By Eric M. Johnson

The biggest blue gill I ever caught was by acci­dent, while I was being chas­tised by a secu­ri­ty guard at Ham­burg­er Uni­ver­si­ty, McDonald’s leafy man­age­r­i­al train­ing cen­ter that’s part of the corporation’s 80-acre head­quar­ters in sub­ur­ban Chicago.

When a friend and I drove through their cor­po­rate labyrinth – a delib­er­ate­ly idyl­lic ham­let replete with a heli­pad, a group of banal build­ings, and a series of inter­con­nect­ed path­ways and lakes – I spied a very fish­able small pond below a dec­o­ra­tive stone bridge. The rip­ples from my first cast were still vis­i­ble on the water when the guard’s car pulled up.

“You can’t fish here,” called the uni­formed guard. As she spoke, a mas­sive blue gill ascend­ed the depths and pun­ished my crankbait lure. A sym­pho­ny of ZZZZs roared out of the rod as the fish swam away. ​“Fish on!” I yelled, which star­tled my bud­dy, who was enjoy­ing a cig­a­rette in the car, pulled over some 50 yards away.

I could feel the guard’s eyes burn­ing a hole in my back as I final­ly reeled up the fish. ​“What a fish!” I said, smil­ing at the guard, who I assumed would rev­el in my joy. I was wrong. The guard, who seemed duti­ful­ly angry but equal­ly stu­pe­fied by my audac­i­ty, reached for her phone. I knew what that look meant.

The cig­a­rette all but dropped out of my buddy’s mouth as he watched me run­ning toward the car hold­ing my rod in one hand and a flap­ping blue gill in the oth­er, yelling, ​“Go, go, go!”

We lit out of there quick­ly enough to shirk arrest. McDonald’s doesn’t allow fish­ing on its $40-mil­lion cam­pus. (At one point it was allowed, an ami­able guard told me before he kicked me out, but the trash got to be too much and they enact­ed a ban. Accord­ing to the university’s secu­ri­ty office, the rule change occurred after a drown­ing.) I’ve been caught and boot­ed out of the cam­pus a dozen or so times; you just can’t beat its fil­let o’ fish.

In the annals of Mid­west­ern fish­ing, some of the best water is on pri­vate lands, lord­ed over by peo­ple who incur great expense to sur­round them­selves with ​“nat­ur­al” beau­ty – and to keep out those who’ll actu­al­ly enjoy it. I don’t seek out pri­vate water for the gid­dy recal­ci­trance it affords (though that is cer­tain­ly part of it); I fish pri­vate water because there are fish there. And, in my opin­ion, the more mon­ey a cor­po­ra­tion spends land­scap­ing a huge swath of land, the more they should let peo­ple respect­ful­ly enjoy it.

I also love the rugged, beau­ti­ful – albeit some­times imi­ta­tive – seren­i­ty and prox­im­i­ty pri­vate land affords. I can’t afford a boat and often can’t spend five hours dri­ving to a Michi­gan blue rib­bon trout steam. But I can run up to the pri­vate lake two local teenagers showed me near New Buf­fa­lo, Mich., hump it through the brush, and catch bass. 

Speak­ing of which, the biggest large­mouth bass I’ve ever land­ed was tak­en from a quar­ter-acre pond inside ​“a dis­tin­guished resort com­mu­ni­ty that has been per­fect­ed and pre­served for gra­cious liv­ing,” accord­ing to its website.

I’m not a member.

I spot­ted the glim­mer­ing translu­cent waters while dri­ving on a dusty road out­side of Petoskey, Mich., a few sum­mers ago. I pulled over, grabbed my rod and net, and in less than 10 min­utes was 100 yards into the resort and into a fight with a 6‑pound bass that couldn’t resist my quiv­er­ing top-water lure. The key is being all rigged up before tres­pass­ing. That way, I was back behind the wheel and the fish was on ice before the scowl­ing con­do­mini­um own­er yelled to her hus­band: ​“Call the police!”

To me, it is absurd to keep sport­ing peo­ple out – as long as they are respectful.

My fish­ing trips are qui­et and min­i­mal­ist. I restrain my exces­sive, top-of-the-food chain impuls­es. Instead of doing any­thing I can to catch fish – like, I don’t know, using gill nets – I mim­ic the way their ecosys­tem func­tions and trick fish into eat­ing some­thing unnat­ur­al, like a hook wrapped in feath­ers and wire, or a rat­tling plas­tic lure. I don’t use live bait, which can dis­rupt an ecosys­tem. Fish­ing is not just how many fish you catch, but how those fish were caught. I’ll only kill a fish for food, and only if its habi­tat is envi­ron­men­tal­ly healthy. Most impor­tant, I try to leave the waters I fish unchanged by my pres­ence – which, despite my best efforts, can some­times include the fish population.

The worst I have ever been skunked was at dusk at the per­fect­ly man­i­cured fair­way ponds of But­ler Nation­al Golf Club, also in Oak Brook. The club costs $150,000 to join; you also have to be male. ​“We don’t let women past the dri­ve­way when they drop us off,” one well-heeled mem­ber (who I told I was inter­est­ed in join­ing) chuck­led to me.

Well, Tyler Davis (whose pho­to­graph accom­pa­nies this piece) and I are a few zeros short of the entrance fee, so we had to scale a chain-link fence and crouch-run from tree line to tree line to fish the fairway’s ponds. We didn’t get a bite, but it was nice to see how the oth­er half lives.

Not all peo­ple have a what’s‑mine-is-mine men­tal­i­ty, though.

On a recent fly fish­ing trip to the Big Green Riv­er in south­west Wis­con­sin, a vet­er­an fish­ing guide and I want­ed to fish a stretch of spring creek that weaved through the pris­tine rolling hills of a large dairy farm. But the water, which weaved low and cold through the brush, was pri­vate and sur­round­ed by barbed wire used to keep the roam­ing cows inside.

The guide I was with, Jim Bartelt, knew the farmer, so we asked to enter his land. He oblig­ed and we humped it to the clos­est rif­fle and nymphed for trout. Of the dozen or so I caught (and released) that day was a 19-inch, tro­phy brown trout, teased out from an under­cut bank by a cad­dis­fly pupa imitation. 

After­ward, when we were strip­ping off our waders and pack­ing up, the farmer’s 20-some­thing son stopped by our truck while head­ing back to the farm­house on his ATV. He didn’t know Jim or me, but he knew the grins on our faces and asked how we did.

After regal­ing him with sto­ries of our suc­cess, we told him about a blue plas­tic con­tain­er of dead wax worms and the squashed beer cans we cleaned up along the stream’s bank. His lips pursed and he let out an epi­thet not suit­able for this fam­i­ly mag­a­zine. Then he thanked us, and called out as he drove away on his ATV, ​“You guys are wel­come here anytime.”