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EITHER LAKE ONTARIO OR THE LOWER NIAGARA RIVER — In boat-talk we're going about 2.5 knots.

I Googled exactly this: What the hell is a knot and how many knots in a mile per hour, which is the only thing real people can relate to.

(This also applies to anything even close to metrics — because here in America we were all out SICK the day THAT was taught at school, so QUIT IT.)

0.688432 seconds later, I had 26,437 Google hits.

I understood none of them.

So I'm forced to make up my own db-definition (it's about this time the ESPN Outdoors lawyer-types learn their own definition of butt-tightening).

db-definition of that there knot thing: VERB, meaning to trust a person, even against your better judgment, when that person, who likes the outside, gets you, a basically INSIDE-liking person, to step off the solid earth and tentatively onto the liquid earth, on something made of a sliver of fiberglass, wood, electronics and beer cans, and to take off onto a lake only calm once, back when it was being made and was just a drip off the backside of a glacier, and then to go a certain set speed that will take your stomach and tie it into knots. And if said stomach is tied up say four times, then you, my friend, are going 4 knots.

And while the U.S. Coast Guard may dispute this in writing, trust me, this is the secret all those mariner-types are hiding from you.

So I'm on Lake Ontario, and I'm KNOT HAPPY.

What was I thinking, or fishing with the Ken Cook family

I'm on a boat with a basement.

On a lake that's an ocean.

We're trolling.

Our speed, 2 knots (which, in db math, equals two Dramamine taken with two donut holes).

Photo gallery Check it out

Capt. Bob Cinelli, of Olcott, N.Y., is saying exactly this to me: "db, it's not really rough until the waves come over the bow when you're trolling."

Exactly this is happening: Pretty much most of Lake Ontario is crashing over the front of the boat. (Three hours later, back on terra firma, Google would tell me: Bow = the front of the boat.)

I hate it when that happens.

My face is two shades south of Caucasian: Think Dairy Queen vanilla cone white. That would be me.

I'm on the Hotline, which is 31 feet of fiberglass, now floating on several hundred miles of water. The water is clearly winning.

Behind me in the back of the boat, called the stern, I think mainly because everyone I've ever seen back there pretty much has a stern look on their face, is: Tammy Cook, wife of Bassmaster Elite pro Ken Cook; First (and actually only) Mate Eric Bickel, a captain when he's not a mate; and Ken Cook.

Ken and Eric are doing fine. Tammy is not. She is a shade of Caucasian below me, sort of the color of custard ice cream (the soft serve of kings).

Next to me, in the chair that gets the check, is Capt. Bob. Chain-smoking, cross-legged, sandwich-eating, swells-or-no-swells, flinging-cigarette-ashes-out-the-side-window-between-the-waves Capt. Bob.

"db," he says, "steelhead is a ridiculously mean fish."

And that of course, is what we are fishing for.

Mean fish.

Mean water.

Priceless.

Capt. Bob has been fishing these waters for 28 years. Me, 28 minutes.

In between me and the captain is Ali Cook. Ali has been fishing with Tammy and Ken since she was 6 weeks old, and so has eight years of boating experience now.

And she is scared. Drooling scared. Tail-between-your-legs scared.

Her seafaring legs are shaking: all four of them.

Ali is the Cooks' golden retriever. Her snout is in my crotch, while her eyes are looking up at me. Three of her paws are on the deck and one is in my briefcase. As I rub behind her ears, this is what I say to her in doggie baby talk: "Me, too."

This is what Ali is thinking as I rub her ear: "I don't know who this donut-smelling guy is, but when I get back on land, I'm going to bite his ass for doing this to me — and to the people who have been giving me treats all these years."

Capt. Bob called the weather out there "unstable." If you want to know what "unstable" weather feels like, do this: Keep reading this story, but do so while picking up your laptop and swinging it back and forth in wavelike motions.

If you get sick within two minutes of doing that, then you would have been swinging that laptop at the remarkably precise speed of 2 knots.

Salmon and steelhead

First and Only Mate Eric is giving me a one-on-one lesson in how to fish, culled through his 30 years of fishing on Lake Ontario: "You rub the head of a quarter 'til it gets warm, then flip it over your right shoulder into the water — and you'll catch fish every time."

I paid $40 for a New York state fishing license and all the bait I brought to this charter were two dimes, a nickel and three pennies. Just as I was about to ask if a buck overboard would get us four fish, Eric was off like a shot, as was Ken, who had been sitting on the side of the boat, one leg on the wall, one leg on the deck, eating grapes.

Both said we were on fish. In truth, the fish were on us.

Capt. Bob: "As soon as we saw water temperature around 56 degrees, we shut down and trolled inside out, from south to north, shallow water to deep water."

Because the conditions today were unstable (you can stop swinging the laptop now) the wind was slamming the water around, which in turn was slamming the fish.

Capt. Bob called it "scratch fishing": "Got to go looking for the fish, try and find them and run them down."

I knew he must have run over a few.

Behind me in the back of the boat, everyone had their stern faces on. Ken would reel, stop, reel, pull back, eat a grape, reel. Tammy was starting to get some color back in her face, now looking more like vanilla sherbet. Ali was trying to get her grip on the slippery deck, watching the reel bend for a second or two while swinging her head back to look at me with that I'm-still-going-to-bite-your-ass-when-we-get-on-land-again-right-after-I-get-that-chicken-treat look.

Then it was the magic moment — the moment why people fish — the moment why people go out on small boats on big water, that heartbeat or two between water and air, when the dream is suspended on an invisible string, when the depth between man and fish is measured in inches instead of leagues.

From out of a teal blue sea came a rocket of silver.

Squirming, twisting, never giving an inch, coming right at you, a storm of torment behind those gills, ferocity on the fin.

A water spout on the hook, up and over the side, the movement a blur of silver and black. I'm thinking we've hooked an Oakland Raider linebacker.

It was a 2-year-old king salmon, caught on a green and gold spoon.

Capt. Bob: "If I lock in on a bait color, we'll stick with that color. I've been running green and gold for three months. Everything we're running is a variation of green and gold."

Photos of Ken and the fish are snapped by all. Even Ali is impressed as she scrambles up to get a closer look.

Capt. Bob: "We run all spoons — you can run them at a relatively high speed. That way we can cover water. In Lake Ontario, everything is always in motion. The fish are always moving; the bait is always moving. You're just intercepting fish as they move along a line to feed, or (as) they are transitioning from feeding to going down to digest."

Ken Cook: "These fish are very thermal-oriented. The baitfish they feed on and the fish themselves are oriented to the temperature changes. Bass anglers use bottom changes and depth changes. These are pelagic fish that live in the middle of the lake and are oriented to temperature. They don't relate to the bottom or shore like bass relate to it. They are less predictable, not as dense in their habitat, not as obvious to find as bass."

Not obvious to find would be an understatement.

For the next hour or so, we trolled back and forth, up and down, through and between waves on Lake Ontario. Every once in a while we would see an inverted V on the fish finder, the sign of a fish below us.

"Try this," said Capt. Bob as he tossed a shrink-wrapped package back to First and Only Mate Eric. It was a lure Ken had brought aboard, a spoon, but it wasn't green and gold.

It was silver and pink. A silver and pink Diamond King #5.

Ken Cook: "It was but 10 minutes from when we tossed that in that we had a strike."

Capt. Bob: "Fishing is about karma — or luck. It's about the intangibles. You can have $150,000 worth of stuff, boat and equipment, but it always comes down to, at the end of the day, to good fortune.

"I put that lure in that Ken brought. There's only one of them on board. I can't buy it around here, because they don't have it at any of the stores. If you have ONE of ANYTHING and you put it in the water, it's like Murphy's Law — you're going to get a fish on it. And that's what happened. You may never get another bite on it, but on a two-fish day, this mattered. That's the kind of thing that drives me nuts."

And in that magic depth between sea and air came a rainbow of squirming fury.

Reel, pull, reel, pull, wave up, wave down, wave sideways, Lake Ontario all around us, over us, dark skies, bright fish, invisible line, sweat and stomach acid, wet feet and pasty skin, sea mist carrying the hopes of man and fish.

Man won. At least this time.

On board, a 2- or 3-year-old steelhead, caught on a silver and pink spoon Ken got mail-order from a company in the Northwest, pretty much an area known for steelhead catchin'.

Throughout the day, First and Only Mate Eric kept flipping open his cell phone, looking at it and shaking his head. I just took it to be text messages from his kids, but when I looked over his shoulder this is what I saw: Pac-Man about to gobble a white dot.

db: "What's that?"

First and Only Mate Eric: "That's the weather radar."

db: "Really? For where?"

F. &. O. M. E.: "Here."

Me: "Here where?"

Him: "Here here."

It's just starting to sink in, what his cell phone was saying, basically "RUN."

Him: "db, you see that white dot there?"

I did.

"You see all that green, yellow and red stuff around it, about to swallow it?"

You betcha.

"That would be the thunderstorm that is about to chase us down."

Yikes.

Very shortly after speaking those words — VERY SHORTLY — First and Only Mate Eric is getting really stern in the back of the boat, getting ready to stop trollin' and start haulin'.

I pop two more Dramamine, along with two white powdered donut holes.

At this point, Capt. Bob is standing at his captain's area, fiddling with captain things, looking at his cell phone, which also happens to feature the Pac-Man storm about to eat us.

With every flick of cigarette ash out the window, he scans the sky and pushes a stick forward a click.

Then he flips open the cell phone and actually TALKS into it: "Yeah we're coming in. It's getting pretty bad out here."

NOTE TO ALL CAPTAINS OF ALL THINGS THAT CAN BE CAPTAINED ANYWHERE, NO MATTER WHAT: When captaining next to a sickly white-looking guy popping Dramamine like M&M's, do not EVER say anything with the word bad in it, ever. EVER!

Below my feet, in the basement of the boat, Ali is just staring up at me. And she's licking her lips.

---

Back safely on the dock, with Tammy taking Ali to the side and feeding her a ham sandwich instead of a db sandwich, Capt. Bob explained to me what we did today.

Capt. Bob: "We ran a three-rigger set with three downriggers. We ran four dipsy-divers (UFO-looking things that pull the bait down and away from all the other baits on other UFO-looking things) and a lead core line.

"That's because the fish were in the top 35 feet, so we were spread out high and wide, out 12 feet wide. Those divers are probably out another 60 to 70 feet from the boat, so we were covering a wide path up high with bait and the lead core line was for the straggler fish that weren't around the boat (Ken hooked the Steelhead on the lead core line).

"I know the water coming out of the lower Niagara River was in the 70s. What I would have liked to have found was where that water was: That's the most stable water in the system right now, but we never found it."

Twenty-four hours later, though, we did.

The Lower Niagara River and smallmouth bass

The next day, I woke up dead.

Nine blocks north of me, in the Cook's motel room, sits a red and white cooler, filled with steelhead and salmon fillets.

I know how the fish feel.

The waves are still pounding me, and the river is ACROSS THE STREET.

I'm not happy and the Lower Niagara River is not happy, the latter having just taken a trip over NIAGARA FALLS.

But yet I know how the river feels.

Outside, there's nothing but rapids, whirlpools and swift current. Pretty much the same as what's going on inside me.

And I have to climb in a bass boat and go fish it. Or to be more precise, watch Ken and Tammy fish it, while I take a couple of pictures and mainly sleep. Waves, sun and a Dramamine hangover will do that to you.

Ken Cook, at least, has his bass jones on.

His baitcasting finger is twitching, his Costas are on tight (locked and loaded), and he's wearing his Triton blaze red hat and shirt.

Sponsors: I know what that means. This dude's going to be pointing some fish toward my Canon, come hell or db puking on high water.

"db," he says, "smallmouth like current ... "

db, by the way, does not.

" ... they like current breaks ... "

I'm just listening. This guy is a college-educated fish biologist, a past Bassmaster Classic winner who has been snatching bass out of the water as a pro for the past 26 years and was chosen by BASS as one of the top 35 anglers of all time. Who would argue with him?

And besides, I have a headache.

"...they like the little slow spots by rocks."

db likes slow spots ... but rocks, not so much.

We shove off at precisely 30 minutes after we said we would leave — at 9 a.m. sharp.

Tammy has her smiling face on, Ken has his game face on, Ali has her, you-people-aren't-plying-me-with-chicken-treats-NOT-THIS-GUY-AGAIN snout on. (But regardless of her affect, Ali nontheless greets me with a swift upward nose jab in my smallies.)

We launch from the Old Fort Niagara State Park boat ramp and troll out under the shadow of the fort, ancient canons still perched and pointed in the direction of our freedom.

Within three swigs of my coffee, a flurry of activity begins, signaled by Ali shooting from the back of the boat to the front deck, as though she felt the twitch of the rod simultaneously with Ken.

And there it is — a lower Niagara River smallmouth. Both Ken and Ali are smiling.

Another golden retriever blur signals another hooked smallmouth, this time by Tammy, in the back of the boat. Snap, click, whirl: a smiling Tammy and Ali.

After bassin' some, we go sightseeing. We head upriver, under the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge, which connects Americans to our northern neighbors (where gas is sold by the liter, mind you) and to Buffalo Bills games in Toronto. And if you kept going, you'd wind up heading directly into a whirlpool, rapid, or other water hazard that's been pretty much posted "no bass boats."

Ken turns the boat starboard or port (it was actually to the left, so you guys who drive boats explain it to those around you who don't) and we rocket out of No-Bass-Land and head back toward Old Fort Niagara and to one of the best public potties on EARTH.

(Dudes, they had a vase of flowers in the men's john.)

It was at this point that Ali resumes being the top dog: I had no idea in Ken's bass boat that I had been sitting in the dog seat. And Ali had been none too pleased about it.

Tammy is sitting on the step between Ken and me, both arms around Ali, who's facing me, a mere 3 inches from my mug. Looking at me, snout to crooked nose, blue Costas to brown eyes, Ali's nose is twitching, communicating her unhappiness in dogspeak about the human squarely in her seat.

And she's drooling. Spittle everywhere, but mostly on me.

Ken Cook, later: "I looked over and saw all these spots on db's shirt, and I knew where that was coming from."

Not lower Niagara River spittle. Dog spittle.

It seems, dog slobber flows downstream.

Ali's revenge.

On the future

It's 7:30 a.m.

Not a bass in sight.

Tammy's out with Ali, taking photographs of the alphabet in the wild (more to the point, they're looking for naturally-occurring shapes that look like letters, and after a couple of Coronas, it becomes easier).

I'm sitting with Ken Cook at a booth in an almost-deserted Denny's.

He orders eggs that run, while I order eggs that stay. He orders ham, while I summon a double-order of bacon.

Ken is nearing 62. I'm 56, which in my case is the new 83.

We have hundreds of these meals between us.

A man's life can pass before him while eating a plate of pancakes.

Over several cups of coffee, Ken talks, and I take notes; I nod and chew on a slice of bacon much like a swizzle stick.

Ken's future is the invisible meal on the table between us.

Ken, on the Empire Chase

"Last year, after the tournament in Buffalo, I spent a week fishing Lake Erie out of Dunkirk, N.Y. Even though it's 40 to 45 miles south of Buffalo, the glacier that carved these lakes left more boulders down there. It's a great structural habitat, a lot more bigger smallmouth in 35&ndash40 feet of water. Every other one was a 4-pounder. Depth is still the key, 35 feet or so. A west wind in Buffalo will muddy up the water; bass are not as happy or active in muddy water."

Then comes another cup of coffee.

Ken, about Tammy

"Having Tammy on the road with me these last four years has revitalized our marriage. I was asked what my greatest moment was, and I thought about that a lot ... and it has to be marrying Tammy. My whole life changed and it helped me reach the level I did. In fact, it was on our honeymoon that I won my first bass event. We became a team — and our marriage did it."

On their first date, they went fishing. Tammy was a Bass-N-Gal Rookie of the Year and often fishes the back of the boat with Ken when he is practicing for a tournament, including the treacherous waters of Lake Erie. They will be married 26 years this November.

Another pour: coffee, black.

Ken, on his future

"db, this may be it for me."

I put the pen down.

I know I won't need to take notes to remember what this great man of fishing is about to say. If the pen is the sword, when you lay it down, you give the other man the respect he is due.

"I feel a great kinship with Brett Favre," Ken Cook continues. "Not only do I admire him for what he's done, but I think we share the same desire and enthusiasm. It's tough to just walk away from that, to one day just stop.

"Sitting home, I'll be dying. For the last 26 years I've done nothing but this, nothing but."

I'm not sure if he will be doing nothing. He has been developing what he calls the Tarbone Ranch on his property: It's a 320-acre, high-fenced, intensely-managed hunting preserve that features whitetail deer, elk and buffalo.

He's also been crunching bass tournament data, and has come up with a pattern-based forecasting system, based on 600 tournaments spread over 20 years. "Basically, if a guy goes on vacation and wants to save money on gas on a lake that's new to him," he says, "I can put in his data and tell him where it might be best for him to fish that lake and be on fish."

I've sat at tables like this before with athletes like Ken, all facing their biggest foe, time. Once, they were the best of the best.

"db, if you sit back and look at my career, I should have stopped by now. The last two years, I've been like crap. You just want to go out on top, I just don't know if I can reach the top again."

Bad knees, an aching back and iffy sponsorship money keeps him up nights.

"If I can make the 12 cut on the next two events, that will tell me I'm still good enough to compete," he says. "I need to be in it to win it. I don't want to be a good loser. It does NOT depend on whether I want to — my WANT TO never goes away."

Two nights later, Ken and I find ourselves at a picnic table on a campground where I'm RV'ing it with several other Bassmaster Elite pros and their families.

Ken and Kevin Short have just spent a couple of hours working on tackle, talking and grilling the salmon and steelhead snatched out of Lake Ontario.

It's a table filled with fillets, potato salad, Grandma Brown's baked beans, and a Boston cream pie to die for. Kevin, Ken and Kerry Short are on one side, while Steve Kennedy, Tammy Cook and my wife Barb and I are on the other.

I'm sitting directly across from Ken. And as I pick at my salad, I keep hearing one of the last things he said to me over the breakfast at Denny's: "My legacy, I hope, would be that I loved to introduce young people to the outdoors. I hope that my legacy is that I helped people enjoy the outdoors."

Ken, buddy, for me, you've certainly done just that.

— db

Don Barone is a member of the New England Outdoor Writers Association. Other stories of his can be found on Amazon.com. For comments or story ideas you can reach db at www.donbaroneoutdoors.com