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