Punderson Lake - Cleveland

August 27 2007, Punderson Lake, Punderson State Park, near Cleveland

Jud Shelnutt and his wife Marty run the little marina and concession for this state park lake. They’re here via serendipity. Last spring Jud arrived and asked about boat rentals and was told that the concessionaire had quit and would Jud like to run it. He and his wife had recently retired and they said yes.
The lake is almost a mile long and about a quarter mile at its widest point. I learn that it’s a “kettle lake” formed when a large block of ice broke off a glacier and created a depression. It’s one of Ohio’s few natural lakes and the largest kettle lake. I do know that it’s beautiful and bassy looking with underwater grasses and lily pads in the shallows.
Jud introduces me to Gilbert, the resident Great Blue Heron who guards the point that I pass as I motor out onto the main body of the lake. The lake also has at least one osprey whose dive-bombing I at first mistake for breaking bass. I am in an aluminum boat with an electric motor; gasoline motors are prohibited. And I of course start off with my trusty Senko, tossing it to shoreline pads and overhanging trees.
A graduate of Ohio State, Jud had a career as a newspaperman – 40 years, all in this area. He was an assistant editor, and he worked on sports, wire copy, even at the picture desk. Martha was a project manager and V.P. with National City Corp. For her final three years she directed a computer project to update the trust department. They will have been married 45 years next month.
My Senko finally gets a strike and I set the hook and bring in a 14-inch largemouth. But that will be the last bite I get along this lake’s absolutely wonderful shorelines. I will finally crack this lake’s code with only 40 minutes left to fish.
Jud loves to fish – his favorite thing other than his family and fixing up his house. He and Marty bought a fixer-upper when they retired and have been doing a major project each year: the basement, the deck, cutting down trees. He has fished lots of places: Tampa Bay, Santee Cooper, Canada. One place that’s still high on his want-to list is Alaska. “I want to pull those barn doors off the bottom.” (Halibut!) “And I’d love to catch some of those king salmon.”
Crows fly over the far treeline and as I watch them I see a splash on the water. It’s not an osprey. And it was not a carp. It was a bursting of the surface – like that of a predator fish chasing minnows. I continue to throw the Senko along the shoreline.
Jud and Marty met because of a blind date at Ohio State. Jud had a car and a friend told Jud that if he would drive him and his girlfriend he’d fix him up with Marty. He and Marty decided to meet in advance to see if they were compatible for the first date, and they were. “I impressed her,” Jud grins. “I had apparently used a multisyllable word on the phone that got her attention, and so when we met I presented her with a dictionary.” So they went on the date, and they married about a year later.
I drift along this shoreline and then spot a tight ball of small minnows dimpling the surface out towards the middle of the lake. I throw a long cast and reach them with the Senko. It sinks a couple of feet and then twitches. I set the hook and reel in a bass the same size as the first one. I scan the surface of this calm lake and see other schools of minnows and decide to spend my remaining time casting at them.
What’s the key to a long, successful marriage? Jud thinks, looks at me with his honest brow and pale blue eyes, and says, “I never really thought about it.” He pauses. “In my case I really honestly feel I’d be nothing without her.”
I throw the Senko at more schools of minnows without any more bites. I need something that will cover more water more quickly so I switch to a half-ounce Rat-L-Trap, blue-chrome. On the third cast to seemingly vacant water I catch another good bass. This one and the six more that follow will all be at least a pound, with one just over two pounds – all on the Rat-L-Trap. These bass really fight, and each one feels large all the way to the boat.
Jud doesn’t get to fish much with this job of renting boats and selling concessions. The best part of this work? “Talking to people. A kaleidoscope of interesting characters.”
He tells me one story from the kaleidoscope. “Just a few months ago a fellow stopped and asked if the fishing regulations had changed.” Jud tells me he looked like someone in the service, perhaps back from a stint in Iraq. Jud asked him where he’d been and he replied in prison – 16 ½ years. He then said he’d been convicted of murdering a young woman and it had taken him that long to clear himself. His name was Randy Resh, and a judge finally totally exonerated him and had just released him. And he wanted to go fishing. Jud asked him why he wasn’t showing any anger for being wrongfully imprisoned for so long. “I’m still overjoyed with being out,”was his reply.
The bass start cooperating big time on the Rat-L-Trap. My strategy is simple: keep casting and keep reeling as fast as I can. If I see minnows or surfacing bass, cast into them. If not, just pick a random direction. There are only 30 minutes left before I have to return the boat, so I can’t waste a second. At one point an eyelash gets into my eye, but I can’t spare a hand to remove it. At another point the boat swings around so that the setting sun is blaring in my eyes, but I don’t spare a hand even to adjust the bill on my cap. Just keep casting and reeling for these bass. As I said, I caught several.
I ask Jud what sort of fishing tips he gives folks here. “I ask the locals to see what’s working.” And does he have any fishing tips in general for the rest of the world’s locations? “Buy the oldest lures you can find; they’ve been around a long time because they work. Buy the best equipment you can afford. And realize that you’re never going to have the right lure for the next location, so allow some extra money to buy the lures that are best there.”
Naturally, as I bring the boat in with the bass still biting I mentally explore my schedule to see if I can possibly come back and catch more early tomorrow morning. No, I’ll have to wait until a future time.
Jud’s fishing these days is in bits and pieces around the dock area. Mostly he hears about it from others. “I’ve got five tackle boxes full of stuff, and about a dozen rods. And I’ve dabbled with fly fishing.” He says they signed a two-year contract here, and after that they’ll do something else.
Jud’s a nice fellow. You can tell that when you meet him. He’s tall and sturdy and straightforward and has warm eyes. I ask for some words to live by and he obliges: “Have a positive attitude. Believe in your fellow man. But carry that big stick from time to time. Most people will respect you if you’re honest and friendly.”

Photo: Jud Shelnutt and John Bryan at Punderson State Park

Shipman Pond - east of Cleveland

August 25 2007, Shipman Pond, east of Cleveland

The main campus of the Cleveland Clinic has ten million square feet, ten thousand nurses, and tens of thousands of other employees. The Clinic is a “smart house.” That is, its heating and cooling systems, its electrical systems, computer systems – everything – all talk to one another to work automatically and efficiently.
I am fishing now alongside Stephen A. Seifried who helps run the Clinic’s smart house system, and his two daughters: Camille and Analises, 11 and 8. I’m throwing a Senko. Stephen’s throwing a small Rapala minnow. Camille and Ana are throwing baited bobbers on spinning rods.
I found this little blue spot – Shipman Pond – on my map and drove here and discovered the tiny parking area just up the road next to the sign that identifies this as the Mentor Marsh Nature Preserve. The pond is shallow and weedy and has absolutely no access except from the little road that crosses it – 200 feet or so. The pond widens into two acres on each side of the road, and snakes its channel beneath the road’s little bridge.
Stephen lives just up the road – the fourth house – in this community that is just a few stones’ throw from Lake Erie. (Today’s winds have put Lake Erie off limits to small craft and shoreline anglers.) Stephen grew up in Ohio and learned to fish from his grandfather. He moved to this neighborhood 12 years ago – just before Camille was born. Thus his daughters have grown up fishing right here where we now stand.
I arrived at this pond 20 minutes ago and climbed through the railings to a perch where the pond passes under road. Directly across the pond’s channel from me – 30 feet or so - sat two scoundrels – young men with suspicious eyes and dirty sneers. I hailed them with something like, “Doing any good?” and they muttered something and turned away. Then as I tied on a Senko, they both cast their heavy-weighted lines directly in front of me, 10 feet out from my perch, thus blocking my fishing access to the pond.
Okay, fine.
I had already seen their stringer dangling into the water between them; it contained one bluegill, a nice one. And now I was about to be very lucky and put their bluegill to shame. The only water available to me was up under the road bridge – a low passage that would require the type of cast that I’ve done millions of times up under docks. So I skipped the Senko up under the bridge, and on the first cast felt a tap, set the hook, lifted a 16-inch bass, removed the hook, and tossed him back in with a huge splash as the scoundrels watched silently. Three casts later I caught another, slightly smaller. And then a third.
Then I climbed back up onto the road and walked the hundred feet to where I saw three NON-scoundrels: Stephen, Camille, and Ana.
Stephen tells me that he works Third Shift. Third Shift is the night shift – 10:30 until 7:00. But he explains that he is now ready to start working normal hours. Third Shift was just “while the kids were young,” so he would be at home during the day. But now that they are finally old enough to come home from school alone, “I can finally get back to a day shift.”
These two girls, rising 3rd and 6th-graders, know what they’re doing with spinning outfits. They both cast and retrieve well. And they know how to fish alone without assistance.
Camille has a perky smile and light brown hair. She shrugs and smiles when I ask her why she likes fishing. “My dad!” she points as she answers my question about her favorite fishing partner. Later she proudly tells me that she once saw a giant turtle in this pond. She will begin sixth grade in just a few days; she says gym is her favorite thing about school.
“Catching fish and throwing them in the water,” is Ana’s answer to what she likes best about fishing. Her light brown hair strings across the sides of her face framing an eager smile. Her little fingers – some with red nail polish, some without – deftly handle the spinning reel as she continues to cast and reel as we talk. I learn that math is her favorite thing at school, and that bees and spiders are her least favorite bugs.
This is a quiet neighborhood into which this pond is nestled. An occasional car creeps by. “A neighbor who is involved with a science project,” says Stephen, not taking his eyes off his rod, “says there is a lot of salt in this water now. She volunteered to take water samples. She eventually learned that this may be a result of some sort of runoff from where the new homes are being constructed.” He turns his head and looks upstream.
Stephen tells me that other than home and family, fishing is his favorite thing. “Just to be by myself, just relaxing. We have so much around here – the lake and the river.” He looks around and scans the periphery.
He got his start in his profession – long before his current responsibilities for building automation at the Cleveland Clinic - working in the maintenance department at Bailey Controls. “Anyone who knows boilers knows Bailey Controls.” (I don’t know boilers.)
This pond is surrounded by rushes of some sort, and nearby among them is a stunningly beautiful flower – a Cadillac-pink flower as big as an Iris but shaped like a half-rose-half-tulip – luscious and elegant enough to use as a grail for the fountain of youth. This flower is alone, no others. I scan the pond’s perimeter, penetrating the rushes for another pink flag, and then I see one other – way across at the other end of the pond. Just these two.
Stephen’s two girls are sprites: lank and tanned dark-eyed pixies with expectant expressions and independent airs. Each fishes with joy and confidence, although neither catches a fish nor even gets a bite as far as I can tell. Their father is soft-spoken and mild mannered – slow to expression as he calmly and quietly responds to my inquiries.
Stephen warms a bit when we all leave together and walk up the road and I give them a copy of the Take Me Fishing book. Twilight is arriving (I arrived here around 7:00) and we hear honks on the horizon. “Geese,” smiles Ana with lifted eyebrows.
I decide to walk back down to the pond for a few final casts with topwater lures at the place where the scoundrels sat. (They left after seeing me catch those three bass.) But no bites. I do find four shiny discarded beer cans. I reach down and touch one of them – still cool with droplets of condensation.

Photo: Stephen Seifried with daughters Ana and Camille at Shipman Pond

Headlands Beach State Park - east of Cleveland

August 24 2007, Headlands Beach State Park, Lake Erie, east of Cleveland

Ahh, young love.
This is where Grand River flows into Lake Erie, and I’m here on an after-work Friday when the skies are clear and the winds are calm. You’d think the massive parking areas would be full, but they’re empty. I’m the only angler on this granite-slab breakwall that leads out into Lake Erie.
Until the arrival of 21-year-old Mike Kozar and Maggie Kleinman – both with fishing rods. They settle on a perch near mine and Mike casts while Maggie watches. He’s throwing a Mepps Minnow.
My previous hour alone here has been fishless and biteless. A two-pound smallmouth followed my Lucky Craft Pointer all the way in but didn’t bite. Other than a freshwater drum and three tiny bluegill, the smallmouth is the only fish I’ve seen in this clear water. On his first cast I hear Mike exclaim, and then learn that a smallmouth has followed his Mepps.
He lives in Cleveland and fishing is his favorite pastime, but this is his first time here. His father gave him a book of 55 places to fish within an hour’s drive of downtown Cleveland, and that’s how he found Headlands Beach State Park. The book didn’t tell about the 600-yard walk from the parking lot to the breakwall.
The walk is along a trail bordered by Queen Anne’s Lace and chirping crickets, carpeted with thick sand and overhung by Sweet Gum and Oak. I even spotted a vine of wild grapes – half the size of grocery grapes, but ripe and sweet. Rich blue skin and deep red-purple meat. There are also yellow cornflowers and little daisy-like flowers hued with the palest of lavender.
Mike learned to fish from his father. “I remember being out on a Lake Erie pier with my father – I was around 10 – and we were using live bait and I didn’t really know what I was doing.” Mike continues to cast the Mepps Minnow as he talks. “He had rigged up a line with live bait and weights on the bottom, and I was getting ready to wind it in to put on a lure, and a big fish was on. I was fighting this thing, and Dad was behind me helping. And it turned out to be a huge catfish – 28 inches. Dad was ecstatic.”
Lake Erie is flat today – much different from my first time at Erie last October when the wind blew horizontal thundersnow and the lake was closed to all boat traffic. On today’s Erie I see pleasure boaters, jet skis, swimmers, and even a kayaker. The lake is flat all the way to the horizon – flat enough to see a fish dimple the surface. But I see none.
Maggie grew up around fishing, but “Mike got me into it a lot more. I was kind of grossed out when I was younger – the live bait and all – but Mike got me into using lures.” Maggie smiles as she talks. “Most recent was in the Adirondaks. Mike took me and my two sisters out in this little fishing boat in an inlet and we caught bass and perch and bluegill.”
These granite slabs that make this breakwall are huge and old. They bear old drill marks and an occasional new engraving. One says “I [heart] DB 2005” – chiseled deep into the granite, the product of special tools and quality time. Before Mike and Maggie arrived I spied a brown bushy tail disappear between granite slabs. I waited and watched and eventually a brown head, smaller than my fist, poked out. Then the whole body – a mink I suppose. Hershey brown head and eyes, a 14-inch body, and a tail equally long. He scampered away from me and disappeared into other slabs of granite.
Mike works at Notre Dame College – groundskeeper and maintenance. “The best thing is the people – all really nice. What I like least would of course have to be the pay - always looking for more money.”
Mike continues to work the Mepps Minnow. A lot of past success with it has given him great confidence. I’ve had no success with the lures I’ve thrown thus far: the Pointer, a couple of Rat-L-Traps, a yellow crankbait, several offerings on a dropshot rig, and at one point I decided to throw the goby.
“Throw the Goby.” Sounds like a euphemism for some unknown act. We don’t have gobies in Virginia, so I’m not experienced with them. But here on Erie, gobies – little brown bottom-dwelling fish - compose the entire diet of the smallmouths. At a tackle store I bought some plastic gobies – lures that I thought looked ridiculous, but that the salesman (also definitely a good angler) assured me could catch fish. But with no confidence at all, I was at a disadvantage. Nevertheless I did throw the goby. No bites at all. That’s it. From now on I’ll use the phrase “Throw the Goby” to indicate that I’m using a lure with which I have no confidence.
Mike’s rod bends and water splashes and a fish comes off right there at his feet. He didn’t see it well enough to identify it. Could have been a smallmouth. Maybe a drum. On the Mepps Minnow. He keeps casting it.
“It gets crazy around graduation time,” he continues about his work. “Last spring we built a huge patio with a two-foot stone wall and with pavers. We had to level everything, cut the stone, and make it look nice. We did it in only two days. Pretty crazy.”
Maggie – still merely watching from her perch on a higher slab of granite – works as a server at California Pizza Kitchen. I ask her if she can tell if a customer will be a big tipper or small tipper. “75% of the time.” She’s been there three years and has steady customers who ask for her. “It’s pretty much guaranteed that there will be a good tip if they’re regulars.” I ask her if age makes a difference. “Late twenties to forties is best. Old people don’t tip so well. And younger kids don’t really understand. They’ll all order waters and split a pizza. They just don’t understand.”
Why does she like to fish? “I get to spend time with him,” she says with a nod towards Mike. “It’s always interesting to learn new things and try new spots.” Her eyes search as she contemplates. “It’s sometimes frustrating for a new fisher like me. I get my line caught [Mike chuckles] but he helps me out a lot.”
Mike: “It’s not always about catching fish; it’s having a good time with Maggie or my dad or whoever I’m with.”
Mike’s rod bends again and again the fish shakes off at his feet. “It was smaller than the first fish, but it looked like a striper,” he says as he turns towards me. “Do they have stripers in here?” I tell him I don’t think so, but later I remember that there are white bass in here – a slivery striped fish that does look like a striper.
I watch a 30-foot sailboat come in under power, its sails gone from the masts. A distant windsurfer that I’ve been watching has made enough progress – finally – to get to the main lane headed into the marina area. Also the lane used by the powerboats which now have to dodge this slow-moving clutter.
A big orange and black butterfly – the size of a Monarch – flutters and glides out over the lake a hundred yards and then comes back. Later I will see three more just like him venture for outings on the lake.
As Linda Greenlaw says in her book All Fisherman are Liars which I just read, “If you’re not catching anything, change something.” Which I do now. Over and over. Now I go to a rig I’ve just invented: a goby dropshot. It’s the weighted goby with another hook with a small worm on it a foot up the line. Nothing.
Mike’s favorite type of fishing? “Definitely Steelhead!” he says without pause. “On the Chagrin with a flyrod. I’ve been flyfishing for six years now.”
“He’s really good,” adds Maggie. “He’s caught some really big ones. How big . . .”
“Oh, they’re all big,” Mike interrupts. “Twenty inches or more.”
I switch to a Carolina rig and pull a mini-Senko behind it. Then various worms. Nothing. And I move to other locations. Occasionally Maggie looks over and asks – I shake my head – and she reports the same with Mike.
These are two happy young folks with bright smiles and hopeful eyes who are in love with fishing. “It’s so relaxing,” says Mike in response to my question why he likes it. “And I really like the outdoors.”
“And it takes your mind off things,” Maggie says. “He’s already relaxed. He had a hard day.”
Last October Erie was a cold, wet blur. Some of the tournament anglers even quit and went home. At one point I lashed my boat to a piling in the harbor for three hours while we were pelted with sleet and rain and horizontal thundersnow and 30-mile winds. I did catch one keeper during those hours. Hope does spring eternal.

Photo: Maggie Kleinman and Matt Kozar at Headlands Beach State Park

Wilcox Lake - greater Detroit

August 23 2007, Wilcox Lake, greater Detroit

I see the Wayne County Parks sign and turn into this gentle park with a picture-book pond: lily pads, fallen trees, fishing pier, and three swans. It’s a weekday afternoon and I’m the only angler here. The water is brown from a week of pounding rains. A dozen ducks play in the parking lot puddles. I tie on a Senko for what should be a cleanup operation on these bass.
I drop it in the shadows of the 100-foot fishing pier, but no bites. I drop it among lily pads, but no bites. I swim it along the shoreline lane of open water, but no bites. I see a big fish roll out in the middle of this five-acre pond: carp! Then I see another carp at a nearby lily pad; it raises its back, then its head as it looks at me with brown eyes as it lips the edges of a green pad. Other carp rolls out in the middle.
A green heron circles and flies within 25 feet of me and then circles away – just cruising by to take a look. Green herons are known for their curiosity. One of the swans on the far side of the pond lifts off and begins a wide circle over the pondside road, and then back in front of me, so close that I hear his hoarse lungs wheeze with the flapping of his wings. He circles again, then loses altitude, lowers his diamond-shaped webbed landing gear, and skids to a splashing stop 100 feet away. Then he swims casually towards me, all the way to within a couple of feet from the fishing pier on which I stand, and makes a few chirps. He dips his neck gracefully, sips water, and then points his head 45 degrees skyward as he swallows.
I switch to a buzzfrog and pull it enticingly across pads, across holes, alongside fallen trees, and across open water. Nothing. I see more carp roll. I switch to a finesse worm – at least I might feel a bluegill tap it. But nothing. This pond is so fishy looking. Why is nothing interested in my lures?
Over to the right, past the little building with the restrooms, I see a concrete barrier. I walk over and find that it separates the pond from a 50-foot-wide stream. Later my map will confirm that this is a tributary of the Rogue River. The stream has some current and some depth, so I start again with my selection of lures. But nothing. I even try a Mepps.
Sometimes even the most hopeful anglers get to the point where they think nothing will bite. This is dangerous. It generates carelessness, mistakes, and unreadiness.
This is wildflower season and I see purple dandelions, blue violets, sunnyside daisies, and a shoreline tree with maple-like leaves and holly-type berries. Next to it is another little tree with elm-shaped leaves and blue berries. I taste both – acidy. An occasional bumblebee visits the wildflowers.
The Mepps should attract something in this little river, but it doesn’t. I throw it to the shallow sandbar that blocks an eddy within a hairpin curve. And I throw it under overhanging trees and alongside this concrete restraining wall on which I stand. Nothing.
In the middle of the river I see a swirl and then another. I watch as a carp – maybe 10 pounds – reveals itself. Then I see another one swimming alongside. They play out there near the sandbar the whole time I’m here.
I hear a blue jay jeer from a distant treetop. And I see a little bird – gray back and white breast – walking on a stand of lily pads. He’s the color of a dove and has a black tip on his tail.
I switch to a four-inch curly-tail worm and cast it alongside fallen trees, into shaded shorelines, out near the sandbar. Nuttin honey. Then it happens and I’m not ready. I have tossed the little worm into a skillet-sized shady area next to a submerged picnic table (where I’ve already cast several times), and simultaneously notice a tree, twice as tall as me, overhanging with a bunch of tiny green apples with reddened tops. My eyes are on those apples as I lift my rod and feel tension. Must be hung. As I pull to unhang it I suddenly realize that it’s a fish pulling. He’s off before I get a chance to set the hook., but he was obviously a nice one. (All that get away are.) My only bite at this very nice pond and stream park.
It takes some doing to pick one of the reddest apples – it’s out over the pond and I have to balance on a wet part of the trunk – but I do get one and take a bite: apple and alum. Another week or so . . .

Photo: John Bryan at Wilcox Lake

TriCentennial State Park - Detroit, MI

August 22 2007, TriCentennial State Park, Detroit, MI

After days of rain here the sun is finally showing on an after-lunch Wednesday. This beautiful park, with harbor and boat slips and performance space and lighthouse, is on the Detroit River which stretches more than a mile across to Canada. The water is blue – a milky blue – and clear and aclutter with grasses that have been blown by a continued 20-mile wind. But this little harbor – a couple of acres – is protected and this is where I now wet my first Michigan line.
After absolutely no luck with a Senko, a Rat-L-Trap and finesse worms I approach one of the few other anglers and ask for advice. His name is Larry Beale, and he’s just now getting back into fishing after four years of being too busy. This is 5th or 6th time fishing here. He’s throwing a little Rapala bait, but he says his favorite is a black/chrome Rat-L-Trap. He recently caught a two-pound bass on it and lost a huge pike – both right here in this harbor.
Larry was born in 1953 in Birmingham, Alabama. Who taught him to fish? “Myself,” he says. “I used to see neighbors come and go fishing. My father didn’t like it. He said if he wanted some fish he could buy them at the store. He didn’t have anything against fishing, he just didn’t do it.”
Larry continues to cast his closed-face reel as he talks. He casts along the shoreline rocks and out towards the boat slips, winding the lure with a steady retrieve. He’s a carpenter – went to school for it. “I’m a rough and finisher,” he replies to my question. “Do you know what that is?” I don’t respond. “Do you even know anything about carpentry?” I don’t.
“That means I can build a structure and also finish it,” he explains. “I can also make cabinets. Carpentry is my true love. Fishing is a pastime.”
Earlier I switched to a Roboworm and hung and lost one small largemouth. I’m told that this water also holds smallmouths and walleye. Now I’m casting a Lucky Craft Pointer and I hang and land a largemouth – perhaps 11 or 12 inches. Larry takes a look at my lure and asks if it floats and dives too. It does.
I ask him what his favorite thing about fishing is. “Catching them,” he says after a lot of thought. “The thrill,” he begins again, then pauses again, “how you just caught that one.” He thinks more. “That’s what fascinates me.”
He tells me about the big pike he hung and lost recently. “Just like I lost that big pike; I thought about it all night long.”
Larry moved here from Alabama because of love. He fell in love and married a woman from Detroit. He’s been here for 30 years.
I ask him if he can identify a memorable day of fishing. “It was the day I caught my biggest bass – 8 pounds. Caught it on a Rat-L-Trap. Fell in love with it then and been using it ever since.” He tells me about how another angler had to help land it with his net. “One guy offered me $35 for the bass. But I didn’t want to sell it. I gave it to a friend.”
Larry volunteers that he doesn’t eat the fish he catches. “I just like catching them.” He agrees that any he would catch would be fresher than he could buy from a fish market. “Fish market fish are liable to be older than me and you,” he confirms.
I ask him about carpentry. What’s his favorite wood? “Oak,” he says first. Then, “No, I love it all – Poplar, Maple, all of it.” What wood would he use if he were commissioned to make a special cabinet? “I’d use whatever they want. Oak could be used. Maple makes a beautiful cabinet. Or mahogany.”
What has been his most difficult project? “Now this may sound funny,” he says as he turns away from his fishing rod and looks at me. “I once had to hang a 10-foot door that weighed over 500 pounds. 10 feet by 40 inches. It was for an old church, and there were two of them. I had to pay a guy $100 just to help put it on the hinges.” Larry shakes his head as he remembers it. “I gave him $100. I did.”
He keeps casting and winding, but no bites. I’m hoping for a big one for the camera. Later I will catch two more largemouths on the Pointer, and Larry will catch a small perch. But no big ones.
Any type of wood he doesn’t like? “I don’t like sheet wood. Real inexpensive wood. I don’t like working with it. You can’t guarantee it.”
I ask about his tools – how much would it cost to replace them? “$10,000,” he responds quickly, “that is, in the shape they’re in. Maybe $15,000.” I ask if he owns any antique tools. “I did. They got stolen,” he replies abruptly. Nothing more.
He turns his back towards me and casts a few times in the opposite direction. I wait. Then in a few minutes he continues. “That’s something I despise, a thief!” He casts a few more times. “Want something from me, ask me.” Another cast. “I’m a very giving person. If I can help you out I will.” He doesn’t say more. I drop the subject.
A favorite tool? “I like a laminate router – trimming. In fact I was cleaning those this morning.” A favorite hand tool? “Cross-cut saw.”
Larry is like me in that he doesn’t take many breaks from fishing. He casts and casts and casts – obviously always hopeful that the next cast . . . I can’t remember my exact question, but his response was, “I always wanted to be a drummer.” He turns to me and smiles. “But I never learned. One day I’m going to buy some drums and I’m going to soundproof my basement so I won’t have a problem bothering my neighbors.”
I can tell that he’s a contemplative person, so I ask him if he cares to offer any words to live by: “Treat people as you want to be treated.” He pauses and then repeats it. And then concludes, “And I mean that.”

Photo: Larry Beale at Detroit's TriCentennial Park

Belle Isle - Detroit

August 23 2007, Belle Isle, Detroit

I am at the “Fishing Pier” on this gigantic island that sits here in the middle of the Detroit River with Canada a mile away on one side and Detroit a mile away on the other. This pier is actually a concrete and wood bulwark that lines couple of hundred feet of shoreline. A fenced railing provides safety and something against which to lean fishing rods.
Joe Brown fishes here from beneath the shade of a willow tree 50 feet away. His two rods lean the railing and he watches from the relaxation of his folding chair. “Well, it’s relaxing,” he says. “I like catching fish too, but it’s more to do with it being relaxing.”
At the downstream end of the pier is a picnic shelter with tables from which drift smells of the grill. A dozen women and children chatter and laugh while four or five men – that’s all of the anglers on this long pier – stand along the pier with their rods. I see nobody catch anything while I’m here talking with Joe.
Joe’s outstretched legs are crossed, and his bright-white-soxed feet are out of his leather sandals. He leans back in his chair at the same angle that his fishing rods point towards the Canadian skies across the river.
This Belle Isle a huge island – perhaps 100 times bigger, no, 200 – than Richmond’s Belle Isle. A multi-lane, streetlamped, 25-mile-an-hour bridge transports visitors. There are many giant fields and performances spaces, a museum, historic buildings, a huge swimming beach with sand, a golf driving range and pitch and putt course, ponds, playgrounds and picnic shelters, and even a model yacht basin. And of course there is the still-active and well-heeled Detroit Yacht Club with its slips filled with sailing and motor vessels. And of course over near the beach is one of those pretzel-spaghetti water slides.
Joe Brown comes here once or twice each week for a few hours. The day before yesterday he caught “a real nice catfish – two catfish – and some bass and perches.” I ask him how big the big catfish was. “About a foot long,” he says looking up from the brim of his hat. He wears sunglasses so dark that you’d think the lenses were coated with black paint. It’s the direction he points his face that tells me whether he’s looking at me as we talk.
I’m using a dropshot rig – casting it out as far as I can. Joe explains that there are rocks in close that will hang you. I use plastic worms, plastic leeches, even plastic gobies, but no fish. At one point I do get some bites, but they’re just tiny pecks that I am certain are from tiny fish.
Later I will drive all the way around this island and will see the other fishing piers that are actually piers rather than shoreline bulwarks. The “South Pier” is the biggest freshwater pier I’ve ever seen anywhere. And the most formidable. Its flooring is 2x10-foot concrete slabs, and its “railing” is made from real four-by-twelves. The entire thing sits on a series of steel pilings. And the pier is long. It stretches 65 feet out and then makes a right angle and goes another 320 feet. When I walk it there will be no anglers on it. Same with the “North Pier” on the other side of the island. Same construction, similar size, no anglers.
But this handful of anglers – including Joe Brown – that are at this “Fishing Pier” seem to be comfortable. I’m a hundred feet down the pier when I hear, “I got one!” It’s Joe. He’s left his chair, is at the railing, and has brought in a fish. “A small one,” he concludes. I go over and see that it’s a smallmouth – perhaps 9 inches. Joe doesn’t know the difference between smallmouths and largemouths and I show him how to line up the back of the jaw with the eye to determine which one it is. Then I toss the fish back into the Detroit River.
Joe puts on another worm, casts, and walks the 50 feet to his shade chair. I continue to throw a fishless dropshot rig.
I had started my conversation with Joe by asking him about himself, but he said he is not comfortable giving personal information and asked that we talk only about fishing. He is extremely polite and articulate, and is appreciative of my gift of a copy of the book, Take Me Fishing. He complies willingly to my art direction for photographs. But he never removes his shade hat nor his sunglasses. And his answers to my fishing questions are as simple and brief as possible. I depart without catching anything. Joe stretches in the shade, chair and eyes pointed towards his fishing rods and the Canada skyline.

Photo: Joe Brown on Detroit's Belle Isle

Woody’s - Mechanicsville, VA

August 16 2007, Woody’s - Mechanicsville, VA

TALKING about fishing can be good too.
“”Now there’s some drama in here,” Richard says as he looks up from his workbench. “So this is a pretty good story.”
It’s a stormy after-work Monday and I’m at my favorite fishing-tale headquarters: Richard Woods’ garage and driveway where on nights and weekends over the past few years he’s rebuilt more than 1,000 outboard engines that have enabled that many people – including me – to enjoy boating and fishing. Glenn Bailey – a feared bass angler around these parts – is Richard’s engine-shop partner and frequent fishing partner.
“I was already seeing dollar signs,” Richard continues – a story about the recent Walkerton Volunteer Fire Department Catfish Tournament in which he and Glenn faced off against 77 other teams.
Glenn has already told me about his three-week-ago outing on the Pamunkey: “a BUNCH of nice ones – hitting on a 200 series Bandit in Original Perch, on duck blinds and on grass lines.” Glenn emotes with his sincere and serious eyes, keeping his grease-covered hands on the three carburetors he’s rebuilding. “Of course on tournament day a week later we didn’t do anything.”
I met Richard Woods through word-of-mouth several years ago when my outboard blew up and the diagnosis was a brand new engine – for which I couldn’t justify the cost. A friend of a friend pointed me to Richard and that resulted in a rebuilt job that has been good as new for a long time.
“Now listen,” Richard looks over at me again, assuring that I have his attention while I take notes. “We went upriver on the Mataponi. It was an overcast day with 64-degree water temperature and a 7:00 a.m. low tide. We set up in only five feet of water, and within two hours we had a 22-pounder.”
Glenn also told me about using a jetboat to fish the UPPER Pamunkey two weeks before that and catching 83 bass, “hitting little soft crawfish baits, four-inch Ringworms in moccasin blue, and quarter-ounce black and blue jigs with sapphire blue trailers.” I don’t know where Glenn gets the time or money to buy and try all these different baits. He’s always got something new working for him. “They were everywhere you thought they’d be.” (There is one particular tackle store where he won’t buy lures because the staff there then puts the word out to a couple of other bass anglers regarding which lures Glenn’s using – anglers who fish the same tournaments as Glenn.)
[This is the sort of conversation I just drink right down at Woody’s; everyone needs a Woody’s. And naturally, conversation always steers to every thing else imaginable, just like at the cliché barber shop. But for this piece now, I’m sticking to the fishing parts.]
“Then we decided to take a gamble,” Richard continues with the catfish tournament, “and we ran 10 miles downstream and set up on a four-foot flat. Everyone else was fishing deep.”
Richard’s fingers are coated with white greasy stuff as he individually places a precise number of wrist pins inside the end of a connecting rod. He’d never looked inside an outboard engine until he decided that his duck hunting buddy needed a bigger engine and discovered how much a new bigger engine cost. So Richard bought a junk engine for $25, took it totally apart, and rebuilt it. “This is too easy,” he remembers thinking when he finished. And that started a hobby that has become a moonlight business.
“I had just taken the second bite of my sandwich when the rod exploded.” Richard pauses for effect. “I mean, it literally exploded.” He’s looking up at me now with wide eyes. “I dropped my sandwich on the floor. And remember, I’d only taken two bites – and that made me mad. And I grabbed the rod and the drag was going hard. I told Glenn to get ready; this is a big one.”
Glenn adds, “That drag was buzzing.” And Glenn makes a sustained buzzing noise.
Richard is half smiling now. “So I set the hook,” he pauses again, “and nothing happened. The rod just stayed bowed over.”
Glenn buzzes again. “I mean MAJOR drag. And we were using 8/0 circle hooks on 25-pound line with a 24-inch 60-pound leader.”
Richard continues, “And we’ve got two anchors out – front and rear. Glenn reeled in the other rods and got the net ready. After a 20-minute fight we finally got him up to the boat –“
“Now tell the WHOLE story,” Glenn interrupts.
“I’m getting there,” Richard snaps. “So we saw the fish and we both said ‘Oh my God,’ and I said to Glenn, ‘Whatever you do, don’t lose this fish!”
“It was a huge fish,” adds Glenn.
“Well,” Richard continues, “the fish then decided to go to the bottom where he wrapped himself around the rear anchor rope.” Richard stops with the wrist pins, turns his entire body towards me, and carefully says, “So Glenn and I go into Panic Mode.”
“Panic Mode,” Glenn echoes, his own eyes wide now.
“So I put the pressure on and pray the line doesn’t break. Glenn starts pulling up the anchor rope real slowly. And I’m winding slowly. I can feel the fish pulling as it comes up. The fish and the anchor finally get to the surface and just as Glenn gets the net all the way under him the hook comes out of his mouth.”
Glenn and Richard look at one another with eyes even wider.
“So now in one hand Glenn has a net with a 50-pound catfish, and in the other hand he has a 25-pound anchor. And if he drops one, the other will go with it.”
“Together we somehow got everything in the boat,” Glenn concludes. “Iaconelli would have definitely been proud of the scream we both let out.”
“We weighed him,” Richard says, “48 pounds. Later we boated an 18-pounder to complete our 3-fish limit.”
The two of them then tell about the weigh-in – a complicated affair in which each team has to decide whether to enter the big fish competition or the three-fish competition – but not both. After waiting and seeing a lone 52-pounder, Glenn and Richard weigh their 78.6-pound 3-fish limit, and have the top spot in the tournament.
Until the last-second deadline.

Photo: Glenn Bailey and Richard Woods

C & O Canal - Washington D.C.

August 13 2007, C & O Canal National Historic Park, Washington D.C.

This canal is flat loaded with fish, and I’m walking a bit of the section between the Chain and Key Bridges. Like the nation’s very first canal in Richmond – designed by George Washington – this canal was built to transport goods westward alongside sections of rivers where navigation was difficult. Today this canal is concessioned with silver canoes, yellow and orange and red kayaks, and sturdy wooden rowboats. Upstream and down I see only one other angler.
Susan Graham watches as Nicky intently studies the business end of his spincast outfit that is dunking a worm among the shadows of tied-up rowboats. The red and white bobber bobs, Nicky lifts with a sky-reaching arm and swings the empty hook over towards Susan. Worm bandits again!
I say hello and ask them if they’ll walk over by the canal sign for me to take a photo. Susan says yes. Nicky shakes his head no as he readies another worm for sacrifice. I of course know his mindset: don’t interrupt me while the fish are biting.
This water is green and is bordered by manicured green pathways for walking and jogging and bicycling. Participants in all pass by frequently. The canal is about as wide as a long cast, and I throw my Senko to within an inch of an overhanging branch on the opposite bank. With my polarized lenses I can see plenty of bluegill, and usually bass will bite a Senko in bluegilled waters.
Nearby Nicky continues to feed his group of shadowed bluegill. I can tell that he is a novice. I can also tell that this is a most exciting venture for him. And I can tell that he won’t be wanting to depart anytime soon. Give a kid a series of tugs on the end of his line, and you’ve given hope springing eternal.
My Senko sinks for a few seconds and then I feel the tap. When a bass approaches a piece of soft plastic and then simply vacuums the bait into his opening mouth, what the angler feels is just a slight tap. You can’t learn this precise feel in any angling school. In fact, this little tap presents an extremely difficult learning curve for all newcomers to bass fishing. But I got lucky a long time ago on Green River Reservoir in Kentucky. I had years of fishing experience behind me, but had not yet clicked on the feel of this vacuum tap. Near the boat dock was a ten-foot-deep area where the water was perfectly clear, and I threw a Texas-rigged plastic worm and started hopping it across the bottom. A bass swam up, and as I watched, he came over and opened his mouth and vacuumed the worm. As he did it – and as I watched – I felt the tap. Delicate, slight, impossible to describe. I still remember that precise Eureka moment. It was one of the handful of significant turning points in my bass fishing life. From then on – even in muddy water, even during nighttime bassing – I could recognize that tap blindfolded.
And now on this canal I feel that tap. I pull back on the rod and set the hook and am into a bass. He’s not big – perhaps 11 inches – and I release him. Later today I will see photos of big bass caught from this canal. And I’ll hear about one bass angler who has devoted almost all of his bassing life to the miles and miles of this canal.
Nicky finally pauses long enough for me to take a photo of him and Susan, but then he’s back to the bluegill. I’d like to fast-forward 10 or 15 years to see how many rods he will own then. My money’s on a bunch.
On the other side of the canal, submerged a few feet, is big, blue hydrilla harvester that I’ve been told was used downstream. I walk across the canal bridge and drop the Senko beneath the harvester, but no luck. Then I walk the canal for a hundred yards or so in both directions dipping the Senko in likely spots. But that one bass will be it for this brief outing.
This canal is so beautiful – luscious trees and foliage overhanging everywhere, gentle current drifting downstream, occasional wildflowers, and two- and three-foot visibility displaying small bluegill. I need to dedicate a whole day for exploration up-canal and down.
As I depart I watch as Nicky continues to work on those bluegill, his glasses perched expectantly on his nose, his back arched forward with anticipation, his eyebrows raised with hope.

Photo: Nicky and Susan Graham at the C&O Canal in DC.

Fletcher’s Cove - Washington, D.C.

August 13 2007, Fletcher’s Cove, Potomac River, Washington, D.C.

“Definitely my dad!” answers 13-year-old Margaret Ward to my question about her favorite fishing partner. With blonde hair, pink cheeks, and blue eyes, she’s a bright complement to this stretch of the Potomac River that landscapes behind her here at Washington D.C.’s only fishing boathouse. She’s been fishing here all her life.
Today the river is blue and clear beneath a hot sun and cool breeze. The far shore – the Virginia side – goes straight up with foliage in multi-greens. The river moves along with currents from the upstream falls, and hosts generous populations of smallmouths and largemouths and catfish and especially spring-run anadromous shad and stripers.
Margaret is here with her father, 52-year-old Dan Ward, who works here and began doing so as a teenager. “Why do I like fishing?” he repeats my question. “I don’t know – it’s a combination of the mystery of it and the natural environment.” Dan gestures with his hands, rocks gently back and forth on his sneakers. “I’m what I call a social fisherman. The whole competitive thing is fine, but not what I like.” He turns and looks out at the river. “The fun is in the simplicity.”
Fletcher’s is a D.C. mainstay that originated in the 1800s and that has a history of famous visitors and famous fish tales as long as the one that got away. Today is my first visit and I am genuinely surprised that this natural oasis – without any view of buildings or monuments or politics – exists.
“I love to come here and read,” offers Margaret, “because it is so relaxing.” She reads a lot of animal books, and is now reading a fantasy series about talking with animals.
My fishing venture here is in one of the rowboats – handmade, heavy, sturdy, wooden boats that cost over $3,000 each and that rent for $20 per day. It is roomy and stable and glides surprisingly easy to my strokes with the oars. I head to the far side of the river, and once there I drop anchor and throw a Senko into steep shadows. Sharp bites greet every cast, but nothing hangs on. Must be small ones.
“This year was incredible for shad,” Dan told me. “Even people who wouldn’t normally catch fish were catching them. And for a brief period you could catch 50, 60 whites a day.” Whites are American shad – bigger and stronger than the more numerous Hickory shad.
But this is August and the shad are gone and I’m after bass. I switch to a Rat-L-Trap – first chartreuse and then brown – but no bites. Then a little crankbait that looks like a minnow. No bites. Back to the Senko – lots of bites, but no hookups. The bites are not from bluegill; these are more savage than those of bluegill. Bluegill will sort of peck and twitch; these are more akin to attacks.
“I just like to go out there and have fun,” Margaret told me, with worm-baited rod in hand. “When you catch them and then reel them in it’s a lot of fun. I really don’t know how to explain.” At Fletcher’s I watched as she and her dad dropped red-and-white-bobbered worms among bluegill. Margaret knew how to watch the line and lift the bluegill out of the water at just the right moment.
I see only one other boat on the water. The Chain Bridge is upstream as far as I can see, and the Key Bridge is downstream even farther. I am certain that those are little smallmouths that are hitting the Senko. I have seen photos of the huge smallmouths – five pounds and bigger – that come regularly out of this water. And it’s deeper here than you’d think – 30 feet average, much deeper holes.
I switch to a Roboworm with a small jig head. A bite or two, no takers. Then I bite off half of the Roboworm and rehook it on the jighead into what looks like a small minnow, and on the first cast I catch a little smallmouth. He’s green and sleek and energetic.
Earlier I asked Dan about his work at Fletcher’s Cove. He does just about everything including helping customers, ordering fishing supplies for the little store, and cleaning. During the colder months is the annual maintenance on these wonderful wooden boats. Each is pulled from the water, cleaned, scrubbed (algae), scraped, and painted with primer and topcoat. Also an occasional carpentry repair is needed. This careful attention and maintenance contribute greatly to the aesthetic pleasure of each of these boats.
My boat’s anchor is as authentic as the boat: a rectangular rock with a rope. Anyone who has ever used a rock for an anchor knows there is an art to tying the rock with a knot that won’t come off. Whoever tied these anchors should write the book.
The Roboworm continues to produce little smallmouths, but no large ones. I try other lures – a huge grub, a creature bait, a bit-in-half Senko – but no takers. I watch the other boat in the distance – also a Fletcher’s rowboat with anglers – and see that they are casting silvery lures. But I don’t see any fish.
“Every kind you can possibly imagine,” was Dan’s description of the customer base. “Rivers seem to attract everyone. We get people who can barely afford to pay for worms and people who can afford anything and who compare this to their recent trip to Paraguay or somewhere. And we’ve had many presidents here. President Carter jogged here on a regular basis and would stop and chat.”
I wish I had all day to spend on this section of the Potomac but I don’t. I row back into Fletcher’s Cove, tie the boat, and talk again to Dan. He says that nobody has been catching much of anything right now, and that it’s an accomplishment that I caught some fish. (He knows just what to say!)
I ask Margaret if she has a favorite day of fishing. She thinks awhile, twirls her cap, then turns her head and points upstream. “A while ago my dad and I went walking along the path and fished off the rocks and caught a lot of big fish.” She smiles gently.
I look up that way, and sure enough, there is a path. Next time . . .

Photo: Dan and Margaret Ward at Fletcher's

City Pier - Southport, NC

August 8 2007, City Pier, Southport, NC

They shut the plant down for the day when Johnny Harris retired. 450 workers. “You could party all day long,” says Johnny, his eyes shifting briefly away from his fishing rod.
It’s another hot and humid and eye-squinting bright day, and I am surprised to find midday anglers on this fishing pier. Among them are Johnny and Shirley Harris and their almost-17 grandson, Ricky Rhodes. They sit together on a pier-bench watching their three fishing rods that have been bitten only once this morning.
“We’ve had some pretty good days on this pier,” says Johnny. “Spots, flounder . . .”
Johnny, Shirley and Ricky live in Fletcher (all three grew up there) – near Asheville – and are here for a week on vacation. All three love to fish. Fishing’s at the top of the list for Johnny and Ricky; Shirley’s list begins with something else.
“I like working in flowers,” she says as she moves her eyes away from her fishing line.
“You ought to see her house,” adds Ricky with a smile.
“Dahlias, four-o’clock blooms, roses,” Shirley begins listing them,” her eyes back on the line.
“You ain’t got enough paper to write it on,” Johnny nods to me as I make notes.
“Irises, tulips, sunflowers,” Ricky helps.
“Black-eyed Susans,” Shirley corrects. The secret to roses? “Lot of water on the roots and not on the leaves.”
A bait bucket with live minnows and shrimp sits in front of them. The three rods lean against the rail, their lines stretching tight at ninety degrees. Johnny, Shirley and Ricky watch the rod tips for a twitch that doesn’t come.
Johnny and Shirley grew up in Fletcher, started going together in the ninth grade, and have now been married 47 years – 48 come February 14.
“Love,” they both reply to my question regarding a successful marriage. “Love, forget, and forgive,” adds Shirley. “It takes two,” she continues, “it takes two . . .”
There a dozen other anglers on this little pier and nobody catches anything while I’m here. This pier stretches perhaps 100 feet off Southport towards Bald Head Island in the distance. Wilmington is a half-hour north and Myrtle Beach an hour south.
Johnny’s dad taught him to fish when he was little; Shirley was taught by her dad and grandmother. Shirley and Johnny taught Ricky.
Their favorite thing about fishing? “Catching fish, I guess,” answers Ricky. Best fishing day ever? “Probably a couple of years ago,” he continues, “on Yaupon Pier. Probably caught 150 blues in one day.”
“Hitting a Gotcha plug,” says Johnny as his eyes catch mine. “And they were good size.” He moves his hands apart to two-pound distance.
Shirley wears a pink cap with “Las Vegas” stitched on the brim. “Down there at that thrift store,” she motions with her head, “one of them 25-cent caps.”
It takes some doing to get Johnny to respond to my “claim to fame” question. He finally says it was his retirement from Buss Fuse, a division of Cooper Industries. “They throwed me a party all day long.” But he doesn’t elaborate.
Ricky, an 11th-grader, is on the other end of retirement. He busses tables at Carrabba’s Restaurant. “The money,” is his answer to what he likes best. “Touching everybody’s dirty plates” is worst. The worst mess he’s encountered? “A part of 25 people who had 10 little babies throwing food.”
Shirley’s a retired textile worker. “No, they can’t shut down the textile plant,” she says about her own retirement day. “But they about closed and moved to Mexico.”
Why did they decide not to move? Shirley thinks for a long time before answering. “They sold it to another company . . . I don’t really know.” “Probably because of the quality of the work,” Johnny adds.
All three test their fishing lines for bites and then respond to my request for fishing tips for this pier.
“Be patient,” Shirley says first.
“Try not to get hung,” grins Ricky. (He’s fresh off a major hangup.)
Johnny doesn’t have any tips. “Naw, not really. Fishing’s luck anyway . . . most of it.”
Any words to live by?
Johnny: “Just live a good, clean, life.”
Ricky is hesitant, then offers, “Live life to the fullest . . . I don’t know.”
Shirley: “You got to love your family.” She looks over at Ricky with a smile and pats his knee. “Have a lot of faith.”

Photo: Johnny and Shirley Harris and grandson Ricky Rhodes on Southport's City Pier.

Long Beach - North Carolina

August 7 2007, Long Beach Surf, North Carolina

The annual certainty at this beach happens right now: a giant mystery fish grabs my bait and takes off and I hang on with scant hope. My rig is a freshwater spinning outfit with a hundred yards of 30-pound Power Pro on top of 100 yards of 10-pound mono.
Following a multi-day scattering of one-pound whiting, a monster has now inhaled my wire-leadered live shrimp and is swimming towards Europe. As I say, this happens every year. Sometimes twice. And sometimes I win – usually a 3- or 4-foot shark, sometimes a giant flounder, but more often a stingray.
I have fished this stretch of surf for 15 weeks now – every first Saturday-to-Saturday week of August for 15 years. And you can’t predict the fishing.
One year it was bluefish – small ones – splattering surface schools of mullet minnows and hitting rapidly retrieved strips of cut bait. Another year it was pompano – tiny pompano everywhere, flat-siding the skinny incoming water up the beach and then out, gorging on sand fleas, and occasionally offering a two-pounder to a carefully fished rod. Last year it was sharks – from 14 inches to 4 feet – hitting live shrimp mostly, forcing the use of wire leaders, braided line, and long-nose pliers.
There is the occasional flounder, the infrequent Spanish mackerel, and a rare trout. Years ago there were spots here during this week, but last year I caught just one.
The whiting are the mainstays – numbers of cigar-size fingerlings in close, and larger ones – a good one weighs a pound or more – out further.
But no matter how you look at it, the fishing isn’t great here – never has been. A local guide told me that this 8-mile stretch may be the most barren beach on the Atlantic coast. He’s plotted the bottom with his electronics and says it’s a featureless desert out there. So you feel good when you do catch something.
Today is Tuesday, and this morning during two hours of wading chest-deep and casting live shrimp, I got one bite: a 16-inch whiting. Now it’s afternoon and I have been doing the same and am now attached to what I presume is a shark. Last year I caught more than 20 sharks here – mostly a pound or two, but a half-dozen were three feet or longer. Stingrays will stop their runs and hug the sand, but this current fish isn’t stopping. A few miles down the beach on Yaupon Pier they caught a 1,100-pound tiger shark last year. The pier regulars see lots of big sharks; I never have.
The braid screams off the reel in spite of a tight drag, and now it’s gone and into the monofilament. It won’t be long now. I just wish the fish would jump – leap clear and shake its head.
Usually we see dolphins here – porpoises – but not even one this year. There are always pelicans – lines of a dozen or more low-fliers cruising the beach and the ocean – but not this year.
The big fish hasn’t stopped, and the spool of my reel is emptying. Going, going, going, gone – and the final knot pops. I’ve been spooled. How long will a big fish swim around trailing a 200-yard length of fishing line?
Back at the house as I re-spool I am unaware that6 another mystery fish will bite before the day is over – and that I will capture it, and that it will be a surprise.
They say that this is the only undiscovered beach left in the United States. Our rental cottage on the beach is inexpensive, and when we walk out on the deck and look with binoculars two miles in both directions we count no more than 100 persons – including maybe 6 anglers. There are zero jet skis, zero surfers, and only a sprinkling of kayakers. All this will of course change during the next few years.
And there is no undertow, no riptide – at least not compared to the Outer Banks. This beach runs east to west, and its slope is gentle; at low tide you can sometimes be chest-deep a hundred yards out.
It’s afternoon now, and I’m re-rigged and re-shrimped and chest-deep among windy waves. I catch the shrimp myself with a cast net – throwing it into the tidal creek a few miles down the island. My other favorite bait is mullet minnows, and I catch them right here in the surf with the cast net. Get out here chest-deep with a live-lined (no weight) mullet minnow and you’re liable to catch a bluefish or a trout or a shark or even a Spanish.
My Carolina-rigged live shrimp explores the bottom out as far as I can cast. My strategy is to move it a few feet and then let it sit a few seconds. Flounder like something on the move; whiting bite when it’s stationary. Sharks don’t care.
This hard wind forces a continual procession of huge waves and swells that cause me to pogo myself several feet off the bottom to keep my head above water. No other anglers are out here enduring this.
Suddenly a fish is on – no bite, just a stretched line and a steady pull. It’s much bigger and stronger than a whiting. I do what I always do with bigger fish: head for the beach.
Drag peels off the reel (30-pound braid again) and my rod throbs. So this fish may just be catchable. (There’s no throb when a truly giant fish takes my bait, just a continual double bend.)
The drag stops and I make progress as the fish turns and parallels the beach. I follow it. Last year I followed – and eventually landed – a 44-inch shark up the beach through several pods of swimmers. But this fish now doesn’t go far. Six nearby swimmers stop and stand and watch.
I make more progress and the fish nears the breakers. Another lunge of the drag. Then another. Then the fish rockets to the surface and leaps three feet out. A pompano! A big pompano! Not like the African giants, but bigger than I have personally ever caught here on this beach.
He leaps three more times – full body clear of the ocean – as the swimmers watch and as I hold on. Finally I beach him on an incoming wave.
Three pounds at least! Maybe four. Glimmering pearl hue with yellow highlights. My hook protrudes from the corner of his jaw. Slick-soft skin over gourmet muscle. A real prize here at Long Beach.
I kneel in the sand, hold the fish flat, remove the hook, and then scoop him upward and oceanward into an Olympic dive to freedom.
In a minute I’m back out here chest-deep with another live shrimp. But after an hour of increasing winds and no more bites and sinking sun I call it a day.
Long Beach has one thing in common with most other ocean fishing holes: you can count on an eventual surprise at the end of your line.

Photo: John Bryan (me) catching bait in Long Beach (NC) surf.

Ocean Crest Pier

August 6 2007, Ocean Crest Pier, Oak Island, NC

It’s 10:30 Monday morning and a hot twenty-mile-an-hour breeze blows Atlantic waves beneath this pier. Terri Reed leans over her flounder rod pulling a small mullet minnow along the bottom on florescent line. She’s been here since 6:30 and has gotten one flounder bite. “I can stay out here fishing all day and not get one bite and still have lots of fun,” she says. “Look at that,” she says after she retrieves her line and discovers an empty hook.
Terri lives in Denver, NC and is an administrator for Duke Power at their McGuire Nuclear Station on Lake Norman. It’s been there 25 years and has more than 1,000 employees. “It’s merged with Synergy and is all over the world now.”
She and her husband own property here on Oak Island and come here often. “This time we’re here for 9 days and I’ll be out here on this pier probably 6 or 7 of them.”
She uses a spinning rod and reel and casts fairly close to the pier’s pilings on the shallow end. She leans over, points her rod at the ocean, moves the minnow along the bottom on a strong leader trailing behind a swivel and a barrel sinker. “Last week I caught a 5 ½-pounder on this pier,” she smiles. “They put my picture up.”
Flounder fishing is her favorite, but Terri grew up fishing for bluegill, crappie, bass, and catfish in Chester, SC. Her grandfather taught her. “I just lived for grandpaw’s visits, ‘cause I knew he was taking me fishing. I was just a little bitty thing.”
Her husband got her into saltwater fishing. Here at Oak Island she occasionally fishes from the surf. “I just prefer the pier because of the people,” she says as her eyes stretch across the other anglers down the length of the pier. “You make friends up here.”
“Who likes fishing better, you or your husband?” I ask.
“I do,” is her immediate response. “He’ll tell you that too – and also that I like to fish more than any man’s he’s ever met.”
I point to vacationers along the beach, relaxing in their chairs, reading their books, and ask her if she enjoys that.
Terri shakes her head before the words come: “You won’t find me out there. This is what I love doing.”
At home in Denver she and her husband enjoy fishing at Lake Norman, crappie mostly, usually on minnows. “If you can fillet him and put him on a biscuit, he’s a keeper.”
Terri uses her final mullet minnow – from among a bunch that her husband netted earlier in the shallows – and winds in her line.
I ask if she has any fishing tips for newcomers on this pier. “Patience.” She pauses, thinks, and points her head towards the other end of the pier. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell that little feller up yonder.”
Any words of wisdom for life itself? “Take a day at a time and live it to the fullest. I just love being out here – the ocean, how the tide comes in and out . . . just take it all in.”

Photo: Terri Reed on Ocean Crest Pier

Tempe Town Lake

July 30 2007, Tempe Town Lake, Phoenix

This lake is worth seeing – a beautifully manicured and appointed park-lined “lake’ formed by a precisely defined dam on a channelized Salt River that runs right through town. Shore anglers fish from concrete walkways that border the north and south shores. A concessions area rents paddle boats and tour boats.
I am here – along with only one other angler – in the early afternoon of sunshine and 106 degrees. The other angler is Mo Rukli, age 28, an aspiring professional bass angler. “I fish here for practice,” he says. I see immediately that he knows what he’s doing. He’s throwing a junebug-color piece of plastic on a Carolina rig on Power Pro braid. (Novices don’t do that.) As I arrive he sets the hook, yanks his rod, but nothing’s there. “Lot of bluegill down there,” he explains.
I’m throwing my chrome Rat-L-Trap in an effort to cover as much water as possible. Mo again sets a fishless hook, shakes his head, and says, “They’re down there.” I stay with the Rat-L-Trap.
Mo owns his own two-year-old business: an on-line bazaar that sells items he imports from north Africa. He warehouses and ships everything himself. His wife, a graphic designer, developed the Web site.
He tells me that his largest bass from this lake was six pounds, that a primary forage is crawfish, and that there used to be hydrilla “until the big flood” three years ago.
He sets the hook again and this time his rod bends double. Must be a big one. It’s a fat-bellied two-pounder. He explains that all of this lake’s bass fight like much bigger fish. I immediately switch to a dropshot rig with an “Aaron’s Magic” Robo Worm.
Mo is a tournament angler, has fished in three of FLW’s major league events, and fishes other tournaments in area lakes which he says are difficult and have poor quality bass. He says golden algae wiped out three of the better lakes.
Mo gives the #1 answer to my question about his fishing beginnings: “My dad took me when I was little.”
As we talk the skies darken and the winds arrive. “It’s monsoon season, and it’s coming – a good time for me to be going,” he says while looking at the sky and reeling in his line. Rain begins.
“Does the rain end as quickly as it starts?” I ask.
“No. It usually stays awhile,” he says.
I do not follow his advice. I decide to stay – casting in the shelter of the highway bridge overhead. It’s a mistake. Hard winds and pounding rain blow sideways making casting and fishing problematical. The weather stays – and strands me away from my car - for two hours during which I catch no fish and get no bites.
After the rain I walk along the walkway for another hour and see bluegill and carp, but no bass. I throw a bunch of lures – even a Lucky Craft Pointer – and get no bites. Mo’s bass had given me confidence and expectation, and they’ll be in place when I visit again.

Photo: Mo Rukli at Tempe Town Lake in Phoenix

Canal Park Pond

July 30 2007, Canal Park Pond, Phoenix

It’s the middle of the day, sunny, 108 degrees, and I’m all alone at this lovely public pond. As I approach this palm-ringed water some sort of giant grey heron flaps from pre-history across my view.
This pond is fed by a canal – wide enough and deep enough for good fish – from upstream towards the nearby Arizona Historical Society. The landscape here is as natural as it was a long, long time ago.
Scrawny plants hug the ground and display what look like white flowers until I get close and see that they are merely ghost-pale leaves. I pick one, crush it, and smell it. That’s the thing about the desert southwest – all the ground plants smell like cookouts.
A bush as tall and twice as wide as I am displays crimson flowers the size of gardenias and pretty enough for a senorita’s hair. The ground crunches like grapenuts under my plastic crocks which feel as if they are ready to melt. Purple violets grow along the shore of the canal.
I fish patiently with a Senko, dropping it into the shade of overhangs and laydowns. Obvious bass areas, but no bites.
Occasionally I see a silver-dollar-size hole in the desert; I don’t know what creature inhabits those. Even the lizards are absent in today’s heat. I see only one – a gray slow-mover.
There is a huge fish tailing the shallows across the canal. It is the first of two dozen Asian carp that I see in this water.
I watch where I step. This has to be scorpion country. Or rattlesnake! I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I continue to watch my step. Delicious clouds begin to appear in the distance. This is monsoon season and perhaps later they will bunch up and drop a load. A drop of water hits my arm. Then another. Forehead perspiration. It doesn’t take long . . .
I scour the ground for gold as I walk and kick among the sand and rock. This must have been what it looked like to other-century prospectors.
I keep trying the Senko in great spots, but no bites at all. A dove occasionally dodges low among these palms that I see are loaded with acorn-size green fruit. I squeeze into one and taste it – slightly bitter. I pick pieces of a variety of crinkly-dry ground vegetation and smell them – all worthy of grilled veggie kabobs.
A large mangy dog that looks exactly like Cujo appears in the distance and gets closer and runs the opposite shore. No companion. Apparently no owner. He disappears. Then suddenly he appears on my side of the lake a hundred yards away running in my direction without seeing me. I stiffen my hold on my fishing rod-weapon and stand motionless next to a palm trunk. At 20 feet – still at full gate – the dog sees me and is startled. He pauses and barks a low growl. My heart quickens, but he moves on – cautiously, his head turning back in vigilance. He becomes smaller and my last sighting is of him running a distant hill – still in 108-degree sunshine.
After an hour I switch from the fat Senko to a skinny Robo Worm and catch a 10-inch bass on my first cast. I am of course encouraged, but nothing else bites – even on other lures I try before I leave.
This pond is in the landing approach for Phoenix’s Skyport airport, and there is a constant flow of overhead traffic – all of it beautiful. In this smog-free, clear-air city (they tell me the winds are responsible) the often beautifully-hued airplanes are angelic.
The ground air is alive with the high-pitched buzz of crickets or locusts or some sort of insects, and with the yapping and squawking of birds not familiar back east. One squeaks like a pet’s squeeze toy. I do recognize a flock of 20 starlings and a solitary scraggly grackle.
A multi-trunk bush with stringy green leaves supports seed pods that look like dozen-pearl strands of brown M&Ms. I bite into one for the taste: a yummy and smoky flavor.
The winds pick up and the clouds darken and I see rain falling five miles away towards the mountains. I depart having caught just the one small fish.

Photo: John Bryan (me) at Canal Park Pond in Phoenix