The Old Man had fished for everything that swims at one time or another, and he’d caught most of it. He never mentioned fishing any of the world’s exotic places, but of skinned and scaled critters closer to home he’d caught them all.
By the time I came along and was deemed old enough to begin an internship, he’d settled firmly into catfishing as a specialty, with trotlining holding sway for technique. Crappie rarely tempted him but, when they did, another side of his abilities went on display.
Thursday of the week before I was granted a few days’ furlough from sixth grade, I came home to find him rummaging through one of his outbuildings, hauling out gear I’d never seen.
“What is this pole for?” I asked, picking up a brown fiberglass telescoping rig with a curious little reel on the back end.
I considered myself something of an Indiana Jones-style rambler, hunting small treasures wherever they might be found, and the Old Man’s outbuilding had been the catch-all for his life’s work, so I had dug into it often. Still, even after years of my plundering, it continued to yield treasures I had never seen.
“Crappie,” he said. “They’re catching the fire out of them on the Waterway. I thought we’d give them a try about Monday.”
“Why not Saturday?” I asked with impatience. “If they’re catching them now …”
“Everybody will be out there Saturday and Sunday fishing on top of each other,” he said. “When they go back to work on Monday, we’ll ease out there and fish where we please.”
The scene at the Waterway on Monday was calm, but the sort of curious calm that descends after a minor calamity subsides. There was no visual evidence to speak of, but the feeling that a wild scene had concluded just hours before prevailed nonetheless. A few other boats were in sight as we eased into the water and made our way to a likely spot, but they moved slowly and kept their distance. I guessed they could feel it, too.
For that matter, they might have even been part of whatever it was for all I knew and were now feeling remorseful. The Old Man watched them out of the corner of his eye. He, for one, doubted their remorse.
“When we start catching fish,” he said in a serious tone, “don’t make any more hullabaloo than you have to. No big moves and keep the fish down low. Ease them into the boat and close the ice chest lid over them quietly.”
This was something new. Gradually his intent dawned on me.
“Other folks wouldn’t come fish right in the same spot as us, would they?” I asked.
“Son,” he said, “that’s the very thing half the folks out here are waiting to do. They’ll dab along and watch every other boat in sight. When somebody else catches a few, they’ll come throw across their line.”
We spent most of the day in a big scope of flooded timber. More than once I watched the Old Man glance about to see who might be looking before pulling a hooked crappie aboard.
Crappie are notoriously easy to lose off of a hook. They’re called “paper mouths” in some situations, and the best way to get one aboard is to keep steady and vigorous pressure on him from the time he’s punctured until the time he’s above the ice chest, letting the curve of the hook do the work and never depending upon the barb to hold him. This technique, though, grabs the attention of every looky-loo for miles around, and it’s what the Old Man was making sure I avoided. We caught fish quietly, cleanly, happily and almost secretly. Fewer than you might imagine actually got away.
Across the lake, three other boats fished back and forth around each other, coming to cross words more than once.
“I’d hate to think you’d behave like that to catch a fish,” the Old Man said after we had watched one of their better rowdydows. He needn’t have mentioned it because I couldn’t imagine it myself, and I felt sorry for the guys in the squabble.
I guess they weren’t as lucky as I’d been in their choice of mentors.
Kevin Tate is a freelance writer. Email [email protected].
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