As passionate as I am about fishing, I do draw the line at enduring bone-chilling cold to satisfy my yearning to get on the lakes.

Perhaps it is age (or let’s call it “experience”) that has changed my attitude about sub-freezing weather, or perhaps I’ve just become a wimp. Whatever, it is a fact that once the frosty days outnumber the balmy, I tuck the Bass Cat away for the winter.

Cold weather is not the only hiatus in my fishing schedule. I’ve suffered months-long stints away from the boat several times because of various encounters with surgeons’ scalpels. Those were anomalies. Winter, on the other hand, happens every year.

I still manage to get in a few shore-fishing excursions during the winter, but I find they are not quite as satisfying as those halcyon days on the boat with the sun warming my shoulders, the redwing blackbirds trilling in the cattails and the below-deck compartments stocked with everything I might possibly need for success.

Put simply, fishing for me has moved on, for better or worse, from boyhood romps to the creek with a pole and a can of worms to a man-and-machine relationship with a tricked-out fast boat loaded with an arsenal of rods, reels, lures and technology.

I’m not saying fishing is all about gadgets, but I do admit they make it more fun and productive. This got me thinking. Why do such things matter when, in fact, we get all philosophical about fishing being about communing with nature?

Good question.

For me, the boat represents the realization of an aspiration rooted in my earliest childhood experiences. My extended family — mother, father, sister, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins — staked unofficial claim in the 1950s to a bluff overlooking the Mill Creek arm of Berlin Reservoir for weekend picnics that included riding in Uncle Charlie’s speed boat.

This was more than 65 years ago, but I vividly recall sitting on someone’s lap and gripping the steering wheel of Charlie’s 16-foot runabout. The Evinrude outboard pushed the boat at what, in those days, was high speed, or at least fast enough to thrill a toddler.

Mom and Dad told me years later that during one of those lakeside family picnic-boating weekends, I emphatically declared, “I want a boat with a wheel,” apparently in disdain for simple tiller-steered boats. Gripping that steering wheel to rein in the Evinrude’s ponies impressed me more than anyone might have realized.

Twenty years later, I took ownership of my own “boat with a wheel.” We had tons of fun aboard our 16-foot Arrowglass tri-haul and reeled aboard countless walleyes, crappies, bass and perch. In 1995, I succumbed to the allure of the modern bass boat and bought a Ranger fish-and-ski that served well until I traded up for my current boat, a red and white Bass Cat powered by a Mercury engine.

Some of my friends have bigger, faster and (in my opinion) considerably more expensive fishing boats. By 2024 standards, my boat is pretty humble. I added Power Poles and upgraded the trolling motor. I am not tempted, however, to invest thousands of dollars in new fish-locating technology. My pair of basic 2010 vintage sonar units serves my purposes.

My fishing boat is my home away from home, my office on the water and my getaway-from-it-all retreat. It transports all the tackle that makes me happy at the lake and safely gets me out to the places where the fish live and back to the dock (knock on wood).

I love being on the boat as much as I love fishing. We’re a match made in heaven and I weather winter with the vision of soon being back on the water in my “boat with a wheel.”

Jack Wollitz is the author of “The Common Angler,” a book about the “why” that attracts anglers to the water. He likes readers’ emails, jackbbaass@gmail.com