Open Water

WORK TO FISH

“On an unnamed lake in Tennessee, guide Matt Reilly and I waited for the carp to do their thing. The morning started slow, then the light switch flipped. For four hours, carp cruised the surface, slowly slurping cicadas as if they’d been waiting seasons for the bugs. It was the kind of day people think you’re lying about.” Photo: Dave Fason

Words: Dee Finkel

Nobody wants to work at a car dealership; we’re a collection of failures. Some of us make it, but most of us won’t. I had one manager, Don, who wore a leather duster every day of the year no matter the weather. He told me that back in the ’80s your best salesman had a wife, a girlfriend and a problem. I don’t have the first two, but I do have a problem. So I guess I’ll make it.

Remember when people told you that you’d save money by tying your own flies? Or that this awesome new fly rod would be the last one you’d ever need? How are those waders that weren’t supposed to leak? I have problems my coworkers can’t relate to.

My first job was at a well-oiled machine of a Toyota dealership. The average dealership sells a bit over 100 cars per month, and this one sold 500. You could practically hear Raymond Scott’s “Powerhouse” as customers, salespeople, desk managers, service techs, valets, suits and runners played each other from 9 in the morning until 11 at night. Every person wanted what the other person didn’t want to give up.

I was on a fast-track program to sell there until the 17-year cicadas hatched in the Ramapo Mountains. For a week the woods were littered with ray-gun-sounding bombers, tumbling through the air, bumbling on the ground, and getting devoured on the water. You could see their forms in the bellies of gorged fish, caught like Han Solo frozen in carbonite. If you crossed a section of water and threw a dead cicada back in your wake, three or four fish would fight over it, zero fucks given about your presence.

WORK TO FISH

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