Urban Fisherman

There is no shortage of wildlife in the city. Rats, pigeons and squirrels. Ducks and geese. Opossum and bats. One morning on the way to the car Mark tossed our garbage in a dumpster. "There's a raccoon asleep in there," he said. "Wanna see it?" He lifted the lid as I carefully approached. There, atop some newspaper, slept a 40 pound raccoon, curled like a cat. He raised his head, assessing us with black, beady, un-cat-like eyes. "He should be happy," Mark said, closing the lid. "I just gave him half a pound of hamburger."

And, of course, there are fish.

I grew up on the Mississippi River, learning to fish the backwaters at the junction of Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin. We caught far too many blue gill, the occasional illusive, coveted walleye, a lot of gar one season (the long-snouted heads of which my brother Jim strung across the front of the camper like some scene from Heart of Darkness), but mostly, we caught crappie - strong, good-natured, good-eating crappie, which Dad and Jim cleaned and piled into the deep freeze for us to eat all winter. One of my best memories growing up is fishing at dusk during mayfly season, when the wispy carcasses of mayflies speckled the water, and crappie leapt up to eat them. We caught our fill that night before the sun went down; our poles barely cast before there was a bite.

When you catch a fish on the backwaters of the Mississippi, you catch in solitude, with only the turtles and woodpeckers to cheer you on, until you return at dusk with a basketful, and then, at the fish cleaning house, the less fortunate gather round to gawk over your catch and slyly inquire where you found them. If you are like my father, you are polite and smile and chat away, but never reveal the sacred spots you have worked so hard to find. Though you might throw them a little bone of a place, if they won't get too tangled in the sunken trees.

In the city, there is always an audience (for anything you do, don't forget). On the first day of October, Jim, Mark, and I watched a fisherman just south of Shedd Aquarium spend twenty patient minutes hauling in a 15 pound salmon. By the time he brought it to shore, a crowd of thirty had gathered to watch, and we applauded.
The salmon come to spawn in Chicago from September to November, and the urban fishermen are out in full force to meet them. They gather along the lakeshore before sun-up, in camo pants and down jackets, jumping fences and ignoring the no fishing within 100 feet of boats signs. They linger till long after the sun is set. I see them when I leave for work in the morning, I see them when I come home. They stir in me some quiet, biological need to catch the fish that swim beneath my home.

One evening, gliding into the pump out station, I motion for the three fishermen gathered around the sewage tank to move aside. "We're coming to pump out," I called to them. They stood a ways off, while I leapt onto the dock and scrambled to tie up. (Definitely not boaters - boaters will always help you tie up.)

I introduced myself to Keith and Sheryl (all fishermen I have known have a girlfriend named Sheryl) and Sheryl's kid Ricky. A few days back Keith caught a couple good-sized salmon - 12, 14 pounds - had them smoked and ate them. I asked if he was concerned about the mercury. He held his hand out in front of him. "Well, I can kinda see straight," he joked. Sheryl joined in. "I was scared, but I ate some. So if we're messed up, at least we're messed up together!" They told me about someone who had caught a northern in Montrose Harbor the previous week - maybe three feet long - "good enough to get in the paper."

I called Jim, a fisherman by vocation, like our dad. "The best thing to do is see what everybody else is doing, then do that. They're probably fishing with roe," he said, before I even described the mass of orange fish eggs sprawled all over the sidewalk. "Is that like sushi?" I asked. "Sort of. They wrap it in small nets to keep it sturdy." Then he thought for a moment. "But if everybody else is fishing with roe, you might try throwing a night crawler out there - they might be itching for something different."

A few days later he called to see how the fishing was. I confessed I didn't feel like doing it in the cold rain. "Go get some sardines from a bait shop," he said. "Not the ones in the store - the frozen ones. They're a real greasy, oily fish - the salmon'll be all over that. Just put one on your line and go inside where it's warm. Hell, you could even put a line out in the morning, then when you get home at night check it. You might have a salmon hanging off your hook."

Because it's in my blood, I'll try it. But I have to admit, it feels wrong to fish for an animal I won't eat for all the mercury we've injected in its blood. I prefer them alive, unseen, quietly swimming beneath my pillow while I dream at night.