Take Me Fishing

Shaker Park, Pittsburgh

2007-09-04T12:47:00.001-04:00

August 28 2007, Horseshoe Lake in Shaker Park, Pittsburgh

The historical marker says that this lake was created in 1852 when the Shakers built a dam across Doan Brook to create a woolen mill. Today this five-acre horseshoe-shaped lake and its park are surrounded by zillion-dollar homes – the types of homes with about 30 windows facing the street, with serpentine drives, and with lawns and grounds so well manicured that they look effortless. Their residents stroll occasionally by me as I fish here. I’m the only angler.
“Catching any amur?” a 60-ish man asks. “Amur?” I respond. “Yes, they stocked them in here – should be big enough now,” he explains, and then walks on. Amur indeed. Obviously not an angler.
“Are you fishing for trout?” a 40-something woman and her companion ask. “No, bass,” I respond. Trout in this shallow, warm-water, public park pond? Other non-anglers.
This is a beautiful pond – quite fishy looking – but I see no evidence that others fish here: no discarded fishing line, no lure packages, no worm containers. The pond is sprinkled with shoreline weeds, lily pads, shade trees, and duckweed. Its water is dark, tannic. I tie on a Senko and toss it along this dam over which the main pathway traverses. Strollers continue walking by.
The dam is located on the bend of the horseshoe. The horseshoe’s arms stretch left and right in the distance with apparently no shoreline paths providing access. A kingfisher chatters and dives and flaps across the left arm of the horseshoe. Ten minutes later a different kingfisher does the same on the right arm. Then the left-arm kingfisher again.
My Senko swims into bassy water, but no bites. I switch to a Rat-L-Trap and throw it alongside far pads, through patches of floating duckweed, and out into the calm center of this pond. Nothing.
You can’t help but notice how well-appointed these strollers are. This park’s clientele wears casually smart clothing – plenty of khaki and plenty of perfectly relaxed and blended hair styles. It’s an hour before sunset, and this is an after-work or pre-dinner communion with nature.
I switch to a Pop-R then a buzzfrog, but no bass respond to these topwater offerings. Then I go to the certain strike-getter: a four-inch finesse worm. It does indeed get bitten on the first cast, but only gentle pecks from what are presumably tiny bluegill. No bass bites.
The dam – now carpeted with grass and wildflowers and this path from which I fish – is constructed of granite blocks, and from between some of their cracks grow eager greenery. The Shakers built it to last, and today’s pond is a postcard. A Great Blue Heron – the only one I see here – squawks and flaps lazily across the pond and alights in the top of a 60-foot tree. Far across the pond I now see a blue- and white-shirted couple stand and fold their blanket and stroll into the woods.

Chagrin River, Cleveland

2007-09-04T12:46:00.000-04:00

August 26 2007, Chagrin River, Cleveland

Just a couple of days ago on the shores of Lake Erie an angler told me that he loves fishing for steelhead in the Chagrin River. Now I’m wading in it – but the wrong time of year for steelhead. What surprises me is the size of this river: only a couple of casts across, and mostly calf-deep with the deepest pools perhaps four or five feet deep. The river is green-clear with three or four feet of visibility, and its bottom is mostly rocky and pebbly – not muddy.
This is a perfect-weather Sunday afternoon, and my car claimed the final spot in the Chagrin River Park’s lot, but the other park-goers are here for picnics and dog-walking and jogging and just enjoying the out-of-doors – not fishing. I can see at least a mile of river up- and downstream, and there are no other anglers. Before I waded in I looked down on the river from an upstream footbridge and saw clear, shallow water with no fish: no smallmouths, no little bluegill, no carp, not even any minnows. It made me wonder what’s in here; I’m of course brand new to this water and my knowledge is nil.
To get to my wade-in spot I walked a path bordered by a meadow of wildflowers: purple Hortons, blue daisies, pale lavender morning glories, tiny smartweed, mini-fried-egg asters, purple violets, yellow cornflowers. My heart quickened as I came upon the river and waded in among its seemingly virgin vista.
I see them immediately: schools of two-inch minnows, pale green ghosts in groups of tens and twenties and more. I have no idea what kinds of predator fish are in this river, but they have plenty to snack on. I start with a four-inch finesse worm on a sixteenth-ounce jighead and begin my downstream wade. (River waders always have this dilemma: up- or downstream? I choose downstream because the park’s footbridge and the underbridge waders and sand-players are upstream.)
This surely does look like smallmouth water. It even smells like smallmouth water – like Nashville’s Harpeth River from my teenage years with live crawfish. And, like the Harpeth, this stretch of the Chagrin is surrounded by homes and roads and civilization – all unseen from my midstream wade. But I do see clues: there lodged on a midstream gravel bar is an old bicycle frame, and not three feet from it is a golf ball. And the river’s bottom and shoreline – throughout the mile or two that I will wade today - are littered with red bricks and concrete building blocks and pieces of river glass and river porcelain.
I work my finesse worm along a swift shoreline run that’s a bit deeper than where I stand in the middle. On the third cast I get hung in an overhanging branch, but then the rod throbs and I realize that it’s a fish. I reel in a beautiful little smallmouth – perhaps ten inches - strong and healthy and green. So this is a smallmouth river!
A bit further downstream I work the finesse worm through the downstream current of a deeper little pool: cast cross-current and then slack-line the worm as it tumbles downstream across the bottom, waiting and watching for a twitch in the line. The twitch happens and I set the hook and reel in another ten-incher. Then another. Fifteen minutes and I already have three smallmouths; this is going to be a glorious outing.
I look downstream and see endless opportunities: pools and runs and shoreline shadows. River waders are always anticipating what’s next. I slosh through a long stretch of ankle-deep river on the way to the next hole.
I see a mussel shell the size of my palm – bright pearly white. Then another. Near it is a piece of river porcelain with a drawing of an Asian woman. River porcelain and river glass are simply broken and discarded pieces that have had their edges rubbed finger-smooth by the river’s tumblings. Janet and I have collected river glass from the James River; the prizes are the pieces that have numbers or letters or other markings. River porcelain is not common in the James, but it is here in the Chagrin, and before my wade is complete I will have pocketed a dozen pieces of smooth porcelain, all with patterns and pictures.
My worm goes fishless for a half-hour so I switch to a Panther Martin minnow, first the small size, then the larger – with no bites on either. Then back to the worm.
I come to a stretch of river that is floored with the slickest stuff I’ve ever stepped on. It’s bare, smooth rock of some sort, without any growth of slick algae, and it’s even slick on the soles of my special sandals that have a track record of mostly perfect grip. I don’t want to fall in. I don’t mind getting wet or hurt, but I don’t want to drown another cell phone on a fishing outing. (This would be number four.)
Somehow I get across the slickness and arrive at a long deep pool that’s bordered with fallen logs and overhanging trees. Perfect water for all sorts of fish. But my worm, then a Senko, then two different crankbaits, all go fishless and biteless.
The shorelines here and along the rest of the river are lined with three-storey trees, lush weeds and underbrush, and rushes and watergrasses. I remember wading similar stretches of the Harpeth with Ramsey Woods who always caught four-pound smallmouths while I caught one-pounders. I always threw a little Mepps which caught lots of small fish; Ramsey patiently threw a big Rapala. So I now switch to the big boy: the huge Lucky Craft Pointer that has worked so well for me on largemouths.
I throw the Pointer upstream and cross-stream and downstream through several deep pools and across knee-deep currents. It receives no interest. It casts a long way and while retrieving it I scan the pebbled bottom for porcelain. I am reminded of the Ohoopee – the long-ago south Georgia sand river in which I waded and from which I collected shards of Indian pottery. Mostly on dry sandbars, the spoonsize pieces were flat and curved and showed parallel rows of ridges. I would find some during every wade.
The fish don’t bite. Those three I caught early on are the only ones I will catch today, but they propel my hope for more than an hour downstream and then back up. River waders are always perplexed about turning around and heading back. There is always one more good spot to try. There is always one more good pool in the distance. There is always one more fish that jumps just out of casting range.
On the way back as I collect more porcelain, I round a bend and look up and see two anglers: bank-sitting, bucket-toting, line-watching, nasty-word- spewing, aluminum-can-drinking types.
“Catchin’ any?” I hail them as I approach. (My only route upstream is by them and their bucket.)
“Just one small one,” says one of them – surprisingly nicely.
“Any advice for smallmouths?” I ask. “This is my first time on this river.”
“They’re under the rocks,” is the reply.
I don’t dawdle or ask for photographs or interviews, but as I wade purposefully by I do learn that they’re using live crawfish and have had no luck except for the small one that they released.
I round the next bend and the next one before I get to within site of my starting point. Before exiting the river I find and collect a huge, Bible-size piece of river glass: a couple of inches thick, rectangular, with smooth-melted edges and swirls of mesmerizing surface patterns. Back at the hotel I wash and scrub and dry it and begin to see images within the surface patterns – not manufactured images, but images stemming from that same portion of the mind that sees things in clouds. In yesterday’s newspaper I read that some fellow had sold on e-Bay a Madonna-imaged thing that he had found. Back home in a few days I will ask Janet to help me look at my piece of river glass; we will continue to look and look and look.

Photo: John Bryan holding Chagrin River smallmouth

Business Park Pond, Berea, Ohio

2007-09-04T12:40:00.000-04:00

August 22 2007, Business Park Pond, Berea, Ohio

Business park ponds present a set of tricky wickets, and I now guide the reader – and myself – through them as I encounter this one on my travels.
Fundamental rule: when you do find a good-fishing business park pond, don’t broadcast the information. The best way to get a bunch of No Fishing signs planted is to attract a lot of anglers who litter the grounds with used fishing line, empty worm containers, and drink cans. Thus today’s pond remains anonymous.
I am in Berea for just a portion of a day, but I can’t resist driving into a business park to investigate the wooded, weeded, area out back. Sometimes such woods and weeds are there to camouflage retention ponds, borrow pits, and other bodies of water associated with the business park’s construction and operation.
Today I am not disappointed. There is a beautiful little two-acre pond, and there is even a spot that provides fishable access. I park and walk the 20 feet to the pond’s edge.
(A note about parking: for these sorts of ponds there is almost always nearby parking. Of course you never want to park in a Reserved or No Parking spot.)
Next I look for fences and No Fishing, No Trespassing, and No Entry signs – nothing. So I gather my rod and lure vest from the trunk, tie on a finesse worm, and go quickly to the access area. The pond is muddy-brown with only a few inches of visibility. I look for minnows and bluegill along the shoreline in front of me, but I see none. I look across the smooth pond’s surface for splashes of baitfish and larger fish, but nothing. And I look for fish-eating birds - herons, cormorants, ospreys – and I see none.
From a lot of experience I do know that some of these ponds have no fish. Their water may not be healthy, they may have been chemically treated, they may have been recently drained dry, who knows? But I always arrive with positive expectation.
The pond is lined with extremely thick bushes and trees and shrubs, and I throw the worm parallel to the bank in both directions, hoping to lure a bass that’s hiding among the overhangs. My standing area includes little purple-clustered wildflowers on which bumblebees alight. Behind me is the business park, adjacent is a hotel, and across the main road is a restaurant. Cars hum a background chorus.
I work the finesse worm along the shoreline in both directions with no results. Then I fan-cast it out into the main pond, inching it along the bottom to feel for structure. A dozen casts later – that’s usually the point when I switch lures – I change to a chrome Rat-L-Trap so I can cast even further, reel even faster, and cover even more water. With limited time on an unknown body of water you want to cover a lot of water with a lot of lures in a hurry.
I still have seen no sign of minnows or fish, and I begin to suspect that this is a dead pond. Fifty feet to my left I see a four-inch white pipe sticking out from the steep bank and dripping some sort of liquid into the pond. At the drip area is a small flotsam of foam. I scour the ground around me and see no angling trash: no hook packages, no pieces of discarded line, no bobbers. And still not even one fishy splash or swirl. I am on the borderline of giving up on this fishless pond.
Then I see it! On the ground, hidden by greenery: a discarded plastic bait package. Yum Dingers, Junebug color! This is a good find. Only serious bass anglers use Yum Dingers, and only knowledgeable bass anglers use them in the Junebug color.
So with fresh hope, nervous hands, and quickening heart I quickly tie on a Senko (similar to a Dinger) in green pumpkin (only color I have) and toss it to a shoreline bush. Bingo! A 12-inch bass. And during my remaining 45 minutes I catch six more – the largest almost two pounds.
Now there are at least two bass anglers who know about this pond’s bass. But had the other angler not discarded the lure package I would have likely departed thinking the pond was fishless.
There are all sorts of office park ponds and shopping center ponds and housing complex ponds. The ones you want to look for are the ones that are hidden within seemingly unattended woods and bushes. Usually you’ll have to snake your way through briars and vines and thick stuff. But more times than not there are fish waiting for you. People ask me how the fish get there. I don’t know.

Eleanor B. Garfield Park, Greater Cleveland

2007-09-04T12:37:00.000-04:00

August 25 2007, Eleanor B. Garfield Park, Greater Cleveland

This is a community park with picnic facilities, playgrounds, soccer and baseball fields, and a two-acre pond. I simply saw the sign on the road and turned in to take a look. The park is active with games and picnickers. When I arrive there is only one angler. I walk up to him and ask if he’s done any good. “A couple of catfish and some bluegill.” Then I identify myself and ask if I can photograph and interview him. “No, I don’t think I’m interested.” Then as I walk back to my car to get my fishing rod, he reels in his rod, gets into his car, and leaves.
I immediately see a big fish swirl. Then another. During my first few minutes here I will mistake some shoreline swirls for bass, and then I will learn that they are carp. They are all carp. Dozens of carp, hundreds of carp – maybe thousands. They’re everywhere, all at least two or three pounds, some much larger. They are out in the middle and they are right up against the bank in water so shallow that an inch of their back sticks out of the water.
I will fish the pond hard for 90 minutes, walk the entire path around it, throw several types of lures, but will never see a bass or get a bass bite. Finally, at the pond’s headwaters where the little clear stream (Newell Creek – a tributary of the Chagrin River) enters I will catch a four-inch warmouth on a four-inch finesse worm. But that’s it.
There are some lines and bobbers in trees, so I know that others fish here. But the carp are so numerous that they’re bound to crowd everything else out. On one flat I count more than 50 carp so shallow that I can see them.
The grounds and woods surrounding the pond are pretty, and it’s a nice nature-walk around it. There are purple and yellow wildflowers as tall as my chest, Queen Anne’s Lace, lavender dandelions, little yellow snapdragons, blue daisies. There are bright blue dragonflies and pumpkin-rust dragonflies. And there are mallards and Canada geese everywhere.
I did ask that one angler if there are bass in the pond, and he said yes. But he was live-worm fishing for non-bass.
There are bushes with blue berries, bushes with red berries, and oaks with acorns as big as walnuts. And crabapple trees: one with deep red fruit that falls when I shake the branches. I eat a couple – tartly delicious. And there are deer prints on the muddy sections of the shore.
The signature landmark of this pond is an old nearly-dead willow trunk with the girth of a rhinoceros and gnarly bark that mimics that da Vinci drawing of an old man. The tree stands on the back side of the pond where the path leads through and under thick woods.
I eventually give up on the fish and my casts become hopeless efforts. I listen to the loudspeaker for the baseball game. Runners on second and third and batter up. I peer through the woods and see the field. The pitcher is tall and lanky and the batter is short and scrawny. Two outs. It’s up to the batter to try to extend the inning. First pitch: SQUEEZE PLAY! He bunts as the runner from third sprints home! The dusty slide. . and . . . he’s . . . foul ball! The bunt rolled foul just as the runner slid into home. Second pitch: a stinger to short! The shortstop makes the long throw to first, in the dirt, gets away, and one runner scores! The other runner gets caught in a rundown and gets tagged out. One run in, but the inning’s over.
Far more exciting than my fish-catching abilities.
As I leave and walk across a little meadow to my car I see a huge squirrel. I’ve seen big fox squirrels back in Tennessee, but this thing is really big. And he’s sort of ambling on all fours like a bear. He has caramel brown fur and one of the longest tails – also caramel – that I’ve ever seen. He stops and looks at me. He’s between me and my car. I continue towards him. He doesn’t move. Finally at six feet I stop. His eyes are riveted onto mine. A stare-down showdown between me and a squirrel. I am a bit concerned. But my stare outduels his, and he scampers up a nearby tree.

Shawnee State Park Lake

2007-09-01T08:33:00.000-04:00

August 29 2007, Shawnee State Park Lake, southern Pennsylvania

Well, this is odd.
Here I am standing on the roadside wooded shoreline of a 450-acre lake in a 4,000-acre state park and there is absolutely no noise. No caws of big crows, no chirpings of little birds, no crickets, no locusts, no rustling of leaves, no cars passing by, no boats, not even the wind in the willows. Nothing. I tilt my head and observe this silence; how is it possible?
But wait, there’s more.
I walk over to the boat rental building – unused rowboats and canoes and paddleboats on the lawn in front – and the building is locked and vacant. Boldly posted on the front window are the days and hours of operation, and it is supposed to be open today, Wednesday. But nobody is home.
Discarded on the ground is what looks like a large, open, plastic yogurt container half full of a brown mess. With my toe I tilt the container and read: “Catfish Charlie’s Shad Dip – Catfish Bait.” This “shad dip” has been here roasting and basting in today’s hot sun, but there is no stink. I lean over and sniff carefully to confirm the absence of odor. Confirmed.
There’s still more.
I look out across this huge lake that stretches its arms in several directions and see only a flat surface – no splashes of fish, no dimplings of minnows, no wet-winged flutterings of swifts, no swirlings of turtles, not even a ripple of a bubble.
This lake and I are surrounded by 360 degrees of forests and hills, and I realize that the treetops and hilltops are invisible; a hot haze has erased and smeared them into the washed-out paleness of a blue-bleached sky.
Once again I listen: a hollow and soundless nothing.
And I don’t know it yet, but I will catch no fish, get no bites.
The dock area has No Fishing signs, and the two nearby road bridges that cross arms of the lake have No Fishing From Bridge signs, so I walk a few hundred yards along the shorelines to cast my bass lures.
The water has a pale brown hue and two feet of visibility – perfect for a Senko. But cast after cast after cast into shoreline shadows, under fallen trees, and alongside submerged weeds produce nothing.
My path is bordered by a meadow that sprouts purple dandelions and stunted Queen Anne’s Lace. Sycamores and firs are tall along the shore. A dozen muffin-size mushrooms grow in a row near my path. An empty nightcrawler container is littered among them. And I see a lone striped chipmunk scamper silently, then stand alert on his hind legs, then scamper again and disappear.
I switch to a chrome Rat-L-Trap and with it search lots of water out far, in close, and beneath one of the bridges. From atop the bridge undulates a 40-foot strand of glistening fishing line which is anchored in the vicinity of the No Fishing From Bridge sign.
I can see hundreds of acres of lake and thousands of yards of shoreline and there are zero anglers on this good-weather August day.
Then, finally, I see a fishing boat in the water; actually it is tethered to the shore up ahead. I arrive to find it fully equipped with electric motor, depthfinder, baited fishing rods, and no angler. Where is the boat’s owner? I stand and cast for 15 minutes waiting for an appearance that doesn’t happen.
Perhaps an hour later, after throwing fishless bass lures into lots of great spots, I give up on the bass and decide to fish for whatever will bite. I hate to go fishless on this fishiest-looking of lakes. I tie on my never-fail rig: two 32nd-ounce jigs a foot apart – one in pink/white and the other chartreuse/white. I will toss and swim them in tandem among the bridge’s shadows, alongside its pilings, and tempt crappie and bluegill and perhaps a bass or two.
But cast after cast after cast are ignored.
Finally I give totally up. This is such a beautiful lake and a beautiful park, but I have arrived at a time when the stars are obviously in peculiar alignment. (Janet later tells me it must have had something to do with the eclipse.) I have never before experienced this total absence of all stirrings.
A lake is a terrible thing to waste.

Photo: John Bryan at Shawnee State Park Lake

North Park Lake, Pittsburgh

2007-09-01T08:26:00.000-04:00

August 28 2007, North Park Lake, Pittsburgh

Mike Ciccone rarely fishes – only once, without a fish, at this lake; and another time, with small fish, in Maine – but he does tend the boats for this 80-acre, 70-year-old WPA park constructed as part of Roosevelt’s New Deal.
I am the only angler here today – a Monday during work hours – and the little rowboat I’ve been assigned glides wonderfully across the lake’s mirror surface. This is an obviously well-used park, and throughout my outing I see a continual sprinkling of bikers and joggers and walkers on the paths and streets that surround the lake.
Mike’s water interest is kayaks. His father doesn’t fish, but in 1999 he took Mike ocean-kayaking in Alaska – a turning-point adventure – and Mike’s been a kayaker ever since. He owns his own boat and is a member of a kayak club.
Although I see no other anglers on the lake, there are two kayakers – bright yellow boats with red life vests and seesawing paddles.
This is a bobby pin lake – two arms that meet at a bend at the dam and overflow area. The arm that holds the boathouse – a grand and gothic stone structure with a big clock at the top (with the wrong time) – is filled with weeds and lily pads into which I toss my first lure of the day: a green Senko. Around the dock I see bluegills, drawn to my presence by their casual curiosity. But no bass. And no bites on the Senko.
Chirpings from above grab my attention and I watch as three swifts bicker and flutter and chase in vertical play. And beauty from lake level also gets my attention; the pads are aflower: bright white blooming onions center-splashed with yellow.
Along one shoreline I see a fallen tree that looks so perfect for bass that I put down my rod and speak into my note-taking recorder: “I am documenting this in advance: I will catch my first bass from this tree.” Of course all of us bass anglers do this: identify perfect spots from which we guarantee that we will catch a bass. In this case it works. On the first cast a three-pounder grabs the Senko, and I reel him in and release him. Although I will catch several more bass in this lake, this will be the largest.
Mike says that on weekdays only one or two anglers will rent boats, but on weekends maybe a dozen or so. He adds that many more anglers fish from the easily accessible shorelines. He doesn’t know what anyone catches; he never sees them bringing in their fish.
A bit further along this shoreline I catch two more bass – both ten-inchers on the Senko. I see an abandoned water bottle standing on the middle of a green picnic table. And among the waterside rushes is a huge flower, its four petals reaching widely and facing skyward like a lavender satellite dish.
Mike also likes to hike and climb; he’s summated two 14,000-foot peaks. On the first one his hands became swollen, a result of high altitude edema. No problems on the second one. Once when climbing Lookout Mountain – an 8,000-foot peak outside Golden, Colorado, he lost the trail and got lost in the woods in the dark. He knew there were steep drops, and he also knew there was a tower at the top of the peak. So in the darkness he grabbed hold of tree after tree as he worked his way back to the top and then followed a different trail back down. He walked 13 extra miles to get back.
There is one frightening thing here on this lake: the overflow. I’ve never seen one like it. It’s a hundred-foot semicircle that’s difficult to recognize until you get close and realize that a foot of water is continually rushing over it and then cascading a hundred feet below. Back at the boathouse I had been told, “Stay away from the overflow,” along with instructions about the life vest and when to return the boat. I’ve been on lots of little lakes with overflows and none of them is ever dangerous. But this one is. Fortunately I recognize it in plenty of time to avoid getting sucked over.
Along the dam area is steeper, deeper water, and on the third cast I catch my second largest bass of the day: a very fat two-pounder, again on the Senko. A road with lots of traffic traverses the dam, and not twenty feet above me a tow truck attends to a broken car. The driver wears khakis and a crimson-striped golf shirt. With his left hand he talks on his cell phone while he enunciates with his right.
Mike also does mapping, including ten trail maps in a year for Backpacker Magazine. He explains that GPS mappings of trails are needed, and he walks them with his GPS and tape recorder, noting things like crossing bike paths, nearness to roads, etc. Then his version is reduced to a dozen or so essential details. His biggest trail will be the 34-mile Rachel Carson Trail which runs partly through this park. Twice he has done one-day hikes of that trail. He says that many trails are so badly marked that it takes two or three hikes to get the correct trail description.
A lone cormorant drifts in midlake. He doesn’t dive. This open area near the dam is exposed to a slight breeze, and the lake’s avocado-green surface has turned from mirror to frosted glass. I’m now on the shady side of the lake, but no bites. I learned long ago that if a lake has a sunny side and a shady side, you can catch more bass on the sunny side. Just toss your lures into the little shady spots; they concentrate the bass.
There is a stone passageway beneath the road and it leads to a shallow slough filled with pads. Paddling beneath it I read the graffiti: “Scott loves Nicole” in blue, and “Lisa + Tim D.” in pink. The slough is perfect for a frog, so I tie on a Stanley Ribbit buzzfrog and on the fifth cast catch a one-pounder that exploded like a ten-pounder. But he was obviously a decoy bass, because another half hour with the frog produces nothing.
This slough is filled with those little two-inch dragonflies that alight on the pads and stickups: the bright blue-tailed ones and the equally numerous pumpkin-rust variety.
A Great Blue Heron flies just above the water’s surface, huge neck reaching forward towards the mudbar where he lands.
When I return the boat I have caught nine bass – all but one on the Senko. I also tried a Rat-L-Trap without any hits. The Senko got hundreds of hits from the bluegill and tiny bass that line the deeper shorelines.
As Mike tends to my boat he tells me that his favorite thing about his work here is talking to folks about the kayaks – giving advice and tips and suggestions. And his least favorite thing is chaining the rowboats at night. He has to run an awkward chain through them and sometimes the locks get stuck.
Next to the boathouse is a giant and very goofy catfish – a sculpted and painted piece of some sort of stone – and I persuade Mike to stand next to it for a photograph with his kayak gear. The lake stretches in the distance as the sun sinks behind us in the Pennsylvania woods.

Photo: Mike Ciccone at North Park

Punderson Lake - Cleveland

2007-08-27T23:27:00.000-04:00

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

2007-08-27T15:32:00.000-04:00

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

2007-08-25T18:30:00.000-04:00

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

2007-08-25T17:53:00.000-04:00

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

2007-08-24T11:38:00.001-04:00

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

2007-08-24T11:06:00.000-04:00

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

2007-08-21T12:15:00.000-04:00

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.

2007-08-16T10:05:00.000-04:00

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.

2007-08-14T14:41:00.000-04:00

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

2007-08-13T13:23:00.000-04:00

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

2007-08-13T13:12:00.000-04:00

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

2007-08-06T17:05:00.000-04:00

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

2007-08-02T20:28:00.000-04:00

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

2007-08-02T20:18:00.000-04:00

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

Papago Ponds

2007-07-29T21:18:00.000-04:00

July 29 2007, Papago Ponds – Phoenix

It’s cloudless and 104. My mother has just telephoned me from Nashville: “You don’t go to Arizona in the summer.” After more than five decades . . .
I have just parked my car in Papago Park and seeing the first of the three Papago Ponds erases all effects of the heat.
Gorgeous! Surrounded by rocks and desert and those Arizona orange/red hues, these three patches of blue are postcards. I see gray lizards scampering everywhere, herons along the shores (including one pure white giant), those tall cacti on the hillsides, and a smattering of chattering birds that I can’t identify.
There are three ponds here – each about two or three casts across and bordered by palms and other foliage. The three ponds are terraced, each further up the hill, and each draining into the next. In the shallows I see bluegill, tilapia, and bass fingerlings.
I circle the two lower ponds as I cast a plastic worm. Nothing.
When I reach the top pond I tie on a Senko and catch a bass – about a pound – on my first cast in the shadow of an over-leaning palm. Then a second bass – twice as large – on the second cast under another palm.
On the far bank I see the only other anglers here at Papago Park – three men attending baited rods. I fish my way around to them – without another fish – and introduce myself. They smile and are generous with their hospitality and conversation.
They are Jesus Placencia and his 19-year-old son David, and his 16-year-old nephew Angel Garcia. They come here a lot. It’s their favorite fishing hole.
Jesus – the father – started fishing when he took David when he was 5. “I started liking it because he did,” grins Jesus. (Refreshingly backwards from the way it usually works.) He has a genuinely affecting smile on a face that is tanned and creased from 30 years in the roofing tile business. He was born in Mexico and moved to Phoenix when he was 23. “The first fish he caught,” he says about David, “were bluegill and we had to clean and cook them.” They all laugh.
Today they’re fishing with live nightcrawlers. Their largest bass from this pond was a 4-pounder that hit a nightcrawler. They also catch tilapia on them. Today Jesus will also cast a chrome Rat-L-Trap on which he will hang and lose a bass when it jumps.
David works for Western Window Systems, and Angel is still in school.
“It’s relaxing. It’s calming,” says David about fishing.
“I like it because I get away from everybody,” offers Angel.
They usually arrive early and fish until 1:00 or 2:00 – “until it starts getting unbearable,” explains David. “Or we run out of bait,” adds Angel. I ask if the fish are biting and it’s really, really hot, will they stay anyway. All agree yes.
They tell me that today is cool. Usually it’s 110. Last year it got to 118. They are amused when I lament that 90 is hot in Virginia.
Following Jesus, I tie on a chrome Rat-L-Trap and catch 2 more – a 14-incher and a 10-incher. A bigger one follows the lure in.
When I leave, my clothing – all of it – is soaked. Jesus and his son and nephew and I share the inability to resist the siren call of fishy waters – even in Arizona in the summer and even in spite of motherly wisdom.

Photo: John Bryan (me) at Papago Ponds

Lake Cuyamaca

2007-07-28T20:57:00.000-04:00

July 28 2007, Lake Cuyamaca – San Diego County near Julian

I dare you to present this question to the kids in your life: If you could spend an entire day doing whatever you want on a computer, or the entire day fishing, which would you choose?
Today on a hot, sunny, no-fish-biting day at Lake Cuyamaca I ask that of Jamelle and Janaya Mitchell (ages 8 and 9) and their neighbor Kemon (12), and all pick fishing. Parents Clinton and Cheryl Mitchell have brought the family, with friend, here for the day. They do a day trip every weekend, each centered on fishing.
“It’s a way to keep our kids involved in something positive and their minds in the right direction,” explains Clinton.
Cheryl adds, “It’s relaxing – a good way to get away from it all.”
Relaxing? Cheryl has packed food and drinks and folding chairs and towels and other stuff. Clinton untangles a jumble of rods and reels and hooks and lures and as he talks to me he removes two hooks that have stuck his hand.
“Look, a fish!” points Janaya. “There’s another one!”
“Where’s the net?” shouts Jamelle.
There are trout everywhere – mostly 12-inchers – jumping and swimming and even dying. The park ranger tells me that they’re starving for oxygen because the water temperature has reached 73 degrees.
This is one of those clear San Diego County lakes that gets stocked with trout that provide a smorgasbord for jumbo Florida-strain bass like the 14-pounder Mike Long holds in the framed photo in the tackle shop.
Or rather it WAS clear until the wildfires hit three years ago. Since then the lake has remained muddy – visibility less than a foot.
“Everybody was crying after the wildfires came,” recalls Clinton. “everything up there,” he points, “was so pretty and green. You would see mountain lions and wild turkeys, but they haven’t come back.”
Cheryl Mitchell grew up with a love of fishing in Queens, New York where her step-father took her fishing at Rockaway, Coney Island and other places. Clinton was born in Louisiana where he gained an immediate love of fishing from his parents, grandparents and everyone else.
“Kemon,” instructs Clinton, “Here’s what you’re gonna do. Get this pole; let me fix you up here.” He fiddles with hooks and sinkers, then adds, “Tell your mom for Christmas you want a new fishing pole.”
The park ranger has told me that during spawn you can catch some bass on swimbaits, but the rest of the year it’s tough. Today is a Saturday and I count easily 75 anglers on the shores and in boats on this small lake. Not one is bass fishing. Most are fishing for trout and I see a sprinkling of 12-inchers on their stringers. Others are fishing for catfish and small crappie.
“Patience,” responds Clinton instantly to my request for a fishing tip. “That’s the best tip you could ever give a person trying to fish.”
I throw a chrome and then chartreuse Rat-L-Trap hoping one will be noticed by a bass in this muddy water. Nothing. I throw a worm into the very scarce shoreline grass with no results. Finally I catch one scrawny crappie on a white mini-jig. Nothing else.
I stay for a couple of hours and walk the shorelines. Each time I look at the Mitchells the kids are active and laughing. Clinton is continually attending to fishing poles. And Cheryl keeps an eye on all.

Photo (left to right): neighbor Kemon with the Mitchells: Janaya, Jamelle, Clinton and Cheryl

Lake Poway

2007-07-28T19:10:00.000-04:00

July 27 2007, Lake Poway – north of San Diego

(At this lake I meet a gentle, two-decade Marine Corps helicopter pilot whose favorite activity is fishing – with his family. He was the one who prepared the cut fruit for the day’s snacks – and who cooks omelets every Saturday.)
It’s hot and sunny and breezeless and my boat rests on Lake Poway’s surface which is as flat as a puddle of purple paint. This small lima-shaped lake, less than a shout from one end to the other, is cradled among hilly canyons.
On the shore in front of me rest a half-dozen buzzards – one frozen in a wide-open wingspread worthy of a cactus pinnacle. High above, along one of the canyon paths, runs a woman trailing three feet of bright blonde mane. And deep below me – maybe over 100 feet deep – swims what Poway’s proprietor says is the world-record bass. My lures – everything I can think of – go fishless all morning.
I meet four other first-time-Poway anglers: the Beldings – Mike and Lisa and their children W.D. (10) and Jessie (9). They moved here from Virginia just two weeks ago: “Fishing was the first thing we thought of when we got here.”
Mike is a 22-year helicopter pilot in the Marine Corps – the Nam-era “phrog” used for troop and cargo transport. Lots of them in Iraq right now. Mike’s Corps experience spans 23 countries and 6 deployments of a half- year or longer. He expects to be deployed again.
Mike grew up in Pennsylvania fishing with his dad and grandfather. In college he and buddies did trout trips to Colorado. Lisa grew up fishing in the North Carolina coast. Their children W.D. and Jessie – military kids – are growing up in lots of cities, but always finding a place to fish. Last weekend they went out on a head boat for sea bass and yellowtail. Catching fish on today’s outing at Lake Poway is more of a challenge. “We like it even if we don’t catch anything,” smiles Jessie.
And I meet the other end of the angling spectrum: Matt McMahon and Jim Cavanaugh III, both 18 and both claiming to be 17-year bassing veterans of Poway. They have 7 rigged bass rods in their boat and they will have caught 3 bass by mid-afternoon, all on dropshot rigs, and all about a pound and a half.
“There’s a 25-pounder in here, “ says Jim with no expression. “I’ve hung 15-pounders and I’ve seen bigger. You’ll see a huge shadow swim beneath your boat . . .” He doesn’t complete the sentence.
Matt and Jim are among the 6 or 7 bassing regulars that fish this lake. The lake’s proprietor tells me that on a hot and sunny July day a “regular” may catch 3 bass. He says the regulars say that if you can catch bass in Poway you can catch bass anywhere.
Matt and Jim are obviously in the full-tilt bass zone – confirmed by the fact that they arrived early this morning and will stay until 11:30 tonight.
You need to understand that this lake is so small that every square inch of it has been continually pounded by bass lure after bass lure after bass lure. And whenever you do see a spot that looks like a likely bass hangout, you have to know that every other bass angler before you has said the same.
For example, there is only one fallen tree along the shorelines of Poway – only one on the whole lake. It is THE bassiest looking spot on the lake. I of course throw my lures to it, and of course they are ignored by whatever bass are in the tree.
“I like casting,” responds Jessie to my question about why she likes to fish.
Then I ask the kids to tell me something about themselves. Jessie says she loves sports and competition. W.D., with a confident grin, says, “I’m the brains of the family. I keep the whole operation going.” Nobody argues. But Lisa raises her eyebrows and waits for more. I ask W.D. for an example – just one example – of how he “keeps the whole operation going.” And he comes through: he was the one who put together the family’s game plan for their visit to Sea World.
Back in my boat after lunch, and without much bass confidence remaining, it is now 1:30 p.m. and the sun is hotter. The only shade on the lake is beneath the string of log-shaped buoys that block off the area near the dam. They stretch across a deep area of the lake. Earlier today I threw plastic worms at them with no response.
I decide to now do something radical and slow. I tie on a #8 hook with no weight and hook a 6-inch worm through the middle. I drop the hooked worm in the water and count; it takes a full 6 seconds for it to sink 12 inches.
I take my boat to within a long cast of the buoys and start casting – one by one as I proceed across the lake. A VERY slow process – letting each cast sink for 60 seconds.
But it works. In the next hour I catch 2 bass this way – each about 2 ½ pounds. Now, according to Poway wisdom, I can catch bass anywhere.
I ask the Beldings if they care to offer any words to live by.
“Play hard, eat fresh,” Jessie lifts as she says it. Lisa reminds her that that’s a Subway commercial.
W.D. of course offers this: “Work should be as close to prison as you ever come.” Lisa and Mike shake their heads.
Mike: “Just be nice to everybody.” Lisa: Family first.”
And I learn that August 22 will be an important day: W.D.’s 11th birthday as well as his and Jessie’s first day back in school.

Dixon Lake – San Diego

2007-07-26T21:27:00.000-04:00

July 26 2007, Dixon Lake, Escondido – San Diego County

When I top the ridge and see Dixon for the first time my eyes widen as I proclaim a spontaneous phrase that, taken out of context, would label me as both profane and sacrilegious. But within this context, my words are those of praise and awe.
A blue oasis filling high-ridge canyons, the view from up here is dangerous. My eyes need to stay on this narrow un-guardrailed road that snakes the hillsides down to the lake.
Tiny Dixon Lake – as all purebred bassers know – is where the world record largemouth was recently caught, witnessed, filmed, weighed, released, and disqualified because the bass was hooked in a place other than the mouth. Word of that remarkable bass attracted a zillion anglers, a zillion media folks, and a zillion versions of the story.
But today, scarcely a year later, I have Dixon all to myself.
I count 43 vacant boats – powered by only muscle or electricity – at the rental dock. I count 4 anglers on the half-dozen fishing piers. I count 8 cars in the lot. I count nobody in the line to buy a permit.
Walt and Malia Brame attend catfish rods on the closest fishing pier. I don’t know Walt’s age, but Malia – his daughter – tells me she is “fwee” without being compelled to hold up fingers.
Malia also answers my question regarding why she likes to fish: “Because it’s fun.” Pause, then, “I’m going to eat some pudding after lunch.”
Walt and Malia usually fish for bluegill at a small lake near their house in nearby San Marcos. This is Malia’s first time at Dixon. “Look at that duck over there,” she interjects.
“What’s your favorite thing about fishing?” I ask Malia.
Her eyes search and her shoulders lift. “Let me think for a minute.” She does. Then, “When the fish pulls your line.” She follows that, without pause, with a fishing tip to live by: “It’s good that the grass is here – because the catfish like to ‘fwim’ around in it.”
Bingo. This lake is deep and clear, but along much of its shorelines are underwater grasses – rooted down to 10 and deeper. Thick vegetation. This is the stuff that catfish – and of course bass – relish. And this fishing pier is surrounded by it.
Walt’s a school teacher – fifth-grade. “They’re sophisticated enough that you can have almost adult conversations. And they have developed a good enough sense of humor that they get your jokes, and that can be a lot of fun.”
Malia is talking too. “I was telling my daddy that he is a rhinoceros,” she stated amid sips from her purple sippy cup. She then offers that she uses “real” cups at home.
Walt and Malia have gotten bites, but no fish. The two anglers on the other pier have caught one catfish – maybe two pounds. The park ranger tells me that it’s been “a problem for anybody to catch pretty much anything lately.” After all, it’s July, it’s hot, it’s sunny, it’s cloudless, and it’s the middle of the day.
Still, with Dixon’s notoriety, you’d assume there’d be at least 100 or so bass anglers here even under the worst conditions. But there are zero.
“I have milk to drink and daddy has water,” Malia again.
Walt on fifth-graders: “The biggest challenge is trying to make the curriculum appealing to them when you know yourself that it isn’t – like when you’re teaching about prepositions or compound sentences. How do you get them to learn the boring stuff?” Indeed.
I rent a boat, tie on a hunk of soft plastic, and am well aware of the history – and big-time money – that’s possible here with every cast. But still I wonder why no other bass angler within highly-populated southern California is here.
After an hour of absolutely no interest in my offerings I think I know why I’m the only one. So I change strategies. No longer will I use my go-to bass methods; I will offer these bass something they have never before seen. (Nor I.)
It takes me about a minute to rig up my new secret (e-mail me at jbryanfish@aol.com and I’ll tell you) – a rig that anyone can make with stuff they probably already have. It looks goofy and I’m glad other bass anglers aren’t watching.
But it works!
In five minutes I hang a fish. (I am using only 6-pound line in this ultra-clear water.) I assume my thoughts are the same as those of all first-time Dixon anglers when they hang a bass. My rod bends double, a few feet of drag peel from the reel, and I’m holding on for the big money.
The fish heads towards deeper water and away from the shoreline weeds, thank goodness.
This is a very heavy fish. I realize that it will be a miracle to land him on this light line.
My rod throbs deeply as I slowly make progress. Then more drag. Careful not to put too much pressure. Careful to steer her away from the electric motor.
Finally, after two long minutes that seem longer, the fish nears the boat as I gain more line. Then I see him and it is indeed a bass (not a catfish!) and I genuinely can’t believe its size. It’s a two-pounder. Without a zero attached. I unhook and release him. What in the world would a teener feel like in this lake?
My exotic rig takes five more bass in the five more hours I am here. The largest is four pounds. The boat dock attendant greets my return with, “Did you ever get a bite?” I feel like Roland Martin.
Prior to the goofy rig I tried various versions of finesse worms, Senkos, frogs and crankbaits. And I threw them in great places: holes in grass, alongside shady piers, bluffs, shoreline weeds, and on top of one surfacing school of small bass. Nothing.
I visit with Walt and Malia again. Malia says, “The crabs pinch. Daddy had one pinch him before and it really hurt.” They are discussing surf fishing which Walt does with sand crabs for perch in the shallows. He also uses lures and on one caught a leopard shark recently.
Advice for Dixon anglers? I have none – except that it’s worth it just to see its beauty. And of course the hold-your-breath feeling of floating atop bass giants.

Photo: Dixon Lake - Fifth-grade teacher Walt Brame and his daughter Malia

Yorba Park - Anaheim, Calif.

2007-07-26T20:49:00.000-04:00

July 25, 2007, Yorba Park, Anaheim – east of Los Angeles

The angler on the opposite shore is doing what I’m doing at this crystal clear weeded pond: dropping a soft plastic lure into holes in the weeds. I watch as he makes long casts, reels quickly until the dark salamander is over a hole, and stops it to let it sink. Same thing I’m doing. I introduce myself.
He is Phil Chung, 32, an aerospace engineer and systems designer for Boeing. He left work early today. “I’ve been fishing ever since I was strong enough to lift a fishing rod, I guess,” he smiles. “I come here about once a week. I like being outdoors and fishing helps you unwind.”
Phil is about my height, my weight, and like me he is using a spinning reel with light line.
“Any fishing tips for others who might want to fish here at Yorba Park?” I ask.
“Patience,” he grins. “Southern California is different. There are so many people that you’re not only competing against the fish but also against the people.”
Although Phil and I are among only a half dozen anglers spread among the park’s ponds today, he says on weekends the park is very crowded – people everywhere, children everywhere, and perhaps as many as 50 anglers on each pond.
I ask him about his work: “Exactly what do you do? What sorts of things are you working on?”
Phil doesn’t respond. He’s thinking what to say.
I try again: “Are you at the computer all day?”
“They don’t really like us to talk about it,” he says gently.
I am now casting a plastic frog that kicks on the return and sinks on the pause. I see a 3-pounder, pull the frog over him and let it drop. The bass pivots, puts his nose down to the frog, and inhales it. I set the hook and the fish is off. Must have spit it out. I see two other good bass, but no other bites. Phil also goes fishless.
His biggest bass from here weighed six pounds – on a white jig. He’s seen them close to 10.
Phil’s other hobby is photography – pictures of nature and of his two-year-old son who has gone fishing but has not yet mastered holding a rod.
My two hours at Yorba Park include good efforts, sans fish, at all three ponds. This beautifully green public park has three tree-lined ponds – four if you count the tiny one at the end – and plenty of parking spots, picnic tables, and restroom facilities. $3 to enter and park.

Photo: Yorba Park - Phil Chung, Aerospace Engineer

Santa Monica Pier – California - Part II

2007-07-24T21:12:00.000-04:00

July 24 2007, Santa Monica Pier – California

A Pocket Fisherman! A Pocket Fisherman! A Pocket Fisherman!
Here at the extreme end of the Santa Monica Pier there is a young man actually using one of Ron Poppiel’s best-selling novelties of all time. (Ron doesn’t fish; he invented this mini-rod/reel after getting poked by a full-length fishing rod at an airport.)
And this guy is actually casting a baited hook into the Pacific Ocean!
I introduce myself and tell him I’ve never ever seen anyone use one of these things in real life. His name is Chris Jones and his companion is Jason Samuel. (Jason’s fishing rig is a ball of twine with what looks like a Hopkins Spoon with a fake minnow impaled on it.) They come here a few times per week.
Chris – tall, handsome, well-spoken, friendly and polite – is only 17. His mother gave him the Pocket Fisherman when he was 11 and that year he actually caught a tiny fish on it right here. He lives in Hollywood, is in school, doesn’t know what’s next after school. He likes fishing for the “peace and quiet and relaxation.”
He reels up his Pocket Fisherman and casts again. The cast is a sweeping full-arc launch, and the bait actually travels out pretty far. The reel-in makes me shake my head. Each revolution of the handle equals perhaps four inches. ( My spinning reel does 29 inches.) And Chris winds and winds and winds.
Jason is his brother, is 22, and used to fish a lot. (I have never ever seen anyone use a ball of coarse twine as a fishing outfit, but he does so calmly and confidently – launching the line by hand and then winding up onto the ball.)
Jason works now in real estate credit clean-up, but will soon begin teaching medical classes at Concord University – classes related to holistic medicine. I ask about acupressure and he knows his stuff – even the couple of points that I know regarding relieving headaches.
After I photograph Chris and Jason I move to another area of the pier, but I continue to observe them. It is obvious that they don’t consider their goofy fishing rigs – the twine and the Pocket Fisherman – jokes or gimmicks. They continue to fish, to talk, to smile, and to interact nicely with other anglers – one from whom they borrow some bait.
This is a slice of fishing that I love.

Photo: Santa Monica Pier - Jason Samuel and Chris Jones

Santa Monica Pier – California - Lunch Break

2007-07-24T21:10:00.000-04:00

Lunch break on the Santa Monica Pier – California
You can even park your car on this pier – which I did, in the wooden-plank area right across from Bubba Gump’s which I now enter for a quick bite. The tables are full so they seat me at the final vacant spot at the end of the bar. I look at the menu, order, and then hear a voice next to me, “So how is your day going?” A pretty young woman nursing a beer. “Just fine,” I answer. And then I deliver what I assume will be a non-pickup line: “Do you like to fish?” “I do,” she responds with a knowing smile and a towards-me swivel of her bar stool. And she launches intelligently into bluefish and flounder and fluke from her growing-up days on Long Island, and also some sort of fish from her stay at a lake house in Finland. She agrees to let me interview her, but is reluctant to provide much information – such as her age and her name. Kay (no last name) moved here from New York three years ago and works as a massage therapist. She likes the work: “It’s relaxing for both the client and the therapist – a nice release of energy.” She says business is good, although my questions receive fuzzy responses. “Do you work for a company or independently?” “Both.” “What have been the ages of your oldest and youngest clients?” “I like clients of all ages.” “What’s the profile of your favorite type client?” “It doesn’t matter.” “Do your clients like to carry on a conversation during the massage, or are they in some sort of deep relaxation?” “It varies.” In spite of Kay’s obvious knowledge and experience with fishing, she has not fished since moving to California. She intends to go flyfishing in Montana – something sparked her interest on a television travel show. I want to photograph her and she says yes, but profile only. The lighting at this bar is awful, but it will have to do. Certainly it will punctuate Kay’s mystery. “Why do you like to fish?” I ask before I leave. “It’s fun to be outdoors. I like throwing the line and the anticipation and reeling in the fish and eating it.” “Any fishing tips or words to live by for whoever reads this?” And Kay says, “I like the three Ls of life.” Nothing more. She waits for me to ask. “Live, Love, and Laugh.” And with a postscript, “You can add that in.”

Santa Monica Pier – California - Part I

2007-07-24T21:08:00.000-04:00

July 24 2007, Santa Monica Pier – California

I really don’t know how good the fishing can be on this pier (I catch nothing today), but there’s an energetic every-slice-of-life ambience that’s a keeper.
Go to the northwestern corner of the pier on a Monday or Tuesday and you’ll probably see the mild-mannered Jesus Lopez whom I am talking with as I dunk a slice of squid that he gave me. Jesus stays on this pier for 48 hours straight every Monday and Tuesday – stays up all night, sleeps some in his chair during the day. He fishes for sharks.
“The one I caught last week was half as big as my car.” (I have seen one of his baits – a mackerel head.) “That one almost took my rod over.”
Jesus is 22 and has been coming here since he was 12. He says he remembers his first time: he got lucky and caught a lot of mackerel. “Then a Chinese guy asked if I was selling them and I said yes, give me $1.50 each. I got $60 – spent a lot of it on burgers.”
Jesus works as a street vender in Hollywood – sells flowers and toys and other things. Single roses go for $5 each. He’s been doing this since he was a child; his mother taught him.
“What kinds of customers are best?” I ask.
“When they got their girl or their wife and they stop, I know they’re going to buy.”
“When they do stop, do you say anything to them?”
“I might say, ‘How are you doing?’ or ‘Good afternoon.’ And then, ‘Would you like to buy a rose for your wife?’”
“Who buys more – younger people or older?”
“Older people buy more than the younger ones,” he confirms.
“As old as me? I’m 57.”
“No, not that old,” Jesus smiles and shakes his head.
He lifts his Sabiki rig and winds in three cigar-size fish he says are perch and puts them in his bait bucket. Then he checks the row of tiny hooks to be certain that each still has its tiny piece of squid.
I ask him what he likes about being a street vendor.
“You don’t work for nobody. You get your own hours. You don’t got anybody telling you what to do.” Pretty straightforward. “I also sell watches - $3, $2 and sometimes for $1 when I really need money.”
Two nearby anglers are having difficulty with their lines and Jesus walks over and helps them and ends up giving them new hooks and sinkers which he rigs for them. Bait too.
“I caught six lobsters here yesterday. Gave them to a man that wanted them.”
Why does Jesus like to fish? “When you catch something – get a bite – you’re curious. You want to see what it is. That’s what got me into it.”
Photo: Santa Monica Pier - Jesus Lopez

Deep Clear Lake, Florida

2007-07-02T07:12:00.003-04:00

Friday, June 29, 2007, Deep Clear Lake, Homestead, Florida

That’s not the name of this lake; it doesn’t have a name. It’s a 25-acre borrow pit bordering vacant land on which some sort of new development will no doubt be built. Someone I met at another local pond told me about this lake – says it’s very deep and has huge bass.

This lake is a couple of miles from Homestead’s racetrack, and has no homes or buildings in the neighborhood – just vacant fields. A pair of earth-moving cranes sit alongside the lake, and 100-foot mounds of dug-out gray-white stuff border one side of the lake.

I park next to the cranes and walk the 20 feet to the edge of the lake and see that its shorelines drop vertically in a hurry. I also see a bunch of small Peacock bass and a couple of small largemouths. And a couple of 2-pound tilapia. I have over an hour until sunset and I anticipate that this is going to be one good hour!

But, as they say, the fishing is good but the catching is lousy. I throw everything at these fish but the kitchen refrigerator and there is not much interest. The water is clear as Jimmy Buffet’s empty glass, and so I know that the fish see my lures. I throw, in no particular order, a topwater popper, a topwater frog, a Rat-L-Trap, a topwater Spook, a Roadrunner, several versions of finesse worms, and a Senko. Nuttin honey. At least not much of nuttin. I do catch one big bluegill deep on a 3-inch finesse worm after getting continual bites on it. And I do catch one bass on the topwater frog – a bass scarcely 6 inches long. It always amazes me how such small bass can mouth such big lures. And I do catch one other bass – this one 10 inches – on a small piece of Berkely Gulp shrimp (which I purchased for general saltwater use).

If anyone else fishes here, there’s not much evidence. All I see on the ground is one small Mustad package. Shoreline anglers are famous for littering (I could make a living as a shoreline angler tracker) and around this lake are no other signs of their presence.

When you have an hour or so to fish a strange body of water and discover that there are lots of fish that you can’t figure out how to catch, you always think about it afterwards and determine what you’ll try next time. I’m going to throw a small Peacock bass imitator.

Lower Matecumbe, Florida Keys

2007-07-02T07:12:00.002-04:00

Friday, June 29, 2007, Lower Matecumbe Flats, Florida Keys

If you’re fishing in greater Miami and go 25 miles south to Homestead, you naturally have to drive the additional 25 miles to the Keys. And you have to visit the Worldwide Sportsman store in Islamorada and ask if there’s a place where you can pull your car over to the side of the road and wade out on some flats and possibly find a bonefish. The answer is yes and it’s just a handful of miles down the road on the east side of Lower Matecumbe.

I don’t know how to catch bonefish other than with live shrimp and I don’t have any live shrimp, just a vestful of mostly bass lures along with a few lures that the salesman at Worldwide Sportsman says will work.

But I do know how to wade these flats – from a brief visit when I was a child and from three brief outings as an adult down here on business over the past few years – but none with a guide.

First the weather: perfect. It’s 80s, mostly sunny, and breezy. The breeze gives the flats a surface chop which is not ideal for sighting fish but good for making the fish less spooky. I of course wear polarized lenses. If you’re an angler you’re nuts not to always have a pair.

When you’re in the Keys you notice the colors of the water – the shades of green and blue that vary with the depth, the clarity, and the bottom. I’ve never visited the Arctic Circle, but whatever indigenous peoples were first here in the Keys had to have had as many words to describe the hues of this water as the indigenous peoples up north have for snow. This place is a watercolorist’s delight.

My wade on these flats lasts three hours and I don’t catch a bonefish. I do see one – a large one, maybe 8 or 9 pounds, during my first 15 minutes – but he sees me simultaneously and darts away. Bonefish don’t stick around when they see a human or a fishing rod. You have to be stealthy. So I never get to cast a lure to a feeding bonefish.

But I do get to cast to other fish including perhaps 25 barracuda. Barracuda are similar to largemouth bass in that they’re both curious and wary. When they know you’re around, they’ll come over to take a look, but when you throw your lure to them they back off. You have to tease and tease and tease until you goad them into striking. I eventually crack the code with a finesse worm that I’ve bitten to three inches – speed it across the surface as fast as I can reel and then stop it dead. Then twitch and twitch and twitch. I hook a dozen or so barracuda, mostly less than 14 inches, but one measures at least 3 feet. I’m using only 8-pound line and most of the barracuda bite it off. I know I can put on a wire leader and eliminate the bite-offs, but that would also eliminate any interest from a bonefish if I happen to see another. It’s fun to fool the barracuda even if it means losing a lure.

At one point I reel in an empty barracuda-bitten line and stop to tie on another hook and as I’m looking down at the hook I see a big shadow approaching me on the water – a shadow from a storm cloud moving in. I look up to see the cloud and there’s no cloud. So I look into the knee-deep water and there’s a giant closing in only five feet away. I gasp (only in saltwater can the swimming giants make you actually gasp) and step sideways and then the giant notices my presence and veers off. It’s a lone manatee. A year ago I had seen my first manatees, but in a deep lagoon and in pairs. I had no idea that they ever swim the shallow flats. This one comes within a foot of my legs as it glides by.

There are not a lot of fish on this flat – at least I don’t see a lot – but I do see enough to keep me very interested. There are needle fish on the surface, schools of pale green finger-size minnows, occasional blowfish hugging the bottom, and one shark. The shark is 3 feet long and brown – not gray – and has a wide head and a slender tail. I toss a Zoom fluke to him and dart it along and he inhales it. I’ll never land this fish – his teeth will sever the line or his strength will strip all of it from the reel – so I give him slack rather than setting the hook. And within 10 seconds he spits out the fluke. I wind it in undamaged and watch him swim off.

This stretch of flats spans a mile or so alongside the road and at least 100 yards wide – more in some places. There are a few areas as big as a half football field that have bottoms of white sand, but mostly these flats are covered with various short grasses and smaller strips and patches of white sand. It’s against the white sand bottom that you spot fish.

In one direction is the Atlantic Ocean and in the other is the slender Lower Matecumbe Key with expensive homes hugging the water. It’s not tourist season, but still there’s a sprinkling of boats: a half dozen or so small outboards in the distance, and two family-size jet skis in close. Still there’s plenty of room for everyone.

A pair of four-foot-long fish swims slowly by, weaving their way among the grasses, obviously hunting food. They’re thick and black and I wonder what they are. Cobia? (I’ve caught cobia off the Alabama coast, but in deeper water.) These are 40-pounders. I cast a little bonefish jig to them and they veer off. The Senko! I fumble through my vest, heart beating, and find and tie on the Senko, one eye staying on the big fish and continually following them with my wading feet. The Senko on, I heave it a long way and it lands perfectly in the path of the fish. They swim by it without any interest. Twice more I repeat and twice more there is no interest. I wonder what these fish are. They’re gone now. Will I see them again?

Five minutes later they come back and before I can cast to them they swim within a few feet of me and I see them from the side: tarpon! I’ve seen tarpon in other environments, but never on skinny flats and I had no idea they look like this: stark black from above with strong, thick bodies, and silver-dollar silver from the sides and with clear delineation of that distinctive jaw. I cast again in front of them, but no interest. My admiration for folks who have caught these fish on flats immediately skyrockets. My fish are mere 40-pounders; anglers have caught tarpon 3 and 4 times that size on flats.

I depart the flats with 3-hour-tired legs from continuous water-walking, and with a thirsty throat. As I drive off the clouds move in and drop a massive load – massive enough to later make the evening news.

Leisure Lakes Park, Florida

2007-06-28T22:15:00.000-04:00

Thursday, June 28, 2007, Leisure Lakes Park, Homestead, Florida

There are still two hours until dark and I’ve found a gorgeous blue spot on the street map of Homestead. The blue spot is in the midst of a green rectangle labeled, “Leisure Lakes Park.” Sounds right up my alley.

As I weave through this town towards the blue spot I notice that the homes are shrinking. By the time I get to ground zero the houses are small and flat and their orifices are covered with bars and their lawns are surrounded by fences. (Even their front doors have elaborate bars.)

And then I see Valhalla: a blue lake – maybe 15 acres – amid large green lawns. The sign says “Leisure Lakes Park,” and there’s a busy pavilion with music blasting – a kind of exotic Zydeco with a thrumping (yes, “thrumping”) rhythm. And a refrain that repeats and repeats and repeats – all in Spanish.

In a green field is a fully-manned soccer competition – shouting and running and kicking. And everywhere are mothers and children and babies. All Hispanic.

The lake is populated with bizarre ducks. You know how at city parks there are tons of white ducks and then that one duck that is splotched with blacks and reds and speckles and other abnormalities? At Leisure Lakes Park all of the ducks are like that. Even their babies. I see several groups of newly-hatched ducklings – all with mottled coloring. Nowhere is there a plain white duck.

The lake has no anglers. Not even a sign of anglers. No errant fishing line, no lure packages, no worm containers. This lake must prohibit fishing, but there are no signs stating such. So I decide to wade right in – figuratively, that is. (The signs do say no swimming or boating.)

I park in a crowded lot, walk through scattered families (Cuban perhaps?), and become the only angler. The water is clear as a spring, and within seconds I see a shoreline bass about a foot long. He’s not interested in my finesse worm, so I switch to a Senko and he takes it.

A couple sitting the grass twenty feet away sees my accomplishment and one remarks, in English, “A fish!” That’s all I hear them say.

During the next two hours before the sun sets I catch two dozen bass, mostly the size of the first one, all along the shoreline shallows, and all on the Senko. All of these bass look the same: long and slender and pale green with no striking markings like I’m accustomed to seeing in other waters. They must be hatchery fish, and the hatchery truck must have dumped them earlier today. All of my fish have been approximately the same size – a giveaway that they’re from the hatchery.

There are also Peacock bass in this lake; I see them and can’t get them to bite. They’re various sizes, and the largest I see is about a pound. I throw every lure in the world at them, but no interest. I’ve never caught a Peacock, but I know what they are – from television, from magazines, and from visits to other Florida waters where experts have pointed them out to me. I’ll have to read up on them.

Just as the sun is beginning to set a man coasts up to me on his bicycle. He’s thin and harsh and scarred, has shiny black hair and mellow brown skin, and appears to be in his late twenties.

“Are you doing any good?” is his salutation with a smile and raised eyebrows in perfect and unaffected English.

We are soon embraced in a fishing conversation. He’s a bass angler too. He explains that no, these are not hatchery bass, and that the hatchery truck has never ever visited this 15-year-old lake that is a borrow pit used to build the housing development surrounding it. He says the lake looks shallow, but it’s deep in the middle. He never sees anyone fishing here, and had thought it fishless until seeing a little boy catch a fish. Then he began occasionally fishing here and even caught one fairly large bass on a Krocodile spoon fished out deep. He points to where the ledge is – a ledge he found while wading out to unhook a hung lure.

He’s never seen or heard of a Senko and I explain and demonstrate how it works. As we talk I get a strike and my rod really bends and my drag really burns and soon I bring in a large bass - over four pounds.

Before he pedals off, he tells me about another lake I need to try – a very deep lake where he got his diving certification. He says it’s out near the air base, it has huge bass, and it’s publicly accessible.

He leaves and I hear him talking with others – in Spanish – as he pedals off. The Zydeco beat continues its exotic rhythms as I walk back to the car among Leisure Lake’s regulars.

John Lloyd State Park, Florida

2007-06-28T22:11:00.000-04:00

Thursday, June 28, 2007, John U. Lloyd State Park (Ft. Lauderdale)

The wind is up – really up – and the red flags are horizontal. So are the cranes that load the huge container ships across the canal on my left as I drive into this park.

Like Oleta, this park has hundreds of vacancies in its parking lots – only a dozen cars are here now. Also like Oleta, there are yellow butterflies. And on the ground are ground-hugging, six-petal yellow flowers the size of silver dollars. The same shade of yellow as the butterflies. And also like Oleta, there is a chameleon that lets me get very close – this one with a herringbone brown pattern on its spine.

The beach areas are no good for fishing today. The surf and the waves and the wind are all turbulent. And even if you could cast into that wind and surf, the turmoil has delivered a smorgasbord of flotsam and driftjunk – stuff that would foul every line cast into it. So I head to the boat launch area.

There are a few ramps in a small protected harbor and a canal running both directions. Only one truck and trailer are parked there. This is the area where I saw my first manatees during a business trip last year. I see none today, but I do catch a fish. Within a few minutes my rod bends and I reel in a 14-inch barracuda on a red finesse worm. After I toss him back I wipe my hands on a pancake-size leaf growing along this boardwalk trail along the canal.

I see schools of 3-inch pale green minnows, so I tie on a pale green Zoom fluke and give it a fishless try. I also see a school of a dozen or so 3-pounders swimming in circles – mullet I presume. They don’t look at my lures. Foot-long needlefish plow the surface, and I can get them to slash at a fast worm, but they don’t get hooked. Deep below I see a profound deep-green flash. I visit Florida waters seldomly, and now I remember one it the things that is always good: seeing a gigunda flash or a shadow down below that stops you alive in your tracks.

I depart this state park after an hour and hope for calm breezes that will allow beach fishing next time.

Oleta State Park, Florida

2007-06-28T22:10:00.000-04:00

Thursday, June 28, 2007, Oleta River State Park (Miami)

Fresh off the plane and into the rental car I soon see the Oleta River State Park sign on the highway over to Miami Beach and can’t resist. Sunny, breezy, scattered clouds, 80s, and water everywhere. When you are compelled to fish and you see a possibility of publicly accessible water it’s hard to resist.

A $5 fee at the gate opens to a green-embraced entrance road. “You’re continually fighting back the jungle,” said a friend of mine years ago after his move to Florida. Today this jungle has pale yellow butterflies – solo fliers as big as pocket watches – bouncing among the bushes and trees.

The parking lots have room for hundreds of cars but nobody’s here on this mid-day workday. (I count 10 cars.) I park at the last lot, the one with the sign for the fishing pier, and grab my rod and walk a manicured trail past a pavilion with restrooms, past picnic tables, and to the pier (350 yards from the car).

There are 9 persons on the pier and none of them looks like me. None of them speaks like me. It‘s all Spanish except for one couple – dark as a charbroiled coconut – whose tongue is more exotic, more delicious. “Dominique fishy fishy!” she exclaims with a grin as she looks into the water. I have an idea what that means.

The pier is short – less than 100 feet – and juts out into a huge bay that I assume is the Oleta River. The water is clear to the bottom. I immediately see two small barracuda – each alone in the shallows and camouflaged against the pebbled bottom.

The anglers on the pier are all bait chunkers – huge rods, huge hooks, huge sinkers, and huge full-arm casts that go a mile. I gaze down among the pilings beneath the pier and see schools of small baitfish and occasionally a larger fish – maybe a couple of pounds – darting among them. These are foreign waters to me; I’m not familiar with most of the fish.

The bottom line is that I try several of my bass lures – I am certain, but wrong, that a small finesse worm will catch something – and go fishless. Even the barracuda, with which I do have some past experience, don’t bite. I throw a Rat-L-Trap in the far distance without a bite, and a topwater chugger across the shoreline shallows without a bite. But it’s absolutely fun knowing that there are fish here and knowing that I MAY crack the code. Hope always!

A huge splash – just like a feeding largemouth - happens 100 feet up the shoreline. An equally huge black man says to me, “That was a big one.”

“Barracuda?” I ask.

”Yep, and he’s still there.” He moves his hands into a three-foot-wide demonstration.

I throw a finesse worm and then a chugger, but nothing.

With live shrimp I could catch fish here. But live bait – and even cut bait - is a pain to deal with. So I usually don’t fool with it.

On the walk back to the car (my time is limited to less than an hour) I notice that the air is abuzz with sounds of locusts. I also notice that there are no bugs bothering me – no mosquitoes, no noseeums, no black flies, no nothing. A real treat for Florida.

A brown chameleon perches on a log beside the path and stays alert until I am within inches of him. Then he jumps away.

Bear Creek Lake State Park

2007-06-26T17:45:00.000-04:00

Tuesday, June 26, 2007, Bear Creek Lake State Park (60 miles west of Richmond, VA)

It’s over 90 degrees, no clouds, no wind, and 1:30 in the afternoon. There are rowboats and canoes and paddleboats here, but not one is in use. A beautiful, 40-acre remote lake nestled within deep woods, and it’s currently unused. The lake is on the little Willis River – a relatively unknown tributary of the James.

I rent a paddleboat for me and Tony, my Down Syndrome brother-in-law who is visiting for three weeks. He loves to fish from the bank, and hates being in a boat ever since I made the mistake of taking him to see the movie, “The Perfect Storm,” and then followed it by taking him in my little boat and getting caught in our own storm. But he’s begged to go in the paddleboat, and so we do. The folks here are accommodating and help Tony with his lifejacket and into his paddleboat seat.

I take two fishing rods – Tony’s with a finesse worm on which he’s caught his share of fish without any need for my assistance, and mine with a Senko. We launch and immediately Tony regresses to his boat-hating mentality. He holds on tight and has no interest in using his fishing rod. But we’ve paid the $6.30 fee for an hour in this paddler (as opposed to as much as $60 that I’ve personally seen charged at other public lakes around the nation), and so we’ll use it.

This lake is so fishy looking that I anticipate a strike on every cast, but it takes me a while to figure them out. In spite of the paddleboat’s very loud and squeaky locomotive gears, I learn that the bass are in the shoreline grass rather than in submerged and fallen trees. And I do mean SHORELINE grass. I can’t find any underwater grass beds, but the lake is high and some of the shorelines have a few inches of water in the grass. And where this slopes into the lake is were there are bass willing to hit the Senko. I catch 5 during our hour, including 2 that weigh a bit more than 3 pounds each. Only one is small – perhaps 11 inches.

We’re wet with sweat when we return (the rule requires that we wear those bulky orange lifejackets), but I’ve learned that this state park’s lake is loaded with good quality bass. Motto: find a bassy lake in the mid-summer heat and drift a Senko into and around cover and/or shade, and you’re likely to find some bass.

Clinch River Steam Plant

2007-06-18T17:46:00.000-04:00

Monday, June 17, 2007, Clinch River Steam Plant (central Tennessee, just off I-40)

The http://www.takemefishing.org/ Web site says this spot has bass and trout and stripers, and when I arrive this morning I see why. Huge smoke stacks announce the steam plant, and water rushes from the plant’s channel into the main body of the Clinch River.

There is lots of parking space and lots of clear shoreline available. I tie on a chrome Rat-L-Trap and begin covering water. This lure throws a mile on 8-pound line, and it’s one that will catch all three species. I have only an hour, and most of that will be with the crew from a Knoxville television station that’s interviewing me about the new book, TAKE ME FISHING – an anthology of writings by 50 great authors.

The tv folks arrive and I give the on-air guy – Russ Bevins – an extra rod and we cast and talk while the camera and remote mikes do their things.

There are no boats, but there are four other shoreline anglers including two near enough to see that they are casting Rooster Tails – trout lures. They say they haven’t caught anything.

It’s only 10:00 a.m. and it’s already hot – blazing sun, no clouds or breeze. I’ve given Russ a rod with a finesse worm and he starts getting bites – bluegill I suppose, but he gets excited and sets a fishless hook a few times. My Rat-L-Trap never gets bit, but it does get hung and I have to break it off.

There is an eddy area where the steam plant’s water rushes into the river, and we both target it – Russ with the worm and I with a new Rat-L-Trap. Nothing. I switch to a topwater chugger. Nothing. Then a Senko. Nothing. Then time’s up. The camera has watched and listened to us talk for more than 30 minutes and I’ve said about all I can say about the http://www.takemefishing.org/ Web site and the book.

That evening Russ’ pre-news hour-long program gives great coverage: several lead-in promos prior to commercials, and then almost 3 minutes of fishing at the Clinch River Steam Plant. No fish, but the camera guy has made it inviting anyway.

Motto: Whenever I travel I-40 I now know that this is a great drive-up-and-fish spot that’s less than 5 minutes off the Interstate. I will definitely add this one to my growing list of fishy Interstate stops.

Potomac River - Leesylvania

2007-06-17T16:00:00.000-04:00

Saturday, June 16, Potomac River (south of D.C. out of Leesylvania State Park)

Bob and I are here fishing in today’s Fishers of Men bass tournament – dawn until 3:00. The Potomac is loaded with bass, and it’s expected that many of the tournament’s 52 boats will bring in 5-bass limits. (Our boat is the smallest and slowest of the bunch: 15 ½ feet, 80 hp.)

We know a couple of good spots where we’ve caught a lot of bass in past years, but neither yields a bite, so we decide to just “go fishing.” The grass beds across the river in Mattawoman Creek are being pounded by everyone else, so we select a random UNgrassy Potomac shoreline knowing that nobody else will be there and hoping that that shoreline’s bass will be less cautions than those inhabiting the grass beds.

The strategy works, and we have our limit by 9:30 a.m. We cull the rest of the day and wind up with 11.71 pounds and 15th place in the tournament. The winner brings in 17 pounds and change.

But this day’s story is a pair of mental mistakes by me. (Bob fished great, made no mistakes, and put the two largest fish in the livewell.)

My first mental mistake was when I set the hook on what I thought was a bite in the middle of a fallen shoreline tree. My rod bent double but didn’t move. I saw where the line went – to a limb – and assumed I was hung. I immediately lowered the rod and slackened the line, and as I did a large bass surfaced and spit out my Senko. Lesson: keep the pressure on until you’re CERTAIN that you’re hung in wood and not in a bass’ jaw.

The second one was worse. I was reeling in a quality bass – 3+ pounds – and it was coming in so easily that I didn’t kneel down on the deck of the boat to be at water level ready to thrust the tip of my rod under water to keep the bass from jumping if it were to try to. Which it did, easily, and easily dislodged the finesse worm.

The Potomac River is just loaded these days with bass. The best advice is to just keep moving and changing lures until you catch bass. And you will.

Leesylvania State Park is a great place to launch a boat or fish from shore – tons of room for both. And be prepared to see lots of deer along the sides of the entry road – in the middle of the day.

Marsh Creek State Park

2007-06-12T11:49:00.000-04:00

Monday, 6/11/2007 – Marsh Creek Lake (Marsh Creek State Park near Philadelphia)

Boy, what a lake. Deep and clear and loaded with fish. Less than an hour west of Phildelphia, this is part of Marsh Creek Lake State Park. There is lots of fishing room along the lake’s shores, and there are plenty of rental boats at reasonable rates – which is what I did all afternoon.

When I arrived I introduced myself to a bass angler coming off the lake. Kevin Nash, commercial photographer, was generous with his advice: spinnerbaits, soft plastic jerkbaits, big Zara Spooks (there are muskies). He’d caught one good bass today. He assured me that things would be “dead” up until 3:00, and would then pick up.

My line hit the water at 1:30 and I caught my first bass at 3:05. Perhaps Kevin had hit it on the nose, but I of course like to think that I finally figured the pattern. Prior to 3:00 I’d thrown Pop-R’s and buzzfrogs over weeds, Zoom flukes through weeds, crankbaits alongside weeds and off long points, and tiny finesse worms everywhere.

At 3:00 I went to my money bait, the Senko, and during the rest of the afternoon I caught a bunch of bass including a dozen over 12 inches, a couple pushing 3 pounds and one weighing 5 pounds. All on the same pattern: let the unweighted Senko flutter down to the bottom on the outside edges of deep weedbeds. The further offshore the weedbeds, the bigger the bass. Weedbeds right up against the shore produced no bass.

And I saw a musky – a pretty big one I guess. I’d never before seen one in its natural environment. This one was swimming just below the surface above some deep weeds. He was up long enough for me to pull a buzzfrog past him twice. He just ignored it and swam away. He looked as big around as my leg and perhaps five feet long; but as I say, I’d never seen one before, so my estimate is questionable.

I looked for other fish in the clear shallows – just to see what I could see. Kevin had said there are spotted bass. I never saw or caught one, but I did see lots of abandoned spotted bass beds – deeper and smaller than those that largemouths usually make. I also saw lots of bluegill – some still on beds. And at one place I saw two little yellow perch. And of course four or five big carp. Every water these days has big carp.

The folks at the boat rental facility are wonderful. It took them about 10 seconds to get the boat ready including attaching the electric motor and a double-charged battery. (The battery still seemed full of juice when I finished around 6:30.)

And I discovered a good luck strategy. We anglers always try various things for good luck, and this is the only thing having to do with fishing that the www.takemefishing.org Web site doesn’t cover.

The good luck strategy had to do with a green and black canoe which contained a young couple with the female maintaining an ongoing cell phone conversation. That’s what got my attention; you know how far sound carries over the water – even at a great distance. At any rate, when I looked over in their direction I could see that the male was wearing a dark blue athletic jersey with a big white number 13 on it. I had not yet caught a really big bass, so I decided that that number 13 might do the trick and headed in their direction. When I got to within 100 yards I looked down through my polarized glasses and saw weeds – WAY offshore. On the first cast with the Senko I caught the 5-pounder. And the couple saw me catch it. She discontinued her cell call, and he wound in his line and cast out farther. (They were anchored next to the shore.)

Lucky Tip: If you see a 13, don’t pass it up.

Score for Marsh Creek Lake: A+. Of course I score almost every fishing water A+. The only failing grade I’ve ever given was to a pristine mountain stream – not because I never got a bite during 3 hard hours of fishing, but because the ranger later told me that the stream was fishless because of acid rain. Fishing is a lot of fun when there is hope.

Schuylkill River and Penn's Landing

2007-06-11T10:27:00.000-04:00

Monday, 6/11/2007 – Schuylkill River (downtown Philly)

For 10 years my connection to this fishing spot had been from one of the top floors of one of Philadelphia’s skyscrapers where I annually met with a colleague who loves to fish and who would point to this spot and say, “I’ve heard that people catch fish there.”

From up there this spot looks about as urban and paved and yucchy as possible. But down here at ground zero it’s not bad. It’s dawn and drizzly and I’ve walked down the hill from my public parking spot just outside the west entrance to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The river stretches before me, a generous parade of fish splashing the surface. I stand on the grassy area just above the dam. This is sort of a platform and the river is five feet below. There’s a rail, but it’s easy to cast over. The river is gorgeous: I see shallows, rocks, underwater vegetation, currents and glides. And just upstream – within easy casting distance – are overhanging and fallen shoreline trees that are just perfect for bass. (The www.takemefishing.org Web site talks about this spot and says there are bass here.)

Last evening I came by to check out the parking and saw a dozen anglers – none with any fish – mostly using bait, not lures. But now it’s Monday morning and there are no other anglers. Cars whiz noisily to work on the across-the-river highway.

After a few fishless casts with a plastic worm into the underwater grasses just below where I stand I switch to a Pop-R, cast it as far as I can, and twitch it on the surface. When the strike happens, it is pitiful – not even a splash, just a disappearance of the topwater plug. I set the hook and it’s a good bass. My line is only 6-pound, and so I climb over the rail, lie on my belly on the wall, and reach down to lip the bass so the line won’t break while lifting him up onto the grassy platform. A couple of pounds – 14 inches, maybe a half inch more.

I look up towards the skyscraper in the distance; I know exactly which one it is. I wish my friend were watching with binoculars, but he’s out of town today.

I have only an hour, so I fish fast. No other bites on the Pop-R, so I switch to a Zoom fluke and catch another bass – this time a smallmouth. And it is small – maybe 9 inches.

I walk upstream along the wooded shoreline, onto a wooded peninsula that is carpeted with flotsam and mucky, muddy high-water stuff. This is an area of overhanging and overarching trees through which I twist and poke my rod and drop a big Senko into shoreline shadows. Nothing. I wish I had more time to give this a thorough going-over.

But I’ve done what I set out to do: get an up-close, line-wetting look at what has been a longtime Bali Hi.

Penn’s Landing (downtown Philly)

I have an hour between appointments and I’m parked right here in the huge lot on the Delaware, so I think why not. My favorite kind of water: urban, surrounded by city hum, folks hurrying by, and sort of nasty looking. At least compared to Yellowstone.

But where do you start on a spot like this? I guess you’d call this entire stretch a huge concrete wharf – perhaps a dozen feet above the river’s surface. No fishing platforms, a rail over which you sort of have to climb and lean in order to cast a line, and no stumps or overhanging trees or underwater weeds or gravel bars or anything at all that looks fishy.

Plus, the river is ripping quickly with an incoming tide. So no time for a lure to sink to the bottom – however far down that might be. But still, it’s water, and water means a fishing opportunity.

There are some pilings, and pilings create structure and they create eddies and that means a place to drop a soft plastic lure which I do. I like to look for largemouths whenever possible and thus the pilings strategy. Nothing. No bite, not even a “funny feel” that I can say might be a bite.

And then, a hundred yards down, I discover gold. A long rectangular “cove” – all concrete border of course – into which tugs and other boats come and dock and unload. Still the high rail, but un-currented water. A backwater! And that’s what you look for for bass in big rivers like this.

The water clarity is about an inch – alright, maybe a foot or two – and there is all sorts of stuff floating on top: paper products, logs and limbs, ropes, you name it. Stuff that the river gathers along its shorelines and then swirls into its backwaters. Stuff that provides cover and habit for fish! At least that’s always my thought.

I throw a Pop-R for three minutes (my business meeting is approaching) without a hit. Then I switch to a finesse worm with a sixteenth-ounce jig head and twitch it along the bottom. Within a couple of minutes I feel something funny that may have been a sluggish nudge from a bluegill or something.

Then I drop my plastic worm in the midst of a bunch of tightly-packed flotsam that is backed up into the corner of this inlet and let it sink to the bottom. (Golden Rule: bass often hang out beneath flotsam that’s backed into a corner.) On the second jiggle something hits and my rod bends it double and I am suddenly attached to a pretty good bass. It is a brief but fairly complicated struggle given that I am using only 6-pound line and the bass zigs and zags around various limbs and logs, but I finally work him out and up into my hand. He weighs a good two pounds, maybe more, and in spite of him having whiskers and no scales and spikes on top and on the sides, I’m definitely counting him as a bass. I take my photo – Philly’s big buildings in the background – and in spite of what the photo indicates, Janet says she’ll back me on it being a bass.

My bottom line is always the same: give me a few minutes and a chunk of water and I’m compelled to give it a try.

Another bottom line: even though I fished briefly at that parking area at Penn’s Landing, I saw no evidence that anyone else fishes there: no discarded line, no discarded tackle packages, not even one tiny smidgen of the stuff that disreputable anglers leave behind.

Little Lehigh River

2007-06-10T22:47:00.000-04:00

Sunday, 6/10/2007 – Little Lehigh River, Allentown, PA

I was told that while I’m in Philadelphia, I just HAVE to get over here to the Little Lehigh. Bingo.

I haven’t seen a ton of trout streams - maybe a half ton - but I’ve never seen one like this. About as wide as a competent double haul, and as deep as a cane rod spare tip, the Little Lehigh is bordered for miles and miles by grasses and trees and fields and woods and flowers and a proudly manicured walking/jogging pathway. With a dozen or so public parking areas nestled along its distance, the Little Lehigh is a beautifully accessible and beautifully beautiful trout stream filled with rapids and pools and grasses and rocks and trout. Plenty of trout. You’ll see them.

When you go you just HAVE to stop in at the Little Lehigh Fly Shop which is snuggled into a tiny thousand-year-old stone building just yards from the river. Proprietor Rod Rohrbach – in business since 1993 when he abandoned commercial banking – will look at you and, if asked, will provide advice over his busily fly-tying spectacles. His pet trout – monsters – swim in the indoor spring-fed stone trough at the back wall of the shop.

His blue-chip, no-exception, first-choice, year-round, all-condition fly recommendation for the Little Lehigh is something called “Al’s Rat” and he’ll give you a typed page that tells all about it.

Rat doesn’t mean rat; it means microscopic flea. I got a few of the large size: #22. (For non fly-anglers, a #22 is approximately 1/16th inch long in its biggest dimension including the hook.) Rod said to really catch more fish I should go all the way to #28 (much smaller) for which I had no intention or ability.

And I had to get a leader with a tip fine enough to thread through that #22 hook. I’ve been around fly fishing long enough to know the drill, and so it wasn’t surprising or a big deal to discover that my line – once I started casting and fishing - looked as if it had no fly at all on the end of it. You can’t see these tiny midges (tricos) on the end of your line; it’s a matter of true faith. Faith that can move mountains is one thing, but faith that can devine a #22 Al’s Rat on the end of your line takes faith to a loftier level.

The river is absolutely stunning and I saw plenty of trout and walked plenty of miles and drifted Al’s Rat through plenty of currents and pools. But if I ever got a strike I didn’t know it. Three hours of this – and also of seeing plenty of other anglers with spinning rods and lures big enough to actually see – and I decided to spend my final half hour with my bass rod. I didn’t have any line smaller than 6-pound (I would have been comfortable using 2-pound if I’d brought some), so I tied on a 4-inch plastic worm that I’d bitten off to 2-inches and started casting it into the swiftest, deepest stuff I could find. Perhaps if the trout were surprised by its sudden swift drift they wouldn’t think long enough to realize it was fake.

It worked. Well, I didn’t actually catch anything, but I did have two rainbows on for a few seconds – around 12 inches each – and got definite strikes from a half-dozen others. I do like to actually catch fish, but going fishless on a stream like this is a real pleasure and I’d do it again and again and again. What amazed me was this being a perfect-weather Sunday afternoon in June and this little river wasn’t crowded. Tons of room to spread out and even be out of sight of other anglers if you care to walk along the path a ways.

Four stars!

Jamaica Pond

2007-06-10T12:05:00.000-04:00

Saturday, 6/9/2007 - Jamaica Pond, Boston

A big urban circle surrounded by willows, sycamores, grass, joggers, walkers, chipmunks, and 7-figure homes and condos, this deep 68-acre body of water claims to be the oldest reservoir in the nation – long-ago provider for Boston’s residents. Today it’s a well-heeled urban duck pond. And it’s surrounded by shores that are indeed easy to fish from.

The www.takemefishing.org Web site says there are bass and trout and even salmon in this lake, but to tell the truth, it doesn’t look very fishy to me. Its shorelines are manicured and paved and accessible, and the nicely graveled path and benches that encircle the lake are peopled with a moving smorgasbord of strollers and runners, walkers and talkers, coffee drinkers and snack eaters. My first casts into the featureless near-shore waters with a 4-inch finesse worm are fishless.

My strategy is the same as with any new water: cover as much territory as possible as quickly as possible changing lures as often as possible in an effort to crack the code as soon as possible. So I walk quickly along the path pausing every so often to cast. A Pop-R, a Rat-L-Trap, a hard plastic jerkbait, even a Senko. Nuttin honey.

A couple of rowboats move slowly out in the middle. (There is a rental concession.) No fish jump or splash or dimple the surface anywhere on this smooth windless day. This appears to be a dishpan lake – shallow shorelines dropping off into a deep bowl in the middle. No shoreline fallen trees, no sandbars or gravel humps, nothing to which bass might relate.

And then I see it – underwater grass. One side of the lake is herniated into a sort of bulge. It’s obviously shallower than the rest of the lake because with my polarized lenses I can see grass beds. And there are diving, fish-eating waterfowl here – six of them scattered about – all diving and coming up and pointing their beaks towards the sky and shaking their heads.

I throw my finesse worm into a particularly thick weeded area and catch a fat bass – not quite 12 inches – but then no more strikes. I keep my eyes on the diving birds and finally see an actual fish in one’s beak. It’s not a bluegill as I had suspected, but a narrow minnow of some sort. So I tie on a Zoom fluke, fish it with a slow swimming motion, and I’m in business. I guess I catch a half-dozen bass or more in the little time I have left – two of them pushing 3 pounds – all among this weedy area of the lake. I get a walker to take my photo holding the largest. “Looks real to me,” was his comment.

I see 6 other anglers around the lake. None claims to have caught anything. Perhaps they’re fishing for trout. I walk the rest of the lake without any additional strikes – and without additional underwater grass.

An old gnarly man who could pass for homeless, but isn’t, passes me twice as he walks limping laps around the lake. The first time he greets me with, “Are you fishing or are you just practicing?” He doesn’t give me time to respond. “Like lawyers, they practice,” he concludes as he walks on with a smile.

An hour later he passes me again – after I’ve caught several bass – and says, “Where’re all your fish?” Again, no time for my response. “In your pocket? Ahhh, you’re a faker!” And he walks hurriedly on.

Whitehall Reservoir

2007-06-10T11:50:00.000-04:00

Saturday, 6/9/2007 – Whitehall Reservoir – less than an hour from Boston

It’s raining and thundering and I’m the only angler at this strikingly beautiful 575-acre lake. There’s amazing shoreline everywhere along which I throw lures for bass hoping I don’t get struck by lightning which is abundant.

This lake is deep and clear and I should probably use a boat – available for rent – to give it a fair try, but the nasty weather keeps me shorebound and keeps my visit short. (My raingear leaks and I’m wet and cold.)

The quick version of this outing is that my soft plastics never get a bite even though I throw them into some prime spots. But I do get 4 bass to hit a Pop-R. I see two of them clearly – both nice fish, at least 3 pounds each. But I land only one bass – a largemouth that is one inch longer than the Pop-R which is itself a rather short lure. All bass anglers have caught tiny bass on big plugs, but this is the smallest I’ve ever caught on a Pop-R. It’s nice to set personal records.

I walk the shoreline all the way to the wide earthen dam – perhaps two hundred yards wide – on top of which is a path leading to the opposite shore. If the lightning and thunder would just go away I would walk over and explore. But instead I crouch near the dam and cast among some visible rocks.

A pickup truck pulls up abruptly and two young men get out. They don’t see me. They aren’t wearing raingear and they walk quickly to the middle of the dam where the regulator controls are located. They’re getting wet. One of them carries some sort of metal gadget about the size of a grapefruit, and he kneels down and fiddles with it for five minutes while the other one stands there and looks about. Neither sees me. They’re both getting wet from the rain that continues.

They have no fishing rods, the park is empty except for me, and I wonder what they’re doing. Are they terrorists, and is the gadget a bomb that will blow the dam and flood downstream residents? All sorts of thoughts pass through my mind.

The kneeler suddenly stands without the gadget which he has left there on the ground. The two of them turn back towards their pickup truck and both of them simultaneously see me crouched there on the bank. They suddenly break into a run – as fast as their legs will move – all the way to their truck. I brace myself for the explosion. They climb into the truck, close the doors, and drive off. I memorize the license number. And then I see the side of the truck – a state park insignia painted on it. They’re park employees doing some sort of routine maintenance or testing or whatever. For some reason I’m disappointed.

Even worse weather persuades me to depart. But I am glad I found this lake on the www.takemefishing.org Web site, and I hope to give it another try in the future.

Cochituate Lake’s Middle Pond

2007-06-10T11:43:00.000-04:00

Saturday, 6/9/2007 - Cochituate Lake’s Middle Pond (west of Boston)

The State Park gates open at 8:00 a.m. on this drizzly Saturday. I decide to walk the shoreline rather than rent a boat from among the multi-colored rowboats and canoes and kayaks stacked near the dock. There is plenty of room to fish in all directions and I start with a Pop-R on the surface right there at the paved ramp area.

The ramp area is quite long with room for 10 or more simultaneous launchings, although no boaters are here on this June Saturday – probably the weather. This lake connects to the North Pond via a canal and thus contains the same species, from bass to Atlantic salmon. I’m after bass.

I see underwater weeds everywhere and thus determine that this lake is much shallower – and bassier – than the North Pond. The lake is flat this morning and I watch swifts dart busily across the water. I start with a Pop-R and on my first cast parallel to the shoreline paved ramps a bass silently engulfs it. He leaps once clear out of the water and I soon unhook and release him: 14 inches. A good start, but the Pop-R goes fishless in a dozen more casts so I switch to a finesse worm.

I turn and walk along the shore to the sandy swimming area over to the right where nobody swims this morning. The drizzle and the air temperature (I’m wearing a jacket) will keep swimmers away today. One thing I’ve learned from a lot of years of fishing in public waters is that swimming holes, when not used, often have bass. This swimming beach bordered by a rope tethered to a row of poles parallel to the shore and the distance of a long cast. Outside the rope, on all sides, grow underwater grasses which reach the surface. Within the roped swimming area are no grasses. How do they mow them?

And there are ducks and geese here: a dozen mallards and 14 Canada geese. They part as I walk among them.

And sure enough, even though the swimming area appears featureless, I start catching bass on a finesse worm – one after another, perhaps 8 in the next hour, all 12 to 15 inches, all displaying a full leap upon being hooked, all healthy and well marked. And when I cast my worm outside the swimming area, into the underwater weeds, I catch nothing.

The strangest thing I’ve seen this morning is there in the sand next to the water: my last name, Bryan, written into the sand with a stick. And I’m the first one here this morning. Next to it is the name Catherine and next to that is Limena. I’ve never known – or heard of – a Limena. I’ll have to ask Janet.

A juvenile cottontail rabbit scampers from shoreline brush and scoots along the sand and into another brushy area. A short bit further a black-striped chipmunk does the same.

A couple of other shoreline anglers arrive and set up shop on the short piers along the ramp area, watching their set rods baited for trout. Nobody catches anything while I’m there.

After I leave the swimming area I catch an occasional additional bass – all on the finesse worm although I try several other lures including my big Senko which I was certain would attract bass but didn’t. One of the trout anglers whistles briefly in amazement as I lift a 15-inch bass within a couple of casts of his pier.

I see that there is a walking trail leading into the woods in both directions, and I bet it is accompanied by lots of good fishing spots. I wish I could stay all day.

Lake Cochituate North (second visit)

2007-06-09T21:39:00.000-04:00

Saturday, 6/9/2007 – Lake Cochituate’s North Pond (second visit)

It’s dawn and I’m back at the Cartop Boat Access to fish until the 8:00 a.m. gates open down the road at the State Park. No float tube this morning – just shoreline, this time in the other direction.

It’s misty and foggy and the opposite shore melts into grayness. The whole dawn universe is gray with a verdant border separating water from air. A bird-egg-blue canoe glides in the distance. A bullfrog greets me with four guttural blasts. A squirrel scampers up the oak in front of me and hides on the other side, his tail peaking out. A snapping sound announces another squirrel up above. Then a third.

I find some bass. There is a grassbed a long cast from shore and a first cast with my Pop-R produces a 15-incher. Then another one on a sinking, fluttering Senko. And a final one on another Senko. All in the 14/15-inch range.

Way out in the middle I see a fish jump – no, leap – clearly five feet out of the water. Silver and sleek, it looks like a Florida mullet.

Then in the other part of the lake – way, way, way out in the middle – I see lots of splashing. A school of marauding bass! The splashing slowly approaches my area of the lake and eventually I see elbows. It’s a swimmer – a freestyler going methodically from somewhere to somewhere smack in the middle of this huge lake.

The blue canoe passes him going the opposite direction.

When I depart the canoer is loading. “That’s the strangest thing I’ve ever seen,” he offers. “I asked him if he’s okay, if he needs help, and he said he’s fine.” Neither of us knew the swimmer’s origin or destination.

The canoer also has an answer to my leaping fish: Atlantic salmon. They’re stocked in here and they jump just like that. One of his friends caught a 27-pounder! The http://www.takemefishing.org/ Web site is absolutely correct about their presence after all.

Lake Cochituate’s North Pond

2007-06-08T22:37:00.000-04:00

Friday, 6/8/2007 – Lake Cochituate’s North Pond – west of Boston

I have just 90 minutes before sundown to wet my first ever line for Massachusetts bass in a lake I’ve never before seen but have recently discovered on the http://www.takemefishing.org/ Web site. The site says there are bass in here, and also Atlantic salmon which I assume is a mistake. The water is clear and deep and calm beneath a warm, cloudless sky, and so I start with a shad-colored suspending jerkbait that can be deadly in clear water.

The main gate to Cochituate State Park – just down the road – is already closed for the day when I arrive, but I find this “Cartop Boat Access” road and that’s where I am fishing. I see only one boat on the lake: a ski boat without skiers. Three shoreline anglers sit almost motionless in a row of canvas camp chairs a hundred yards down the shoreline.

Within minutes I am in my float tube and flippers. A throw-rug-size school of small fish dimple the surface a hundred yards out and I propel myself within casting distance. Nothing with the jerkbait. I switch to a finesse worm on a sixteenth-ounce head. Nothing. I count as I let it fall to the bottom – 50 feet.

I flipper my craft shoreward to a tiny cove next to the parking area and cast the worm to the periphery of a fallen tree. A good strike but no fish. Two more of the same.

I bite the worm in half – from six inches to three inches – re-hook the shortened version, and –promptly hook and land a leaping 14-inch largemouth. Purple-black markings on deep yellow-green body. The clearer the water the more defined the coloring.

A whole multi-hundred-acre lake on a June Friday afternoon near Boston, and my tube is now the only watercraft. A full palette of greens along the shorelines – no visible homes, just woods.

In a nearby tree I hear a bird that’s not from Virginia – a solo tweet like a brief tin flute. Again and again. A ground squirrel scoots along the shore, hops onto a log, poses, and scampers uphill.

Another 14-inche bass – identical coloring to the first – grabs the worm. So do three more before the sun sets.

In the back of the cove are weeds and I hear a deep-throated bullfrog bellowing among them. This place is too vacant for an after-work Friday – too close to Boston to be so vacant.

Another ground squirrel darts along, and further downshore a tree squirrel, three times as large, comes down to take a look.

I am throwing 6-pound line and I wish for a big bass or a big something else to grab the worm and scream the drag. But it doesn’t happen.

Back at the car as I deflate the tube another car pulls up and the driver gets out and photographs an orange-pink sun on the horizon nestled among evergreens and backlighting a gnarled stump in the foreground. I ask him if he’ll do me a favor and hand him my camera which I pose with tube and rod.

The nametag on the check-in lady at the motel says “Patt.” Two Ts. She says that three Pats work there and they have to be able to distinguish them so she gets the double Ts while the other two get Pat and Patty. Patt says she’s started using the double Ts by accident on other things including setting up her new home computer sign-on name yesterday. She says it with a smile.

James River in Richmond

2007-06-02T11:26:00.000-04:00

Friday, 6/1/2007 – James River, downtown Richmond

The http://www.takemefishing.org/ Web site says that Ancarrow’s Landing on the James River offers great shoreline fishing for families, but the site fails to mention that it also offers the strange and unusual.

My fishing buddy Bob Edwards is a person of integrity. Former director of communications for the Catholic Diocese of Richmond, as far as I know he has never been accused of falsehood – even though he’s a dedicated angler. All of which introduces an unbelievable catch that I made – and that Bob witnessed right there in the boat with me and will swear to – in the most urban and most public of fishing spots in Richmond, Virginia.

We put in at Ancarrow’s landing in downtown Richmond – the area where Christopher Newport’s boat was stopped by the Fall Line exactly 400 years ago when he explored upstream from Jamestown having arrived with our nation’s first Colonists. Ancarrow’s has a great launch ramp and lots and lots of shoreline from which anglers catch bass and catfish and bluegill and, in season, stripers and shad and white perch.

Our boat had drifted a few hundred yards downstream and we reached a spot at which we catch occasional bass and stripers, and I made a long cast with a small, deep-diving crankbait and promptly reeled in a 21-inch rainbow trout. A beautifully-colored fish with rich red gills and a frantically flapping body that successfully impaled one of the treble hooks into the end of my finger. I quickly measured and released it and marveled. (And put a bandage on my finger that wouldn’t stop bleeding.)

Now you have to realize that this is June below Mason-Dixon and I’m fishing in warm tidal water from which are pulled occasional croakers and flounder. A rainbow trout? If Bob hadn’t seen and witnessed, I wouldn’t mention it to anyone. (After the trout we caught two stripers and a smallmouth.)

The next day I telephoned Gary Martel, head of fisheries for Virginia’s Department of Game & Inland Fisheries, and he confirmed that their official records – including anecdotal tales – list no trout of any kind having ever been caught in the tidal James. Upstream a ways – in the non-tidal portion among the rapids and boulders – a trout is caught every 10 years or so after a flood, the theory being that it came downstream from upriver trout tributaries. But on the day of my rainbow catch, it had been months and months and months since the last high water.

Gary also told me that an Atlantic salmon was caught several years ago in the Appomattox – even stranger than my trout. As Janet’s father used to say, “The first guy doesn’t have a chance.”

The http://www.takemefishing.org/ Web site lists thousands of places to fish all over the nation and gives tons of tips and strategies and tells what species of fish are in what waters, but nowhere does it give advice on rainbow trout fishing in the tidal James or Atlantic salmon fishing in the Appomattox.

But when you visit Richmond and want some downtown, down-home fishing, visit Ancarrow’s and drop a line. Who knows what might bite?

Photo: John Bryan (me) with exact-size cardboard copy of his James River Rainbow.