But it is not the obligation of fishermen to express sensitivity toward other's failures. As I've said, the small satisfaction most fishermen get in life comes through the celebration of someone else's bad cast. So there it was. A red, shallow-running crankbait with rusty hooks, all alone on a hill in the woods, a broken length of line tied to it. In the distance downhill, far below where I stood, I could see the remote shimmer of water on Lake Murphysboro.
People fish and make casts there.
But not here. None of my own casts ever were terrible enough to be granted names. This, the third terrible cast of my lifetime, I called the Mystery Crankbait on the Hill.