North Park Lake, Pittsburgh

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

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

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

Photo: Jud Shelnutt and John Bryan at Punderson State Park

Shipman Pond - east of Cleveland

August 25 2007, Shipman Pond, east of Cleveland

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

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

Headlands Beach State Park - east of Cleveland

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

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

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

Wilcox Lake - greater Detroit

August 23 2007, Wilcox Lake, greater Detroit

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

Photo: John Bryan at Wilcox Lake