Just now, as I’m typing, a light drizzle is falling on the deck. Falling, but barely landing before it evaporates. After two days of record setting heat, even just this tease of precipitation is enough to lift my spirits.
Clouds are gathering, finally. I’m hopeful we’ll get some real rain before the day is out.
The day before the sprinkle, as Kalispell was tying an early June record with a high of 95 degrees, one of my daughters and I embarked on what seemed a pointless mission: fishing at Rogers Lake. It was too hot and too late in the season for the fishing to be any good. And if the number of fish caught was the only measure of success, then it truly was pointless. We didn’t put a fish in the boat, though actually, we didn’t try that hard.
It’s just that Rogers is a regular spring thing for us. A while back I realized my drift boat made a quite serviceable rowing skiff on small lakes. After that I ditched the float tube and we’ve been riding out spring high water by putzing around Rogers. The fishing in April and May is usually great, and there’s always the spectacle of the grayling spawning run up that small creek on the east shore.
This year, however, I’m getting a heavy dose of the reality that as your children become adults, life increasing puts a crimp in the patterns and routines you developed when they were young. This year that meant we couldn’t make it to Rogers until June. Worse still, this year June feels a lot more like July, or even the time when the whole of the Rocky Mountains can seem dead to fishing, early August.
There are still things to be done at the lake. The bird life at Rogers never fails to entertain. I don’t think I’ve ever visited without seeing or at least hearing loons. As we launched the boat an adult trailed by a chick swam across the water, away from our disturbance. And crowds of geese mowed the lawn of nearby houses. The goslings have grown out of the yellow phase by now, and some seemed so big they had already taken adult markings.
The most raucous birds are seldom seen: night herons. Apparently, being on the small side as far as herons go makes these wading birds fearful of their ilk, so they stay holed up in heavy cover by day. But just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean you can’t hear them. They squawk like howler monkeys in the cattails, especially as dusk approaches.
Out on the lake we made a half-hearted effort at fishing. I rigged up just one rod and we let a Klinkhammer bob harmlessly in the light riffle. There weren’t many fish breaking the surface and the odds of one bothering us seemed remote.
So we ate cheese and Ceres bread, as is our fishing custom, drank cold beverages and pretended not to care the lake seemed fishless. I even enjoyed the the short row back across the lake. I have in mind a slightly modified skiff that would work even better for fishing still waters like this. A double ender of some type, with a mild keel to keep it tracking straight. Flat-bottomed drift boats are built to spin. That’s an asset on the river. Not so much on flat water.
The bald eagles finally made an appearance as we headed for shore. While fishing we’d listened loons calling on the west shore, and now the eagle was headed straight for them. We were too far away to see what happened exactly, but when that eagle swooped close to the water’s surface we heard that loon screeching as it escaped. I don’t know if the chick was so lucky.
Loon calls are always haunting, but this was the first time I’d heard one plead for its life.