“Size Does Not Matter” from Derek Endress on Fishing at McLean Lake With His Son

June 19, 2006 at 7:56 am

Size does not matter

It looked like rain might put a blanket on our outing but we persevered.

Our destination this Saturday afternoon was McLean Lake. Once again we arrived with the lake almost all to ourselves; shared only with a couple of drifting mergansers and a stoic bald eagle perched on the distant shoreline. Angus was excited by the amount of activity he could see on the lake. As if someone was dropping pebbles from the sky; feeding rainbows left concentric ripples wherever they found their next morsel of food.

We anchored the canoe over an active hole and let the light wind spin us quietly like the needle of a compass. With fish intermittently rising around us, I cautiously practiced single hauling my 4 weight floating line with a Black Gnat on the end of my tippet. I was learning as I had already snagged Angus by the toque on our last outing. Our deal for the afternoon was that I catch the fish and Angus reels them in. As fate would have it, a great deal of activity moved around us but little action on the end of the line. After inhaling a small bag of gummy bears Angus thought it was time to explore his attempt at fish whispering, but again to no avail. Is it they just weren’t interested, my dry fly technique, or a kid whispering loudly to the fish?

So we pulled anchor and headed over to the beaver house. Here was where the fun began for the 2 of us. Angus was in fish heaven with little 6 to 10 inchers zinging all over the place. It was all he could do not to giggle at the wackiness of these feisty little guys on the end of the rod. After releasing a handful of them, the wind started to pick up and we decided we had had enough fun for a few hours. With the wind at our backs we casually floated back to the truck to call it a day.

And me, well I was happy that he graced me with time to simply be with him; to share in his curiosity and wonder of this world. What a treasure we are given by our sons!

Stay tuned for our next outing.

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