For me, going fishing means reading a book while a friend fishes, although last year in a saltwater creek near Tybee Island, trying for sea bass, I reeled in a stingray, a terrible haul that required two people to unhook. It takes 15 minutes for them to smell the bait. Around us the river is olive-gray, turgid, and we are diminished to a white toy boat, three cornhusk dolls dangling our invisible lines. There is so much water, infinitely greater than us, a magnitude not to reckon with. Big flood-plain rivers demand respect.
Dams give, roads buckle, houses float.
For some reason he gives me the heaviest rod. The reel is an old Penn, the kind you have to use your finger to stop it from peeing all over itself. Two or three times the line ends up in a bird's nest, but Dorset is nice about it. The 30-pound test sings and sings as it unwinds, down and down. It lands uneventfully on the bottom.