I have written in various essays that I don’t have to catch fish to enjoy fishing. That is a true statement. I have fun on fishing trips where I never find the fish. I have places on the river I call my secret fishing spots, secret not because they guarantee fish, but because they get me away from all of the other boaters.
Not needing to catch fish, however, does not mean that I don’t like to catch fish. Every autumn the Upper Mississippi River experiences a fish feeding frenzy, and I always want to be part of it. For much of the month of September, I put aside my romantic notions about being one with the river and focus on catching fish.
At some point every mid- to late September, the water in the river cools enough for fish to come out of their summer stupor. The perch and bluegills begin to feed voraciously and so too do the larger bass and northerns. This goes on for about three weeks, then stops on a dime. I used to think that the fish stopped biting when the river turned over (i.e., when the water at the surface cools to the point that it sinks to the bottom), but now it seems to me that the good fishing comes to an end before the river actually turns. Maybe there is something else altering the fishes’ feeding habits. The reason does not matter much. I just know it happens.
When the fish are active, I cannot help but marvel at the biomass of the river. On any weekend during the fishing flurry, there might be as many as fifty fishing boats just within my field of sight. If the boats average two people, and each person takes even a dozen fish home (the legal limit on panfish is 15 of each species), three or four weekends of hard fishing would be a serious hit to a less productive fishery. On the Upper Mississippi, the impact is negligible. The Mississippi River faces at least a dozen threats to its ecological wellbeing (e.g., invasive species, mercury, agricultural runoff), but fishing pressure is not one of them.
Last week I wrote that I am in awe of the Mississippi River. I said this because I marvel at its role as a hardworking river of commerce. Imagine how I would feel if I could also observe all of the natural interactions that occur below the water’s surface. They must be amazing.
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