The story
I entered the lily patch with the confidence of a man who had never tried to reverse a dinghy through a lily patch. The leaves closed around the yellow bow. Somewhere below them, something moved with the calm authority of a local resident.
A bass emerged beside a leaf the size of my table. We looked at each other. I apologised for the disturbance, because politeness seemed more useful than anything in my tackle box. The fish blinked in the way fish do not, which is how I remember it.
I backed out slowly and awarded the pond to the lily committee. Later I drew a tiny crown above the fish in my notebook. It improved the drawing but did nothing to improve my claim that this had been a carefully planned expedition.
The best part of the plan was leaving room to abandon it.