You will need to activate java to view this menu. Soon they'll be around again, the suckers, moving up the streams to spawn. If you dip-netted suckers off one of the bridges, you were part of a small and loosely knit fraternity. The memories of those nights in the bridge likely mix with the scent of incense from Easter week church services, and with the sting of a poorly struck baseball on cold hands during the first spring pickup game, a patch of snow still lingering in right field of the ball diamond in the vacant lot.
Suckers are odd-looking fish, their round, leathery mouths aimed downward like suction cups.
You imagine the sucker cruising the bottom of Lake Michigan, slurping here, slurping there, the mouth always in the right position, the act of dining effortless. Something there reminds you of jointed soda straws and powered car windows and TV remotes - manifestations of life made easy. When you headed out sucker fishing, you took the dip net, a coil of rope and a gunny sack - nothing more. You tried to get to the bridge early to stake out a spot over the channel. The downstream side of the bridge was better - you never knew why, but it was.