Fishing with the Huldre

Since fishing gets me out at odd hours when normal right thinking people are home asleep in their beds and fishing also gets me out off the beaten paths it seems like every year the most interesting people I meet are people I run into out fishing. So, I'm in one of those beer, bait, broasted chicken and gas stations somewhere down in Pike or Scioto county. It's 1030 in the morning Saturday and I've just drug a deer out and I want to eat, drop the deer off and go fishing. (Yeah, the perfect day, I know.) So I ask the lady behind the counter if it's too early to get a sandwich. She replies Honey is there ever a bad time for a sandwich? I lean against a rack of off brand potato chips and listen while she talks to me about her mother while she makes my order. (Ham and spinach, mayo, lettuce, tomato, onion, on dark rye. Perfection) It seems her mom used to warn her not to wander too far into the woods because the Huldre would get her. They were Danish and legend had it that back in the day God visited their little village in the woods. One mom with a lot of small children didn't have time to wash all her children before God got there and hid some of them in the woods. God decreed these unwashed children were to always haunt the woodlands. A warning to children every where to wash up and stay out of the woods I guess. As she wrapped up my sandwich and rang me up she said softly she never knew she would end up living where every living soul seemed to be a Huldre. Smelling of woodsmoke with deer blood on my jeans I certainly didn't have room to talk.
Later pulled off beside the river I googled a bit on my phone while eating my sandwich. It seems the Huldre or Huldra are woodland versions of mermaids tempting men to wander out into the woods and never return. Looking at the turning leaves and the clear water of the river I can think of worse fates than wandering these hilly woods in Southern Ohio hill country forever.
The fishing was just what it's supposed to be with these water temperatures, which is to say it was great. I'm testing a minnow plug my brother is thinking of having made and today the fish love it. I'd reel it fast for a foot or two then full stop before burning it again. You would start cranking again and the rod would load up or fish would launch skyward. These precious fall days are simply as good as life gets around here and I'd come here for the great fishing rather than any great truths or woodland spirits though I guess you could find either here among the worn weathered stones and fallen sycamore leaves along the creek. The experience of stream fishing smallmouth will never be better than it is right now, get out there and get you some while it lasts.