Fishing
I turned a corner wrong in a Walmart into the fishing aisle and came face to face with a bright yellow telescoping spinning rod with reel and line included for $24. That's how it started. It would fit in a small backpack or in a pannier on my bike. It could catch fish for me along the Erie Canal or along the Konkapot River, or the Housatonic, or almost anywhere else I could imagine. It could travel with me to Spain or to Santo Domingo and along all the byways and bike paths that I would explore along whatever waterways that held fishes. It could bring unknown fishes up to me to be known.
That night I bled my eyes blind watching YouTube "How to Fish" videos and slept with little plan.
Sunday morning, coffee and laptop, I reckoned a bike route along a local reservoir that might harbor fish. At the last moment I thought "License?", looked it up and downloaded one to my phone on impulse for $50. Lucky for me because 2 hours later a Warden, against all odds, carded me, and with my first perch in hand I was found legal to fish and to keep 'em.
My father had often dragged me, a reluctant youth, out fishing along local streams in the golf course abutting our house and on borrowed rowboats on Lake Buel but to little avail. I learned to row, to piss overboard and to bait hooks with dug night crawlers but little else. We caught no fish to my memory. That first small perch I caught, hooked jerking and tugging and leaping with life and hope to stay in its own waters was a connection to life and survival I had never felt.
All the local waters were known to me from family outings as a child, places to drink beer and bring girls to, shores to meditate from, eat sandwiches on, lunch breaks and as general escapes. But now, with rod and lures and baits, a new world opened and I now hunted fishes. Trout hid invisibly in streams where I had skinny dipped and I never knew. Bass lunged at my lures sounding to the bottom and wound the line around pond weeds trying to anchor themselves and pickerel leapt and slashed in mid air to cut my leader with their gill plates and bite my hand that tried to land them. A giant pike along the shore of the Housatonic followed my lure to within 6 feet from where I was standing on the shore, bumped it with its snout, shrugged and then slipped away, a lithe submarine.
I crept up to the edge of the Konkapot and saw a likely bolt hole in a nestle of rocks underwater and flipped a flimsy plastic lure into it. Explosion of water and a 20" Brown Trout lay heaving at my feet. I released it and wished I kept it. A metaphor for my many loves lost. They tell me a trout that size from that brook is trophy size, not the only trophy I have lost. To this day wish I kept it.
Upstream on the Konkapot, right in Mill River, is a pool that, this summer was landlocked from drought. Sighted lots of fish and 2 lunkers, Rainbows I believe. One day, quietly on the bank, with a comfortable place to sit, I tossed in no fewer than 6 different baits over a period of 5 hours, right in front of the fish, all were surveyed and dismissed. Never dove for cover, would circle high then wander off into the shadows of the boulders. Next bait same thing. This went on all summer from cool mornings to warm afternoons to cool evenings. Maybe still there next summer.
I bought a Tenkara fly fishing rod, short tricky and stealthy, and found a spot on Seekonk Brook where I could cast it without too many snags. I climbed over the bridge down onto the riprap boulders, waited a while in case I had startled any fish and, on my first cast snagged in an alder. Reached out to grab my line and scared up a huge Brookie out of nowhere and he startled me him slamming off the banks and kicking up roostertails of sand from the bottom trying to get out of that pool. Went back to that bridge 20 times, and saw him bunches but he never looked at my offerings, not fly nor night crawler.
Hubbard Brook, nearly nameless on maps, leaks out of the golf course in Egremont and oozes its way to the Housatonic. My school bus route crossed it many times but now, on bicycle, with my yellow Walmart rod I stopped on the bridge near the town line. Elbows on the concrete rail, my butt to traffic about 4 cars/hour, I flipped a rubber fat worm into the dead water with no hope other than to kill time. I knew kids who used to fish there 40 years ago but no kid on a bike had stopped here since then. Bang 14" Brookie and came home with me grilled on the tailgate of my truck in the driveway 345 Miller Ave, on an Esbit fuel stove and was great.
Borrowed a kayak and put it on Gilligan's Pond. Small pond to drive past fed by Hubbard Brook and dammed on the down end but long if you paddle upstream. You can bring a 4 year old with a bent pin and catch bluegill under the spillway, guaranteed, anytime. Rocks covered with heron shit, sure sign of fish. And there are bass.
I used to log with Bill Markham from Brush Hill and he was historic. Huge boned, broad red face and deep hoarse liquor voice-- "Whikey keep you young, Danny," he used to tell me. He had won longest dick contests at logger conventions when he was younger, I was told, and have no reason to doubt it. I watched him dance down the length of a felled red pine, limbing it with a chainsaw as he went singing a song I can't repeat. On the ride home from logging we would drink 3 long island iced teas in Winsted with Pete Cassidy. Would never drink beer from a can cause once he found a mouse in one. Brush Hill. I looked it up this summer and learned there is a pond at the now, dead end of that road-- 3 Mile Pond. I wasn't thinking of Bill when I wended my up Brush Hill with kayak on truck, thinking of bass fishing, but when the road turned to ledgey ruts and I was stepping the tires over the washboard I saw a sign "Brush Hill Cemetery" and stopped to take a leak. Ancient broken cemetery and recognized a few names, but, gazing out over the snapped corroded headstones I noticed a few more in a meadow unfenced above. Low and behold, Bill Markham and his wife with an engraved fieldstone marker and a beautiful view. Wife was the only one of his wives who could tolerate the whole Bill, if you know what I mean. So I was told. Without reason to disbelieve it.
Salt water-- After bicycling past many fishers on canals and rivers and lakes I now bike the coast of Santo Domingo and there are fishers and spots to fish from and depths to fathom.
Buy from Amazon a 9' chinese rod with 2 oz bait limit, what do I know and go fishing.
In the first place there is too much water in the Caribbean Ocean. Here I stand on cliffs 60 feet above the water and the water never stops moving, and here I am casting my pathetic bait a paltry distance from the shore even though the geometry eludes me. I am 60' up and cast 90' out (maybe) so where is my lure?
Buy some gear and sneak out on bike after some scouting. See a few fish caught and pick my spots, often near colmados (where you can buy beer just in case). Squid for bait and success a Moray eel.
The Malecón of Santo Domingo stretches a long ways east/west with sidewalks constantly under repair, on the south side resides the Caribbean Ocean, which, I am told, is full of fish.
My short fishing is of stealth, hunting, moving, thinking i
like a fish, looking under lily pads, around orners, eddys etc. The Caribbean Ocean is nothing like this.
Something heavy on the line, peering over a jagged cliff, reeling, resting, reeling, can't see over cliff and----- moray eel.
I turned a corner wrong in a Walmart into the fishing aisle and came face to face with a bright yellow telescoping spinning rod with reel and line included for $24. That's how it started. It would fit in a small backpack or in a pannier on my bike. It could catch fish for me along the Erie Canal or along the Konkapot River, or the Housatonic, or almost anywhere else I could imagine. It could travel with me to Spain or to Santo Domingo and along all the byways and bike paths that I would explore along whatever waterways that held fishes. It could bring unknown fishes up to me to be known.
That night I bled my eyes blind watching YouTube "How to Fish" videos and slept with little plan.
Sunday morning, coffee and laptop, I reckoned a bike route along a local reservoir that might harbor fish. At the last moment I thought "License?", looked it up and downloaded one to my phone on impulse for $50. Lucky for me because 2 hours later a Warden, against all odds, carded me, and with my first perch in hand I was found legal to fish and to keep 'em.
My father had often dragged me, a reluctant youth, out fishing along local streams in the golf course abutting our house and on borrowed rowboats on Lake Buel but to little avail. I learned to row, to piss overboard and to bait hooks with dug night crawlers but little else. We caught no fish to my memory. That first small perch I caught, hooked jerking and tugging and leaping with life and hope to stay in its own waters was a connection to life and survival I had never felt.
All the local waters were known to me from family outings as a child, places to drink beer and bring girls to, shores to meditate from, eat sandwiches on, lunch breaks and as general escapes. But now, with rod and lures and baits, a new world opened and I now hunted fishes. Trout hid invisibly in streams where I had skinny dipped and I never knew. Bass lunged at my lures sounding to the bottom and wound the line around pond weeds trying to anchor themselves and pickerel leapt and slashed in mid air to cut my leader with their gill plates and bite my hand that tried to land them. A giant pike along the shore of the Housatonic followed my lure to within 6 feet from where I was standing on the shore, bumped it with its snout, shrugged and then slipped away, a lithe submarine.
I crept up to the edge of the Konkapot and saw a likely bolt hole in a nestle of rocks underwater and flipped a flimsy plastic lure into it. Explosion of water and a 20" Brown Trout lay heaving at my feet. I released it and wished I kept it. A metaphor for my many loves lost. They tell me a trout that size from that brook is trophy size, not the only trophy I have lost. To this day wish I kept it.
Upstream on the Konkapot, right in Mill River, is a pool that, this summer was landlocked from drought. Sighted lots of fish and 2 lunkers, Rainbows I believe. One day, quietly on the bank, with a comfortable place to sit, I tossed in no fewer than 6 different baits over a period of 5 hours, right in front of the fish, all were surveyed and dismissed. Never dove for cover, would circle high then wander off into the shadows of the boulders. Next bait same thing. This went on all summer from cool mornings to warm afternoons to cool evenings. Maybe still there next summer.
I bought a Tenkara fly fishing rod, short tricky and stealthy, and found a spot on Seekonk Brook where I could cast it without too many snags. I climbed over the bridge down onto the riprap boulders, waited a while in case I had startled any fish and, on my first cast snagged in an alder. Reached out to grab my line and scared up a huge Brookie out of nowhere and he startled me him slamming off the banks and kicking up roostertails of sand from the bottom trying to get out of that pool. Went back to that bridge 20 times, and saw him bunches but he never looked at my offerings, not fly nor night crawler.
Hubbard Brook, nearly nameless on maps, leaks out of the golf course in Egremont and oozes its way to the Housatonic. My school bus route crossed it many times but now, on bicycle, with my yellow Walmart rod I stopped on the bridge near the town line. Elbows on the concrete rail, my butt to traffic about 4 cars/hour, I flipped a rubber fat worm into the dead water with no hope other than to kill time. I knew kids who used to fish there 40 years ago but no kid on a bike had stopped here since then. Bang 14" Brookie and came home with me grilled on the tailgate of my truck in the driveway 345 Miller Ave, on an Esbit fuel stove and was great.
Borrowed a kayak and put it on Gilligan's Pond. Small pond to drive past fed by Hubbard Brook and dammed on the down end but long if you paddle upstream. You can bring a 4 year old with a bent pin and catch bluegill under the spillway, guaranteed, anytime. Rocks covered with heron shit, sure sign of fish. And there are bass.
I used to log with Bill Markham from Brush Hill and he was historic. Huge boned, broad red face and deep hoarse liquor voice-- "Whikey keep you young, Danny," he used to tell me. He had won longest dick contests at logger conventions when he was younger, I was told, and have no reason to doubt it. I watched him dance down the length of a felled red pine, limbing it with a chainsaw as he went singing a song I can't repeat. On the ride home from logging we would drink 3 long island iced teas in Winsted with Pete Cassidy. Would never drink beer from a can cause once he found a mouse in one. Brush Hill. I looked it up this summer and learned there is a pond at the now, dead end of that road-- 3 Mile Pond. I wasn't thinking of Bill when I wended my up Brush Hill with kayak on truck, thinking of bass fishing, but when the road turned to ledgey ruts and I was stepping the tires over the washboard I saw a sign "Brush Hill Cemetery" and stopped to take a leak. Ancient broken cemetery and recognized a few names, but, gazing out over the snapped corroded headstones I noticed a few more in a meadow unfenced above. Low and behold, Bill Markham and his wife with an engraved fieldstone marker and a beautiful view. Wife was the only one of his wives who could tolerate the whole Bill, if you know what I mean. So I was told. Without reason to disbelieve it.
Salt water-- After bicycling past many fishers on canals and rivers and lakes I now bike the coast of Santo Domingo and there are fishers and spots to fish from and depths to fathom.
Buy from Amazon a 9' chinese rod with 2 oz bait limit, what do I know and go fishing.
In the first place there is too much water in the Caribbean Ocean. Here I stand on cliffs 60 feet above the water and the water never stops moving, and here I am casting my pathetic bait a paltry distance from the shore even though the geometry eludes me. I am 60' up and cast 90' out (maybe) so where is my lure?
Buy some gear and sneak out on bike after some scouting. See a few fish caught and pick my spots, often near colmados (where you can buy beer just in case). Squid for bait and success a Moray eel.
The Malecón of Santo Domingo stretches a long ways east/west with sidewalks constantly under repair, on the south side resides the Caribbean Ocean, which, I am told, is full of fish.
My short fishing is of stealth, hunting, moving, thinking i
like a fish, looking under lily pads, around orners, eddys etc. The Caribbean Ocean is nothing like this.
Something heavy on the line, peering over a jagged cliff, reeling, resting, reeling, can't see over cliff and----- moray eel.