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| Why I Like Lakes, Now
by Gideon Noir,
Staff Valley GuyMy buddy Scooter and I like to fish. We prefer fishing in a lake simply because it is far easier to lay around in a boat and far more comfortable than laying around on a pile of rocks.
This summer, though, because we are both broke and no longer have a boat, we’ve been spending our leisure hours lying on the banks of the Verde River, sipping tropical drinks and pretending we know what we are doing. It is not as easy as it appears—at least the part about looking like we know what we are doing fishing from a river bank. The part about sipping tropical drinks comes natural, more or less.
Back before the economy went south and Scooter still had a job cleaning rest stops, we had a boat. Specifically, Scooter had a boat. To me it was the best boat in the world, not because it particularly big or fast, but because it was Scooter’s boat. I have always been of the opinion that the finest boats in the world are the ones your friends own and allow you to fish off. But alas, the stay-at-home old fogies at the state legislature kyboshed Scooter’s position and he was forced to sell his boat. The last I heard it was owned by a retired cop, who has never asked me to go fishing on it and probably never will. In my book, that makes the boat worthless. Whatever money Scooter got out of it was pure profit.
But enough about the boat. I wanted to tell you about some fish Scooter and I caught down on the banks of Soak Creek. They were queer looking for sure. But what kind of fish they were, specifically, I’m not real sure. The first one Scooter reeled in was sporting a purse, high heels and a gaudy blue lip gloss. Shocked that the little bugger tried to pinch his ass, Scooter threw it back. A couple minutes later I landed a two pound rainbow with a butch cut, a pair of Doc Martins (remember those) and a mechanic’s shirt with the name “Chris” embroidered in a small oval patched sewn over the left pocket.
I immediately set about putting it back where I found it. But before I could get the flopper off my hook, Scooter flipped a limp-finned carp onto the rocks, that immediately started chewing him out in a high pitched lisp…when it wasn’t taking a drag off a smoldering Virginia Slim, locked in a four-inch cigarette holder, dangling at a jaunty angle out is left gill.
Scooter,” I said, “I have no idea what we have gotten ourselves into but these are some scary looking fish. If I didn’t know better I’d swear we were fishing off South Beach.”
He slapped the fruity looking floppers on a stringer, deciding that whatever they were it would be a better thing for the creek if we cleared their kind out. It wasn’t two minutes later we both landed a couple sun fish, each sporting a single ear-ring, wearing shorts that barely covered their dorsal fins and hats that looked not unlike the flower pots worn by members of Devo.
We hit them with a club and tossed them in the cooler. Then we hightailed over to the Arizona Department of Costly Fish and Outrageously Expensive Game office to ask their experts if they had a clue what school these bad boys might have graduated from. Dinger and I flopped the Devo brothers (sisters?) and the rest of the Village Fish on the counter and asked for the resident expert.
After a period of time, not unlike that spent waiting for a visa in some third-world consulate, a pimple-faced lad in his early twenties shuffled out from behind the department’s oaken doors. After giving us a half hearted “haven’t you heard” look, he informed us they were, and I’m not making this up, “sequential hermaphrodites.”
“Is that what the they call an exotic?” Scooter asked him as he took two giant steps back from the counter.
“Actually it’s just a regular fish that’s having a problem deciding on its sexuality,” said the pimply expert.
“The same thing happened to my cousin,” said Scooter, “He was dressing kinda funny so my uncle pout him in the army.”
Pimple boy went on to tell us about this phenomenon going on in rivers and streams around the world, where fish are going “feminine.”
“In some streams the ratio of males to females is askew. There are streams all over the world where females far outnumber the males. We think it’s caused by pollution, pharmaceuticals, hormones, that sort of stuff. It’s a growing problem,” said pimple boy.
Scooter and I left the ADCF&OFG office jaws dropped and speechless.
The next weekend after having overcome the shock, and having talked it over amongst ourselves, Scooter and I went out, together, and bought a boat, deciding this sort of thing probably doesn’t go on in a lake.
But it does explain a lot about Scooter's dad. |  
 
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