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
