I checked to be sure the stringer with my dinner was still secure so that I would have my big Perch later, then slid myself back into the kayak and pushed off once again with the paddle. This time I veered to the right as I crossed the lake, past the right side of the little island, and towards a point of boulders on the far shore. As I glided closer the point began to take more shape, and I could see that it was a corner, another cove cut back in here, this one much larger. It cut back in and around to the left, out of site.
Here the water seemed clearer, I could see deeper. I could follow the boulders protruding from the lake’s surface all the way down to the bottom, it looked to be seven or eight feet at least. I could see smaller boulders and cobble stones, scattered around the bottom all around the larger boulders whose tops peeked out of the water like silent giants in a long sleep. I cast my red marabou jig to the far side of the closest boulder and watched it sink slowly, down, down to the bottom where I could just barely still make it out. As it touched down I let it set there for a few seconds before I started a twitching retrieve. The jig danced, the marabou feathers worked wonderfully. The jig returned untouched by anything except water.
I worked the tiny jig all around the boulders scattered in this entry point to the cove, each time with the same result. Nothing. “Damn.” I looked around, the lake behind me was beginning to move like lakes do once the morning glass is gone and the slight breeze of the day begins to push at the water. The stillness was gone. In front of me the cove still lay still. I scanned its shore line but saw nothing of interest. It was all interesting to me, such a beautiful place, but nothing screamed at me to paddle over to it and fish there. I stowed the fishing rod back between my legs and began paddling back to the left where the cove curved out of site. Time to explore.
As I came around I was pleasantly content with the view. The cove turned into a narrow waterway roughly thirty feet wide give or take. It looked like it continued on like this for about a hundred yards and might open up again. I had to know. It was a scene like something out of some exploration documentary you might watch on television or the pictures you see of far off places in magazines that you wish you could see but know you’ll never go to. Huge boulders the size of small cottages dotted the waterway as if placed there by the greatest exterior decorator ever known to man had spent painful hours deliberating their every position. Once downed trees were now mysterious lengths of drift wood that seemed to snake their way in and out of the boulders like strange, old creatures in slumber just below the water’s surface.
I slowly paddled through, again feeling like I had in the first light of the day on the lake, not wanting to disturb the beautiful picture with the waves from the paddle and the sound of them swishing through the water. The sound offended my ears. It was the sound that people make that drowns out the peacefulness of nature left alone. I suddenly felt like an intruder in a place I had no reason to be. The water rippled from the paddle and the movements of the kayak and it was like hastily grabbing an obnoxiously colored magic marker and scribbling all over a priceless work of art. I was not a fish, not a tree, not a boulder, not a bird. I did not belong here. I was a miserable, lonely person who didn’t deserve to be in such a place and I felt as if the eyes of Mother Nature herself were upon me glaring in disgust as I left footprints across her perfectly manicured landscaping.
As I slowly glided through I noticed how clear the water was here. I was less than fifty feet from the beginning of this narrow water way and were I could only just barely make out the bottom in the main body of the cove which didn’t seem much deeper, here I could look straight down past the edge of the kayak to the bottom which looked to be four or five feet deep and make out every detail of what lay below. And it was beautiful. I wondered how many people had taken the time over the years while camping up here to actually get out and explore these hidden places. I thought to myself how cool it would be to bring my wife or my boys up here in the canoe so they could see this…Then reality slapped me in the face and I paddled on. Lonely and by myself I paddled on.
As I ran the slalom course of boulders I looked off into the forest to my right and noticed how thick the ground cover was, even for this time of year. Bare naked and gray with death, small pine trees stood side by side, their branches interlocking with each other forming such a dense backdrop that to make out a single tree much more than ten feet in seemed almost impossible. Above them the tall and green pines who had won the fight for life thus far cast down their broken and rotten limbs into the mess below only adding to the beautiful chaos. Studying it all as I floated by, I couldn’t help but think that a person could easily wander off into it and never be seen again. I pictured myself with a back pack, pushing through the outer shell of the forest there in front of me, and fading out of site, the sound of cracking branches and sticks trailing off as my figure vanished into the forest…
Fish or Die! 