Anglers are of two types
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There is a vast schism among people who fish for crappies in Minnesota in the spring. Either you fish from a boat or you fish from shore. And which side of the schism you're on says a lot about you.
Personally, I throw in with the shore fishing crowd. Fishing boats - with their GPS systems and fish finders and trolling motors and aerated live wells - have gotten way too high tech and cushy for me.
Fish finders, Phooey.
If you fish from shore you find fish by driving the road at the edge of the lake, and keeping an eye on the phone wire overhead. Find a snargle of miscast hooks and bobbers hanging from the wire and you've found the fish.
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And people who fish from shore don't need all that other hoity-toity stuff either. If you can't buy it where you buy your gasoline, you don't need it.
Which isn't to say there aren't one or two essentials.
A five gallon pail, for example. It holds the crappies you catch and, (covered with a musty old boat cushion), serves as a place to sit.
Shore fishing is much more egalitarian than fishing from a boat, too. Ethnicity, education and socio-economic status melt. Start catching crappies and people up and down the shore gravitate toward you. Their bobbers magically drift closer to yours.
We shore fishers pull for one another. When you have a fish on, you have a cheering section who'll be there for you even if the unthinkable should happen and your fish turn out to be a bullhead - or worse yet a dogfish - instead of a crappie.
It's "Us" versus "Them". You sit there on your bucket, working your spot, and looking at a boatload of rich guys - maybe even an outdoor writer or two - who buzzed over and anchored thirty yards off shore to work the spot too.
"No good cake eaters," you mutter...
Soon the days get longer. The sunlight gets stronger. The crappies move off into summer feeding patterns. The rich guys and outdoor writers and their boats move off to fish for other species and write other stories. The "Fish-crappies-from-shore/Fish-crappies-from-boat" schism recedes until next year.
Trust me, though. The schism is eternal. A thousand years from now, some future Minnesota shore fisher will drive along the edge of some lake, spot a snargle of hooks and bobbers hanging from the phone wire overhead, and think, "This is the spot. Think I'll try it here."
And three rich guys in a boat - possibly even a future outdoor writer - will motor over and drop anchor right next to him.
No good cake eaters...
