KLAMATH FALLS — This week is May Day, the holiday on which people in the pre-television world grabbed brightly colored ribbons and danced in a circle around a pole. Normally, I humorize things a little in my column, but do I need to here? I have a tiny fraction of English heritage, so I’m justified in saying it is one of the most trivial official holidays in the world.

Commercial

As a teacher, I search said world for jokes, quotes or videos to get my students’ attention. Come May 1, I play my favorite commercial.

Let me set the scene: An older man in uniform comes in, speaking German, and gives a younger man in uniform instructions before leaving. Almost immediately, an English voice comes over the intercom and says, “Mayday, mayday can you hear us? Over.”

Pause. It repeats “Mayday, we are sinking. We are sinking.”

The younger German man replies, in heavily accented English, “Hello. This is the German Coast Guard” and is interrupted by static.

The Brit repeats, “We are sinking.”

The German gets back on the radio and says, “What are you sinking about?”

I die every time.

It is a commercial for Berlitz, a company that aims to help you improve your English.

Without being able to see my students’ eye rolls and laughs in person, it’s just not the same, so I’ll share it with you: the people about whom I’ve been sinking. I mean, thinking.

Extreme

May Day also lets me shed the sinking feeling you get being stuck inside all winter. I join the handful of diehards who channel their inner Bruce Willis and fish some of the most intense conditions they’ll ever face because, well, cabin fever.

I do it because I long for the feeling of pitting myself against a comparatively mindless fish and winning. It’s finally spring, and spring is wonderful once the allergy medicine kicks in.

Some confused soul said, “April showers bring May flowers.” They were close; pull the “er” out of “flowers” because “April showers bring May flows” — and the ER. Flood-stage rivers and an intense desire to fish have put me in some dire situations over the years, but they’ve also given me some of my biggest fish.

In the short six weeks since my last ER visit (when I slammed my thumb in the car door at the coast), I’ve had a few close calls but no more stitches — most at the Link River.

The urban river in my hometown is my favorite. It has a nature trail popular with walkers, hikers and cyclists. It sits in a relatively steep canyon topped with vistas perfect for spying on unsuspecting fishermen below just trying to answer nature’s call behind a blackberry bush.

Over the years, invasive blackberries have made the river all-but-inaccessible across most of its short length, save for those who know the half dozen openings in the brambles and those stupid enough to fight through the thorns. As you may have guessed, I meet both criteria.

It’s both the best and toughest fishery in the entire Klamath Basin, but it’s only worthwhile for a few weeks in the spring, with May Day falling smack-dab in the middle of that time frame.

You won’t get 25 fish on your best day like you can in every other river here, but the fish you get in the Link are all big. In my four trips this year, I landed nine of 12 fish with only one fish under 23 inches. Not bad.

What I’m not telling you is that when the Bureau of Reclamation increased flows last week while I was fishing, the water knocked me over and swept away my old net. I lose more lures here than anywhere else, and if we’re being completely honest, I hooked a 29-inch brute the day I wrote this column that dove under a log, causing me to swim (OK, flail) out to in raging current, pull out the line and land it. I was soaking wet and bleeding, but smiling as it slipped into my new RS Nets USA Inshore net before quick photos, measurements and the release.

All this to say, I’m sinking about May Day because I know I’m going to get some massive fish, but I also know I’m going to lose a lot of gear, blood and self-respect in the process. This May Day, what are you sinking about?