Saugfishes and snow angels

Things didn't look good. The river was clear as glass. It was seven or eight degrees below freezing. And a light breeze was blowing up the river. Honestly if I wasn't supposed to meet Dan this trip might have ended right then and there. But Dan was due any minute, might as well fish. I had a pocket full of jigheads and some ugly sauger colored grubs. The colors were way too gaudy for the ultra clear water, I rooted thru them and found a white one. Ten minutes later I felt a solid thump and landed a nice saugeye. If I didn't catch anything else I felt okay about the trip considering the conditions. I decided to switch colors and headed back to the truck where I had some more normal colored grubs. I got there just as Dandrews (AKA the carp whisperer) pulled up. I chatted with him watching carefully as he geared up. Dan is a big guy and dressed in several layers for the cold plus waders and a backpack. It would be easy for him to smuggle a live carp in there somewhere. For you see every time we go fishing Dan manages to find a new and weirder way to catch a carp and it's starting to worry me. Ive seen him catch them on minnow plugs, on spinners, on jigs, on a fly rod. Hell if I remember right he even snagged a line someone had broken off only to reel it in and find a carp attached. It's a bit frightening. I tied on a smoke with red flake three inch grub and went back to fishing. A few casts later and in a zenlike moment I set the hook for no reason and was fast to another saugeye. I honestly can't remember feeling a strike at all. I think it was the product of being at the end of a long year of fishing three or five times a week when I'm about as sharp as a fat middle aged guy in nine layers of clothing can get. By spring I'll have lost it all and will have to relearn it over again. By spring Ill have forgotten as well how to wade with any semblance of grace or daring and will be wallowing around trying not to fall. The older I get the more I find fishing, like life, can be a matter of trying to relearn things we used to know already. What I'm relearning today is how to fish comfortably in frigid weather. My problem today is gloves, mine are too bulky to fish well in. All day I find myself pulling them off and fishing for as long as I can stand it before putting them back on again. Soon I hear a thumping and look up. Sure enough there's a carp on the bank at Dan's feet flopping around making carp angels in the snow. A bit later I'll look up to see his rod bent into a capital C by another carp the size of a small goat that eventually pulls off. Like I said, it's a bit frightening. I quit after two and a half hours having caught three saugfish and snagging two carp of my own. Not bad at all considering the weather. I snapped some photos of the saugeyes in the gin clear water that I thought turned out pretty cool...