Wednesday, May 30, 2007

 

ON CREATING A MONSTER


ON CREATING A MONSTER

The generation before us used to warn us about dope fiends.

Don’t know that I ever ran into one of those, but I’m sorry to say that I may have – with the best of intentions – created a fishing fiend.

For years I have advocated taking kids fishing. Introduce them to the natural world by way of a river or lake, I preached. Let them learn the singular pleasure of learning to make a cast go exactly where you wanted it to go. Of watching wild ducks and Canada geese fly by you in early morning and late evening at shoulder height. Of learning to identify salamanders and baby turtles and an occasional muskrat as they swim by at your feet. Of watching a great blue heron stalk its prey in shallow water, or a kingfisher cracking the surface of the water for minnows.

Youngsters are increasingly difficult to convert to tomorrow’s anglers. They have too many other distractions ranging from video games to text-messaging each other on cell phones.

But new wives. Ah, there’s a different story.

Brenda had never caught a fish until just a few weeks ago. We spent a week and a half in one of the cottages at Hungry Mother State Park where while casting something (I’ve forgotten what) in the park lake, she caught a sunfish.

She couldn’t have been more excited if it had been Moby Dick and she was Gregory Peck with the movie cameras on her.

Since I’d already bought her fishing license for the Hungry Mother trip, I decided when we got back home to spring for a $40 push-bottom Rhino rod and reel, packaged and ready to go.

Well, almost ready.

I removed the monofilament line that comes on all pre-packaged fishing outfits – which invariably has the diameter and stiffness of surgical stitches – and replaced it with good 6-pound-test Berkley line.

Understand now, we live on the banks of the North Fork of the Holston River in Scott County. We’re so close you could throw a 3/8-ounce spinnerbait in the river from the porch on a good morning if you wanted to. But no one wants to. Best to walk a few steps down the bank and fish from the edge.

I probably forgot to mention that the North Fork just happens to be one of the best smallmouth bass rivers in Virginia. It ranks up there pretty close to the New and James rivers.

Brenda’s first half dozen casts were – well, less than expert. Most landed about a yardstick from her feet. But soon she got the hang of releasing the button on the reel at just the right whip
forward. Her lure – a non-promising-looking solid white plastic minnow – started arching impressively out across the green river. Now she was fishing.

Once she’d mastered the cast and started making retrieves that covered half the river – including coming through a couple of deep channels – I heard a combination of screams, whoops and what might have been curses.

"Help me! I can’t get it in," she shouted. "It’s trying to take it away from me."

The rod was bent and throbbing in a most satisfactory manner, and then I saw the big bass jump several yards from shore. Ye gads! I might have needed a little aid myself to get such a fish on light line. I rushed to her side as she brought the bass into shallow water, stepped out into the river myself, and used the lower lip of the fish to lift a three and one-half to four-pound smallmouth from the water.

Brenda was still running in place.

I gently released the bass back into the river. After all, the North Fork is Virginia’s only trophy catch-and-release bass stream. You can’t keep any bass under 20 inches, and then you can keep only one a day over 20 inches. It’s a protective measure instituted by the Virginia Game Department to allow bass to reproduce and grow, and it seems to be working very well.

In subsequent days, she proceeded to lose several more good bass, probably by not setting the hook quickly enough. Another monster broke her line right at the bank.

She has graduated to spinner baits now (they’re great lures this time of year) and she continues to get rod-bending strikes with an occasional bass that she gets to the bank.

And she’s gone fishing crazy on me. On days when the temperature is below 90 degrees and things look calm and inviting on the North Fork, she’s on the riverbank – casting, casting, casting every spare moment.

She has caught more pretty bass in the past three weeks than I’ve caught in three years.

And therein lies the problem. I’m out of clean underwear and she can’t find time to do the wash. Dustballs are piling up and clinging to my flip-flops. Even on this beautiful mid-week morning, she’s down there fishing while the dog and I go hungry. The dog has as good an idea of how to fix breakfast as I do.

Creating a fishing monster if not something I’ll do if I ever get married again. But then I won’t. I’ve got a companion who has found a new lease on life, even if the dog and I are having a hard time of it. She invariably comes off the riverbank with a big smile on her face.

A couple of days ago, I even heard her allude to the a cliché that every veteran angler uses.

"You know," she said, "it’s so quiet and peaceful and so much fun down on the river that sometimes it doesn’t make any difference whether you catch any fish or not."

Spoken like a veteran. A fanatic veteran.

END







Wednesday, May 23, 2007

 

SOUL FOOD FOR THE FISHERMAN


Everybody move back a step. I want to explode a myth.

Despite what you may have heard, fishermen do not gobble down stuff that would gag a Toggenburg goat and call it a meal. Not all the time anyway.

Quite naturally, fishermen hear a different dinner bell when it comes time to eat.

By necessity, their choice of food on rivers and lakes leans in the direction of what you might call "the basics." Remember, it isn’t always convenient to fry fritters on a boat paddle.

But that doesn’t mean fishermen aren’t cultured people, or that you should be afraid to invite one to dinner when friends are visiting from centers of culture such as Bulls Gap or Norton.

It’s just that fishermen unerringly show a preference for the simple instead of the complex, the familiar instead of the esoteric.

In other words, rat cheese over Rambouillet. Baloney over Brie.

The problem with fishermen’s food is that no one gives it much thought. Today you can buy cutesy prepackaged meals for almost any endeavor except fishing.

Want to hike a mountain? First, check out the latest issue of "Charge! The Mongolian Mountain Climber’s Journal." It lists a dozen outlets for lightweight, nutritious foods. Plan to rob a bank and run from the law for two weeks? Here. Take several of these packages along.

To compensate, fishermen must think ahead. They must do what the food industry refuses to do.

Take Elmer, my old friend and Southwest Virginia boyhood idol. In an arid world where grownups bragged they were too busy to fish, Elmer was a refreshing oasis of a man. He took the time to go fishing. And to take a boy.

Elmer made something he called "carp bait." Perhaps I’ll forget an ingredient or two, but the end result was a humongous biscuit about the size of a ’48 Buick hubcap. I seem to recall he used flour, buttermilk, molasses maybe, and vanilla extract for sure. He may have used cotton batting to hold it all together, but too much time has passed and I’m not certain.

What I can be sure of is that Elmer was a man ahead of his time, a visionary if you will. You think we ever went hungry on the banks of the North Fork of the Holston River?

Not hardly. When the carp weren’t biting, we’d eat the bait.

Today there’s plenty of packaged and tinned junk on the market. Fishermen often have to buy it to keep body and soul together while on the water.

Even worse, much of what’s available comes straight from store to river with built-in problems.

Let’s consider the greatest lifesaver of them all, the ubiquitous Vienna sausage.

How do you get the first one out? Do you dig in with your fingernails? Even if you’re fishing with nightcrawlers?

The first Vienna sausage you go for is invariably in the center of the can. Without fail, it breaks off in the middle. How do you get the other one out, now that your mind is on fishing worms?

I’m not through with Vienna sausage yet.

What do you do with that unidentifiable juice at the bottom of the can? Is it an outdoor elixir? Do you turn it up, drink it and howl at the moon?

From a practical standpoint, do you pour it overboard and create a chum line beside the boat?
And what in heaven’s name do you do with the stuff in winter when it congeals like Jell-O in the can and on the sausages?

And finally, once the meal is finished, do you dare read the contents of the can to your fishing partner, who as a matter of course, carries Maalox in his tackle box where his pork rind jar is supposed to be, and who is scheduled for stomach surgery on Monday?

If you’re looking for something to eat while fishing, forget much of the pretentious health food with an outdoor orientation and pictures of mountains on the package.

I love trail mix as much as anyone, but I love it because it contains enough sugar to satisfy the most desperate need for a dextrose high.

Truth is, you have to be flexible.

One day many years ago Elmer and I were going carp fishing. First, though, he had to stop by a store and pick up a couple of ingredients for his carp dough.

Elmer needed buttermilk. Trouble is, we went to a new store where the owner didn’t know Elmer, and therefore didn’t know what he was looking for. Elmer couldn’t pronounce buttermilk, and neither of us could spell it.

We settled that delightful day for RCs in glass bottles and big thick Moon Pies.

If you can find them, they still make a memorable combination.

END








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