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







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