The tent fly was pooling water right above the seam, and I knew it would start dripping inside before morning. It wasn’t worth buying a new one over. The old tent had a broken corner joint, but it still worked fine. The new one was good, but it had this one annoying flaw I couldn’t fix.
A drop would form right on that roll, slide down, and then make a small puddle on the floor. It bothered me, but not enough to run out and spend money again. “Just buy a new one and give me this one,” someone said. “You got enough gifts already.
”
I laughed. The truth was, I already had a second tent. Buying a third made no sense. The one that worked was perfectly fine.
It held everything. The only reason I was even using the new one was that at the other club, they didn’t allow setting up tents anymore. And there was something else. I had a deadbait rod out, a pike bait, set up near the big tree on the far side.
The fish was still fresh enough. Once it got dark, I’d switch to carp and put out a third line. We were cutting onions on the camping table. I’d finally found my knife.
“You packed the sharpest knife you could find, didn’t you? ”
“Yeah,” I said, grinning. “And I forgot the cutting board. ”
The spot was quiet.
Almost no wind, even though we could see the trees bending on the far bank where the breeze hit. That’s why the bugs hadn’t found us yet. It was strange being here though. I told them I’d never fished this area before.
Why would I? It wasn’t much different from what we had back home. I was only here because of Rati. I’d thought about joining their club before.
My daughter lived nearby. But two clubs already? It was too much. That’s when I told them why I’d left the other club.
I’d had a yearly guest card there. Everything was managed through an online fishing log. I’d submitted my catch report for one club without any issue. For the other, I did the same thing, got a confirmation on screen, but never received the email.
I didn’t think to check the inbox because the on-screen confirmation was right there. I did it on the last day of the year. It wasn’t until much later that I realized the card never arrived. So I called the office and explained.
I had written before by email too, including proof I’d logged the reports with the other club, to make it easy to understand. Why would I do it for one and not the other? But the staff member said he couldn’t do anything as an employee. So I wrote to the chair of the club directly.
His answer was cold. “Anyone could claim that,” he said. “It’s not verifiable. I can’t make an exception.
”
“Then I’ll have to leave the club,” I replied. “I wasn’t fishing there much anyway. ”
He didn’t care. So I left.
I told them I understood the club’s right to enforce rules. I admitted my own fault. I should have checked the emails. I wasn’t saying they were wrong.
But it felt like there was no decency, no goodwill. I would have happily paid a fine if he’d just said, “This costs you, but you can fix it. ” That would have been fine. Instead, he treated me like a liar.
And now, I learned that at the end of last year, around four hundred catch reports had never gone through in that system. Four hundred people were in the same boat. And I doubted four hundred angry emails landed in his inbox. Most people just stayed quiet.
I was probably one of the few who even wrote. It wasn’t the end of the world. The fishing grounds weren’t that spectacular anyway. Carp fishing there was nearly impossible.
No groundbait. No feeding before or during the session. You couldn’t even work the water properly. Only hook bait.
That’s all you were allowed. “That’s brutal,” one of the guys said. He started laughing at some video on his phone, a guy in oven mitts and a neck brace carrying a hot dish and smashing his head into a crystal chandelier. “He’s so stupid, I love it.
”
We laughed it off. The light was fading. It was time to check the rods. I grabbed one line and reeled it in.
The bait came back ruined. The soft plastic sleeve that I slip over the line, the one that protects it from sharp teeth, had been completely chewed off. Something had bitten through the whole thing. “Look at that,” I said, holding it up.
“Gone. Entirely. ”
“It’s not a war-changing loss,” I said, “but still. It’s something.
”
The crabs are getting worse, one of them commented. They chew everything. There had been actual crab fishermen around here once, I explained. They harvested them and exported them to China.
No joke. Stories from the old land. I hadn’t had a single contact on the big pike bait for an hour yesterday. Then, an hour and a half later, a guy from Friesland shows up, takes the exact same spot, and lands five big pikes in fifteen minutes.
You can’t make that up. “That’s life,” I said. “That’s just how it goes. ”
The last few days had been good.
I’d caught a 12-pound pike two days ago. One of the others had caught a crab. “Crabby crab,” we called it. Someone thanked a stream follower for sixty bits and said the steak knives were perfect.
We’d bought plates especially. The kitchen man was on his way. Soon we’d make burgers. I checked the other rod.
The boilies looked good. Nothing had touched them. The pop-up rig was in place, a knot tied cleanly. I crawled down to the water’s edge to scan the shallows for soft-shell crabs under lights, but there were none today.
“You have no idea what you’re doing with that rod, Käse,” someone joked. “You cast like a young god. ”
“I’ve been at this for fifteen years,” I said, “and I still can’t cast? Really?
”
“On carp. You can’t cast on carp. ”
“Carp, sure. ”
We laughed.
Käse had only got his fishing license recently. He’d been fishing for exactly two days. He didn’t catch anything yesterday but collected firewood instead. “You didn’t catch a fish, Käse.
”
“No, but I got crabby crab. ”
Darkness set in. Another rod went out, the two-piece with a boilie and a pop-up on a snowman rig. My hands worked on muscle memory while the guys joked about eating onions on stream for subs, about how the crab bait was too expensive anyway, how he wasn’t paying that much just for bait.
I felt the line. Everything was quiet. The tent would still have that drip by morning. The club chair could keep his wall.
I’d manage well enough without them.
