Monster Bream, Unskilled Fisherman and Don’t Rock the Canoe
I don’t know if fishing is a metaphor for life or life is a metaphor for fishing. At any rate, I just may be angling for readers but here’s my story.
The dirt road, actually just two worn wheel tracks, ended at a rustic two-story log cabin. Beside the cabin, a ten-acre pond sparkled in the sunlight. Tall pines and oaks edged up to a ring of underbrush framing the mirrored surface. A small break in the undergrowth allowed access for canoes or small boats. It was fisherman heaven.
Access to the pond in Lancaster Neck was limited by No Trespassing signs and a chain across the half mile dirt road but I had permission and a key. While I was an unskilled fisherman, this pond was renowned for its bass and bream and my friends and I took full advantage of it.
We were in our late twenties and would go out on weekends, sometimes for the day and sometimes “camping” overnight. I only call it camping because we slept in sleeping bags on the floor of the log cabin. The cabin, while dusty and the haunt of Halloween-sized cobwebs, was well constructed with a big open room highlighted by a walk-in fireplace and a quirky sheet- metal chandelier. A kitchen and a bedroom completed the downstairs.
Two more bedrooms were upstairs with a gallery walkway. The beds had not been used in some time and we weren’t about to find out what might be lurking in those mattresses. The only heat was from the massive fireplace. It created a perfect fire for campfire ghost stories. No one would sleep upstairs and everyone listened for the creak of those stairs late at night.
Just below the cabin there was the cleared area for launching our boats. A line of stones was set into the water for about eight feet allowing us to step into the boat without getting wet.
We had several ways to fish the pond. There was an old aluminum john boat that came with the property and at first we would paddle it around the lake to find out the best places to cast our bait. Sometimes we would have someone with us who knew a little about fishing but usually our method was trial and error. Anyone who has not spent much time fishing has no idea how many great lures are irresistible to fishermen but shunned by the fish community.
Time and experience taught me that the trick to catching fish is to use bait they like to eat. Here’s an insider tip…worms and crickets beat hell out of those baits designed to look like worms and crickets.
We learned to cast the bait under the overhanging limbs for the bream. We always used ultra-light rods and open-face reels with four-pound test line. That made the line easy to cast under the low hanging undergrowth. Because we were armed with such lightweight gear, the scrappy bluegills stood a real fighting chance of swimming away to bite another day. I don’t know why they were worried…we would usually catch and release most of the fish. (You’d think word would get around the school). Red worms were the bait of choice for the fish…I wasn’t picky. Once we learned where and what to cast, the fun began. That pond was brimming with bream.
I once caught a bluegill that was so big I put it in a cooler and took it to a country store to be weighed. The owner of the store where I weighed it followed me out to the car trying to figure out where I had caught it. I had to keep the lake a secret because, even though the property was chained off at the road, poachers would still find ways through the woods around the chains.
A good friend, P. K. Harkey, learned to make fishing rods and made an ultra-lightweight one for me that I really loved. I paired it with a tiny silver-hued Shimano reel and it was a prized possession. It was so responsive that I could cast it under branches less than six inches above the water. I knew exactly where the big ones lived but let it slip my mind how strong those monster blue gills were.
Early one spring morning, while there was still a haze of fog above the lake, I made a perfect cast into a perfect spot and set my rod down for a few seconds to light a cigarette, (Don’t groan, it was the seventies and I quit). As I touched the lighter to the tip of the cigarette, the line jerked and before I could grab it, the rod and reel were out of the boat and traveling away and sinking like the barrels in “Jaws.” Unlike the barrel, the rod never surfaced. I miss that rod but hats off to the fish that could so easily make off with it. I think it’s the biggest fish I never caught.
The lake also produced the biggest bass I have ever personally seen. John McCrae and Banks McGinn, a couple of real fisherman, were in Dee Walden’s Zodiac boat and fishing across the lake from me and my Brother-in-law, Steve. I was fishing the bank for blue gills but they were after bigger game.
They had already caught a couple of two or three pound bass when I saw Banks pull back to set his hook. Nothing unusual there until I saw the boat moving forward pulled by the fish. Banks had a fight on his hands and after a good ten minutes, he reached into the water and lifted out a gigantic largemouth bass. Banks, like the true fisherman he was, had a scale in his tacklebox and the fish weighed in at over nine pounds. I was as open-mouthed as the bass when he removed the hook and lowered the gigantic fish back into the water.
Banks smiled at my amazement. “It was a female and she was fat with roe. She will populate your lake, plus, maybe someone else will get the thrill of catching her.”
I was mightily impressed. I would have tied the bass to the front of my car and paraded it through town like a successful deer hunter.
Another friend, Billy Davis, a trained architect and real craftsman, built a beautiful yellow canoe with a wood frame and canvas skin. It cut through the water with barely a ripple. I have never felt more serene or in touch with nature than I felt gliding silently across the glass smooth surface of the lake with the golds and reds of the trees surrounding me and their reflection mirrored on the pond. It was one of those experiences that we spend a lifetime wishing we could recreate.
The canoe rides were not always so idyllic. My life-long friend, John Morris, told me how much his father love to fish. John was not keen on fishing so I volunteered to take Mr. Morris out on the lake.
When we got to the lake, there was a problem. Right at the launch area and hanging above the canoe was a wasp nest about a foot in diameter and fully loaded. It took a few minutes for my brain to process the solution. We did not have any wasp spray and so improvisation was the order of the day. I did have a double-barreled 12 gauge Stevens Savage shotgun. Standing far enough back for the pellets of the dove load to spread out properly and for me to have a head start if my plan didn’t work, I unloaded both barrels into the nest and, when the smoke cleared, bits of nest were scattered halfway across the pond and the few remaining wasps evidently wanted no part of me or my artillery.
I was proud of my ingenuity and all set to take Mr. Morris fishing in the canoe but there were two bits of information I didn’t have. One, Mr. Morris liked to fly fish and stand up to do so and two, he was not a swimmer. Standing up, fly fishing, non-swimmer, canoe. Add those up and you get a nerve-racked paddler who is trying to remember how to do a rescue hold and perform CPR and how to contact an ambulance from that remote location.
I shouldn’t have worried. Mr. Morris kept his balance and the caught the standard “Mess” of bream. We left the pond dry and Mr. Morris was just fine.
Thankfully, back home after several shots of nerve tonic, so was I.