The Great Leviathan Hunt

It's one of the classical confrontations...fisherman versus fish. The mano-a-fino battle of primal creatures using all their wits and intelligence in an effort to defeat their opponent. Or maybe it's just a guy standing on a boat trying to trick an animal with a brain the size of a BB into thinking the plastic wormy thing being dragged across the bottom of the lake would make a tasty snack...and failing to do so on a regular basis.

It didn't take me long to figure out that for these new attempts at piscinarial harvesting my old method of leaping cat-like from a high perch to explosively impact the water might not work too well. Mostly because this 49 year old body won't take the repeated punishment as well as that 9 year old body did. I suppose if I had 4 or 5 pints of Guinness filtering through my brain I might be tempted to give it a try, but with any less lubrication than that, it was unlikely.

Being very left brained, I first attempted to plan my fishing out logically. It would seem that if I could devolve to the point of being able to think like a fish, I should be able to figure out how to make a bit of fake worm appear to the fish equivalent of a Julia Child masterpiece.

Since I wasn't entirely sure how to think like a fish, I decided to start with other creatures that might also have brains the size of a BB. I began by trying to think like any of the 219 representatives that voted for "cap and tax"...then decided even a fish wouldn't be so stupid as to vote for something they hadn't read. So I set my devolving a bit higher.

After running through several possibilities I came to the perfect solution... just listen to Larry, a fisherman of long history and sterling repute, as to what to put on the line and how to make it act. As it turned out, that proved to be a pretty good strategy...on our first outing, I caught the first fish.

We had motored over to an appropriately fishy looking bit of lake shore a couple of hours before sunset. The protocol for this expedition would be to drift along this set of bluffs lining the shore, casting our bits of worminess out, and retrieving them in a fish enticing manner. My hook was baited with a item called a 'watermelon red Fat Albert' which in fact looked green to me and caused the phrase "Hey, hey, hey, it's faaaaaaat Albert." to get stuck in my head for the next 2 hours. I hope that you are now similarly inflicted....

So we drifted along..cast, let rotund Al sink to the bottom, slowly reel in, dragging the bait across the bottom trying to attract the attention of a fish.... repeat as necessary. As necessary turned out to be about a half a gazillion times. Cast, sink, retrieve...

I've cast, it sank, I'm retrieving, then a sudden jerk on the line and I'm all "Quint" from Jaws, calling to Larry to throw a bucket of water on the reel so that it doesn't melt from the heat of the monster stripping the line out. We're doing a Nantucket sleigh ride in a bass boat. I'm sure that Queequeg and his harpoon will be needed to land what has to be the record setting fish of all record setting fish.

Now this is fishing...a life and death struggle, a battle of wits and strength. A playing of nuanced strife reflective of the taming of the wilderness by humans. For twenty whole seconds I struggled to land what had to be the Leviathan of Beaver Lake.

As it turns out I had managed to land, as identified by Larry, a Kentucky bass of such minuscule proportions that if you managed to scrape all the meat off of it, you might have about 1/2 a fishstick worth of a meal...but it sure was fun catching it. Off the hook and back into the lake...the fun is in the catching, not the keeping.

Yep, this new round of fishing is much more fun and entertaining than the ones 40 years ago...even the ones where I used my uniquely hazardous methods.

..take care... tim b

Fishin'

It sure is dusty in here, I wonder who is responsible for this space.....

We camped out at Horseshoe Bend during July 4th and the week after. Thank you Martha and Larry for letting us stay in your RV.

One of the activities during the week or so at the lake was fishing. When it was first proposed I was a bit hesitant. The last time I had gone fishing was when I was 8 and 9 years old and it really hadn't been that positive of an experience.

I had been taken fishing during that time by a step-father and it would be vastly understating things to call him a jerk. My fishing with him consisted of being placed on the bank of a creek or stream, close to an eddy. I used worms as the bait and a pole with a bobber on it. Instruction consisted of being told to not move, not talk, and watch for the bobber to move. I'm not sure why any adult would ever think that a 8 year old, small town, Arkansas boy could ever sit on a creek bank without moving or talking, watching a red and white piece of plastic sit in the water. I never remember catching a single fish.

After the first episode of this, the only reason I ever asked to go back was because I discovered that if I endured this unnatural torture for 30 to 45 minutes, I could quietly slip off and explore further up or down stream, out of eye sight. Sitting through the nonsense of watching the bobber gave me access to new stream banks to explore... one of my more favorite activities.

Thankfully, I was often left to my own devices on the stream that ran behind our house in Cave Springs. I was allowed to go as far as the upstream edge of the pond and for two cow pastures downstream...a bit less than 1/2 mile of stream bank to explore.

My fishing style during these solo expeditions was much more exciting. My favorite technique was to belly crawl along the bank until I found a spot on the outer edge of a bend where the water was deep enough I couldn't see the bottom. My reasoning was that if I couldn't see the bottom to verify there was no fish there then there was a distinct possibility there was a fish there. I would then ease myself up to crouching on all fours and launch out over the stream like some large, hairless jungle cat to plunge feet and hands first into the stream. All such launches from the creek bank were accompanied by a top of the lungs scream of "Geronimo." I'm not entirely sure why, but it was a practice I revived many years later during the 12 parachuting jumps I made...much to the chagrin of the jumpmasters.

My operational theory for this method of fishing was that I would seize any fish that my hands happened to contact or at the very least the shock wave of my body hitting the water would stun any fish in the eddy and they would float to the top. Although I never caught any fish using this method either, at least my version of fishing had the benefit of plunging into a cool stream after belly crawling through itchy grass on an oppressively muggy August afternoon.

In thinking back at these times, it occurs to me that I must have had a very flat learning curve as a child. Often the thing I took away from these attempts was pain and another wound I was reluctant to explain to my mother when I returned to the house at dusk. While it is doubtful that those eddies ever actually concealed any fish for me to stun into submission, they often did conceal tree branches or rocks which I would come into full speed contact with. The resulting gouges, scrapes, and punctures never lessened my enthusiasm for airborne angling, it was much less painful than sitting and watching a bobber bob.

My foray into the world of fishing 40 years later was much more enjoyable..but that's a tale for another day.