FOR THE THRILL OF IT
Rex Burress
The winter day was dark and cold with spits of rain from an approaching storm stinging the water when I stopped by the river to see what was happening.
Wading in the water were some defiant fishermen whipping their flyrods over and over, seeking the thrill of hooking a steelhead in the new year season opener. Catching wasn't so good but that didn't deter the pursuit in spite of the 'next-to-freezing-wind,' [that kept me in my car], rapid water streaming over slick rocks, and “knotty” obstacles common to fishermen! Most puzzling, unless you're one of them, is why some release that large fish after the battle, although the idea centered on saving some for future fishing. That wasn't the way in the homeland when taking a string of fish back to eat was thrilling. Losing a good one was demoralizing. Harvesting some of the surplus is good conservation.
Ask a fisherman if combating the fierce winter day is worth catching a fish, and they justify their reason to the thrill of feeling the strike and the lightning surges! Some pride in successfully outwitting the fish is involved, too, and some will say its not all about catching the fish, but experiencing the presence of nature, the fresh air, the call of the gull, the flight of an eagle, and perhaps the sound of falling rain and even the silence of snow. Does sacrificing comfort for the thrill of catching a fish defy logic?
I know about the zinging nerves and rapid heartbeats of connecting with a striking fish as experienced in Missouri when I was a boy. Once you feel that thrill, you seek it over and over again. With the thought of that charging fish on the line, the fisherman is constantly scheming to find ways to better his chances to feel the thrill again. In those catfish days on Grand River, the scheme was to find a better bait, not always a live bait, but things like stinkbait and doughballs. Each thrill pursuer-had his own formula, and some, like photographer Gerald Wright of Trenton, Missouri, made cheese-stink bait that was so successful he put it on the market!
Soon my tackle bag was bursting with artificial lures, but earth worms from behind the barn was hard to beat. My big July 4th 25 inch channel cat was caught on a baby bluegill though, even if Old Earl shocked us all by catching a 22 pound carp on a fly tied to a plug! Earl yelled to me that his heart was giving out! Could I help? My thrill was being in the water with my arms full of fish but the thrill was almost too much for Earl, although back in town he walked up and down main street with his prize!
Country boyhood was full of thrills! Skunk trapping was the ultimate for bagging the animal without getting shot by serious spray! It's the kind of thrill that makes your foot jump up and down as the nerve system gets stretched thin!
Except for sports and sex, heart-beat thrills are scarce—unless you want to try sky diving, roller coasters, being chased by a bull, entering a haunted house at midnight alone, climbing to the top of Half Dome in Yosemite, and the like!
A rockhound can be thrilled to the core by discovering a rare rock, and one of my ultimate thrills was realized on a 11,000-foot mountain above Sonora Pass when hammering lavender geodes out of volcanic rock. The unexpected find on a jasper slope added to the thrill of witnessing the grandeur of wild heights in God's country!
“Thrills are much more about anticipation than action. An unfired bullet is more dangerous than one that has already met its target.”--Ashwin Sanghi
“The greatest joy of any pleasure is often the anticipation of it.” --Ellen Burress