Читать книгу Reeling In Time with Fish Tales - Brian E. Smith - Страница 11

“Come on, we’re going to Aunt Quida’s house!” Mom told me to my total surprise. It was a three-mile ride I didn’t want to make. She didn’t give me time to make an excuse why I couldn’t go. In my opinion, listening to two women talk, about everything I didn’t care anything about, would waste a gorgeous, summer afternoon. They could talk for hours, say goodbyes for half an hour in the doorway, go home, and then talk on the phone for an hour, or more, that evening. Don’t get me wrong; I loved Uncle Russ and Aunt Quida and their daughters Cindy, Ann, Cathy, and Suzy. They had been friends since Dad and Russ were in the Army decades before my time. After Dad got out of the Army, he moved Mom and me to Virginia Beach, Virginia to be near to Uncle Russ, Aunt Quida, and the girls. They were as close as or closer than the family we left in West Virginia. Nonetheless, sitting around listening to two women talk was not something a young boy likes to do. Besides, Uncle Russ was at work and the girls were out, so it was just Mom, Aunt Quida, and I in the house. It didn’t take long for me to become bored out of my mind.

I presently found myself outside, walking down a typical middle class neighborhood street, kicking a rock along with me. About a quarter mile from Aunt Quida’s house, there was a small bridge that crossed over a canal three times the size of a good ditch. Heading for it, I am drawn to water like the proverbial moth to the flame.

One side of the bridge had a pedestrian walkway. A third of the way across, I stopped and popped my head over the railing. I noticed a beer can washed up against the rocks placed to prevent erosion around the bridge. It was making a soft, peaceful pinging sound. The brownish water slowly moved down stream, carrying with it a scattering of anything that would float, including some grass clippings, leaves, and a light peppering of trash blown into the water from here and there along the meandering stream. Tiny minnows flickered in wads around the rocks, looking for food.

I wondered if they would eat bread, so I walked back to Aunt Quida’s house to get a couple slices of bread for the minnows. They gave me the remains of a loaf of bread in the sack. The ladies were so involved in conversion that they didn’t even ask what I needed it for. With a “Sure, honey,” they just handed it off. In less than a half hour, I was back looking at the minnows in the canal. I rubbed a slice of bread between my hands as Dad had shown me at the lake. Crumbs rained down upon the water. Three or four clumps of bread dropped down with the crumbs. In a minute, the minnows had gobbled up the crumbs. The miniscule pieces of bread would disappear in the minnows when they swam up. The big clumps were slowly floating away in the flow, rung with feeding minnows, like cows around a slow moving hay bail. I bent over to get another slice of bread and something caught the corner of my eye. I popped my head over the rail to see a ring of water where a clump of bread used to be. Half a slice of bread I rubbed between my hands, before hastily breaking the rest of it into four pieces and letting it fall in the water.

The crumbs disappeared right away. A wad of minnows were working over the biggest piece of bread when they all scattered away, only to come back in a few seconds. I watched closely and they scattered again and didn’t come back. A big fish came up in front of the bread and slurped it off the surface! Wow! What was that? Breaking up two more slices of bread into random sized chunks, I tossed them on the water without making crumbs. I watched all the pieces at once. My head and eyes darted back and forth from one white ball of bread to the next, as if I was watching three tennis matches at the same time.

A fish came up behind one piece and slurped it down. I broke up the last three slices and put them in the water. In minutes, several large fish began feeding on the bread. Sometimes I could see almost the entire fish in the water. It was huge. Every one of them was ten pounds or better. I had found a mother lode of big fish. I couldn’t believe so many big fish were available so close to my house, and nobody knew about them. Apparently, many people went over the bridge in a day’s time, but nobody had the opportunity or inclination to look over the railing.

Ideas started flying around in my head. First thought; I needed to get back here immediately with a fishing pole and a loaf of bread. Big fish, so close to home, and I didn’t need a boat I didn’t have in the first place. I was Christmas morning excited.

How would I land the fish? The fish were too big to lift from the water up on the bridge, using just the fishing line. The line would break before the fish was out of the water. I ran around to where the bridge abutted land. It wasn’t a mountain goat trail, but tricky. For a twelve-year-old boy, it wasn’t bad. I quickly figured out a path to take and what rock to stand on to get the fish on land if things should happen as I planned. My mind was still a rush, figuring out the details, while riding back home with Mom, but I didn’t mention what I was thinking about.

“Are we going over to Aunt Quida’s today?” I asked Mom the next morning. She gave me a strange look to a question she thought I would never ask.

“No, we’re going shopping together tomorrow,” Mom said, and asked, “Why?”

“No reason, just wanted to know,” I nonchalantly replied. That bit of information meant no free ride to the bridge, so I had to apply plan B, my bicycle. I’ll ride over this evening after supper. Passing the math through my head, I figured I could hump it there in fifteen minutes or so.

***

“Did you taste it?” Dad asked, referring to supper.

“I guess I was real hungry. I’m going for a bike ride,” I said as I headed out the garage door. Secretly, I had rigged a medium weight, spinning rod that afternoon for fishing from the bridge. Rigging consisted of tying a number four bait holder hook to the end of ten-pound test main line. I decided to use bait holder hooks, thinking the barbs on the back of the hook shank would better hold wet bread on the hook.

Mom’s garage freezer was missing one loaf of wheat bread. I snitched it, stuffed it in my fishing creel, and set the creel in the sun to thaw the loaf all afternoon.

I thought holding a fishing pole in one hand while peddling, would be awkward travel, slowing me down. Something I didn’t have time for, even though the summer days were long. So that afternoon I had tied the fishing pole along the horizontal bar between the seat and the handle bars; the reel hung just forward of the seat, and the rod tip rode above the front tire. I looked like Sir Lancelot on joust with the fishing pole jutting out the front of the bike. I didn’t care what it looked like, because it worked great for me at the time. I believe we’re all given a small invisible booklet of crazy idea tickets at the beginning of life, and one ticket may be pure genius, but we can’t be too humble or ashamed to use the tickets in public in order to find the one that pays off. Think about it; somebody pulled a ticket that said “Pet Rock” and went for it.

The sound of the garage door closing was what I heard, after quickly grabbing the creel with the bread, hooks, bobbers, and other stuff already in it and hopping on the bike. Ten hard peddle pumps had the bike up to optimum cruise speed. I wove through the neighborhood streets, trying to guess the best crows-flight to the bridge. Twice, I found dead ends, but within fifteen minutes, I skidded to a stop at the foot of the bridge. I leaned the bike against the guardrail, hurriedly opened up the creel, took out the bag of bread, fingered two slices of bread from the bag, tore them to chunks, and tossed them in the water as chum. I next untied my fishing pole from the bike.

With hook in hand, I ripped the middle out of a slice of bread. I gently inserted the hook in the middle and lowered it over the railing. A gust of wind came from under the bridge, blowing the soft piece of bread off the hook into the canal. I ripped the middle out of another slice of bread, but this time, I kneaded a small piece of the center into dough and stuck the hook in the doughy part. I lowered it to the water, but in a matter of seconds, the bread became mushy. The hook sank through the middle, carrying with it a booger of dough. A fish skinned that piece of bread off the surface as I was bringing up my hook. That made a frustrating situation more frustrating to me. Now, I laugh thinking back; that bread not staying on a hook was a memorable frustration in my life. I didn’t know how carefree I was. That was then.

I looked on the ground at the two rings of crust. It came to me. The crust is tougher than the middle. I took the corner of crust off one of the rings and inserted the hook flat in the corner so it ran through the crust twice. It held fast. I lowered it over the rail into the water, watching as minnows began to nip the edges. The hook hung from the bread corner. I pulled line from the reel, so the bread would free float naturally in the light current. A lazy V wake came from down current toward the bread. The minnows scattered as a pair of lips protruded above the surface. I yanked. The fish slurped the bread down. I untangled the hook from a patch of weeds around the guardrail. Frustration, coupled with anticipation, spiked with a touch of fear, lead to a premature hook set. I got the hook untangled, checked the line for nicks, and tore off another corner of crust. My hands were shaking, trying to pin the bread on the hook like Barney Fife looking for his bullet in his front shirt pocket. I managed to get bread on the hook with just a prick to my finger. The bait was back in the water with a taint of my blood.

“Brian, relax!” I said to myself aloud, while sucking the blood from my fingertip. I slung my head back and forth to see if anyone was around to cash in my crazy ticket. It was cool; there was nobody within earshot.

I watched my bread intensely. Minnows came around it. The current was slowly moving the bread downstream. Where the bank cut back from the rock riprap, a small eddy formed. My bait was doing slow laps around the faint vortex. I gingerly pulled on the line in an effort to move the bait out of the sluggish whirlpool. The bait was just out of the influence of the eddy when the hook pulled free. The bread floated five feet past the eddy when a set of lips sucked it down.

I walked out on the bridge an extra pace or two to set my next bait out a little further from the bank. That simple adjustment, might allow my bait to flow downstream, without the eddy drawing it in. Minnows gathered as it floated gently down the stream. The popping noise you get when your straw sucks the bottom out of thick milkshake came from directly under my bait. It was gone in a pop.

The fishing line, floating on the surface behind the bait twitched, and then shot down. The line tightened quickly. I don’t remember if I helped by setting the hook or not, but I do remember the rod being bent double in my hands. The power of that fish was far more than I expected. Line peeled off the reel against a firm drag.

Calm down, calm down, I kept thinking to myself. This was the biggest and most powerful fish I had ever had strike my line in my life! Solo, ten feet above, and fifty feet away from the object of my desire, I was inventing bridge fishing on a need to figure out basis. A car passed by in the heat of my battle, but I didn’t realize it until the horn tooted.

“Get ’em, son,” a man yelled out the window. It broke my concentration. Strangely, I felt somewhat heroic, in an embarrassing way. In a blink, I was back to the fish at hand. The fish swam across the canal to the right, then stopped, and ran back to where it came from. Tense minutes passed with each give and take of the line. It took time, but I managed to work the fish to the bridge. The fish was giving its last efforts directly below me.

I have to get around the guardrail and down on the rocks to land this fish. Somehow, I needed to play out enough line to give me room to swing around the guardrail, while keeping just enough tension to hold the fish, but not so much to pull the fish against the rocks, where it would surely breakaway. Things were getting complicated! My mind was racing faster than my body could respond.

The fish surfaced semi-tilted to its belly, and lay cradled in slow moving brown water. I won! I won! I thought, as I was moving off the bridge toward the bank. However, with a headshake, the thin lip skin that had tethered the fish and I together tore, and the hook fell away. The fish wallowed off, exhausted. I stood in silence at the end of the bridge, my mind screaming. Nooooo! Nevertheless, it was over. The biggest fish of my life was gone. I had no words for my disappointment. Like the words that you search to say to a dear friend at a funeral, the silent, uncomfortable moment ends in a long wet-eyed hug. Crushed, I reminded myself it wasn’t nearly that bad. I was young.

What did I do wrong? How could I have prevented that? What should I have done differently? There was no one there to get answers from; I had to figure it out on my own.

I decided to try casting from down on the rocks. From there, I wouldn’t have to worry about making the trek down from the bridge. If I started where I needed to finish, it would eliminate a large part of the problem. It made sense, but it was near impossible to cast a quarter-slice of bread. It was like throwing a kite against the wind. It just wouldn’t work.

In addition, I had the sensation that the fish were aware of my presence. The fish were accustomed to the car noises crossing over the bridge, but weren’t used to a shadow figure next to them on shore. For some unknown reason, I felt unwelcome on the rocks. I trusted my little voice and left.

I needed to get the bread from the bridge, carried by the current to the fish. What would happen if I lowered the bread from the bridge then swung around the guardrail before the fish took the bait? When I tried it, however, a loop of line formed as I moved around the guardrail, down on the rocks. The line loop produced enough resistance to either usher the bait next to the rocks or pull the hook from the bread. That idea didn’t work either.

I needed to fish from the bridge because it was the only way to be effective. When a fish was hooked, I had to manage my way quickly, around to the landing rocks, in the early part of the battle. That was when there was enough line out to let me swing around the guardrail.

The letdown taught me that if the fish was too close to the bridge, I had painted myself into a corner with fishing line. Nevertheless, would there be a next time? At least I had a game plan, if it happened.

I tore the centers out of three slices of bread. The big centerpieces, I broke into quarter-sized wafers and trickled them over the bridge to form a loose chum train. A big hunk of corner crust was the caboose, carrying the hook. I watched and waited, playing out line from the reel so the caboose kept up with the bread train in the sluggish current. The lead locomotive piece of bread made its way down the canal, carrying an entourage of minnows. The second piece of bread slipped down the canal with its following of minnows, as well. The third piece vanished off the top of the water, sucked up by a Mick Jagger set of lips. As was the fourth, fifth, sixth etc… the crust was the next in line. Rhythmically, on by one, they disappeared.

I flipped the bail over, letting the slack line play out before setting the hook with the upward sweep of the rod. The pole doubled over with an explosion in the middle of the canal. The fish bolted down current taking line, squealing the reel drag. Holding the rod high in the air, I hip-swung around the nearest part of guardrail like working a pommel horse in the gym, watching the fish as I went down the rocks. I stumbled when a rock the size and shape of a bowling ball rolled under my foot. Reflexes kicked in so fast I impressed myself, but I realized from there on I had to watch where I was going until I made it to the water’s edge. Balancing on the rocks, I took up line when it was given to me, letting line go when the fish demanded. Twenty feet off the rocks the sowbelly got the first glimpse of me. It got scared, bolting straight down the canal for thirty some feet. The spool on the reel burned around. I touched the revolving spool with my index finger to assist the drag. It was the first time I had ever done that. Instead of fumbling with the knob on top of the spool to adjust the drag, I simply applied light pressure with my finger; pressure I could apply or take away at any time with a fine and infinite adjustment. I had learned how to do something important in fishing during a need to figure out situation. I learned how better to play a fish, using a spinning reel.

After a few minutes of easy give and take, the fish was worn out. Exhausted, lying on its side, cradled in a form-fitted, low lump of brown water close to the rocks. I was standing near my pot of gold, it was just out of reach. It was going to be a delicate situation getting the fish from the water without tumbling in myself. The rocks were far from a sandy spot on which to slide the fish up. I had to think about things before doing anything stupid. With my right side facing the water, I held the rod horizontally with the rod tip four feet directly over the fish. I squatted down, tilting the rod tip up and backwards, while pushing the rod away from me, as far as my left arm would reach. The fish slid across the surface of the water toward me. My right fingers gently slipped under the gill plate of a very tired fish. I stood up heaving a fifteen pound, plus, carp from the water.

It was awesome! I set the rod on the rocks and took my left hand to support the tail section. It was awesome. Armored in huge, thick, hard scales, and colored brilliant orange with brownish black trimmings, it was a beautiful specimen. The eye was a large white marble with a big black pupil. The fins were overly sturdy. The mouth was a reddish protruded toilet plunger that disturbingly, sucked at the raw air. I had to look away from the mouth to admire the rest of the fish. After thinking about it, I realized what I found hard to look at, the mouth. It did have form, and function for a fish that sucked up its food. A short straw for a mouth was the perfect feeding tool.

I held my first trophy fish, for me, and there was nobody there. Alone on the rocks below a bridge on a drainage canal, I was as proud of my fish as any of the saltwater guys I’d seen photographed at a marina with their citation fish. I thought about taking it home to show Mom and Dad, but that would have been an ordeal on a bicycle. There was no need to kill the fish anyway. I held the fish straight up and down with my right hand still under the gill plate and leaned it against my leg with the tail just touching the ground. It came up to my hip. I became excited at the thought of me saying, “and it was this long,” while marking my hip with my finger. I bent over and put the fish back in the water. In a couple of seconds, it swam off in a lazy manner.

It was a perfect moment for reflection, but I was young and the only thing on my mind was getting back up on that bridge and getting another fish. That evening I caught two more carp that looked like brothers of the first fish. Twelve minutes before hard dusk, I pulled myself away from the bridge, readied my bike with my joisting rod, and peddled off to home.

I cruised into the driveway to find my dad finishing some yard work. He looked at my two-wheeled, rod-carrying contraption and smiled.

“What have you been doing?” he asked.

I hopped off the bike and answered, “I’ve been catching trophy worthy carp by Aunt Quida’s house,” with as much brazen inflection as I felt I could get away with.

“You got some big ol’ carp, Champ?”

I answered John Wayne style in a twelve-year-old voice, “Yes, sir,” then blathered on and on like Mom and Aunt Quida on the phone, telling Dad about the big fish and how I figured out how to catch it. He listened to things I ranted about three times as night fell on my recollections. He put his arm around me as we walked into the garage light.

“So what do you think about that, Dad?”

“I think you’re growing up, Champ.”