party, which she would’ve helped create, of course. Same as she had my daughter’s. What, nineteen years ago? Not possible. 

Sometime ghosts walk home in the rain with the Rain Man. He likes them, and the rain.

© 2016 Conrad M. Vollertsen