Fishing With Jim

I’ve been thinking lately about Jim, one of my boyhood fishing buddies. He and his family lived in our neighborhood, in a brown, shingle-sided house a few hundred yards from our house, up one of the rutted dirt lanes that passed for roads in our neighborhood. As kids, we had an interesting relationship both off and on the water, to say the least.

Jim was a rail-thin and gangly kid with a buzz cut (I had one too in those days and I probably wouldn’t hesitate to get one now if it meant I could have hair again) that only emphasized the prominence of his sizeable ears. I used to tell him that from the neck up, he looked like a fuzzy cookie jar with a frown face and two huge handles (his ears). Usually when I told him this, he’d call me a runt and chase me until I climbed a tree to get away from him. We were ten year olds and this is what ten year olds do, or at least it is what they did back then.

Jim liked his dog, potted meat sandwiches and his 35 inch Louisville Slugger ball bat. It was the longest bat in the neighborhood by a couple inches and he could really swing it. To this day, I’ve never seen a kid in that age range hit a ball as far as Jim could when he connected. He named the bat “Thunder” and whenever he stepped to the plate, he would announce that he and Thunder had arrived and that the rest of us on the field should begin to weep and pray for mercy, for our doom was surely upon us. When we weren’t playing ball, he kept Thunder wrapped in an old sheet and lying on a pillow in his room. There it rested sort of like King Arthur’s sword, only waiting to be summoned forth at the hour of need once more.

Like me, Jim loved to fish. Back then, most of our fishing was done with spinning outfits and lures for largemouth bass. We were lucky to have great bass fishing less than a five minutes walk from either of our doors. A low-gradient warm water creek, the outlet of the local glacial pothole lake, ran along the back edge of our neighborhood and from there snaked its way another four miles south through hickory bottoms, swales and impenetrable stands of cattails to its junction with French Creek. The creek was for the most part our private kingdom, perhaps because the clouds of mosquitoes down there were so thick the stream often looked as if it were wreathed in pale smoke. Not many other people could put up with them. That was OK with Jim and I because we knew that mosquitoes weren’t the only thing the creek had in abundance. Its slow pools, weed beds and log jams were loaded with largemouth bass. It was worth a couple hundred mosquito bites to us to see one of the creek’s bass rush out from the shelter of a sunken log or patch of water lilies to stop our Flatfish or Rapala dead and then unzip the surface of the stream as it vaulted from the water in a head-shaking leap. At these magic moments, every mosquito within a mile could have been trying to hone in on our eardrums and we wouldn’t have known the difference. Neither of us ever got tired of seeing that first angry leap by the bass.

We plied the creek for it's bass, sometimes on our own and sometimes together. We would slog our way far downstream from our houses, just fishing and forgetting about time and the world. We’d compete. “I got three and lost two more”, I’d tell him in as I waved my arm in front of my face like a windshield wiper run amok to keep the insects momentarily at bay. “So what?", he’d fire back. “All yours were dinks. I got a 15 incher..” And so it would go. We were kids and we had a wonderland virtually right at our doorstep. We escaped to it every chance we could.

Jim was a somber boy, not given to a lot of exclamation or expression. Things that would cause me to bust out laughing until my sides hurt would often only bring the ghost of a smile to his face. In retrospect, I tend to think that things at home for him were often not all that good. Family problems, perhaps. So, there was a stoicism and even a bit of a sadness about him. But there was one set of circumstances that never failed to delight him and get him laughing so hard, he had to sit down to catch his breath. All it took was for me to fall on my can in the creek or slip and take a dunking or virtually just about anything that caused me pain, discomfort or distress. Truth be told, I faked falls and various personal mishaps a number of times just to get him to laugh. I’d pretend to trip over a log and go flat on my face and make an “ummmph” noise like it had knocked the wind out of me. He’d roar and laugh so hard his eyes would tear up.

From time to time, Jim would take a more active part in engineering minor disasters for me to experience and him to enjoy. He’d walk in front of me as we hiked our way through the woods along the creek and he’d hang on to the tree branches he was walking through, letting them go just in time for them to thwack me in the ear or throat. I didn’t like it, but I occasionally pulled the same stuff on him now and then. And, as I mentioned, these little episodes seemed to be one of the few things that made him laugh or seem happy. I never got hurt, so I didn’t really mind. And besides, we were young boys. It was uncool to whine or carry on, well, like a girl.

We used to take my Dad’s aluminum cartopper boat and row up the creek a half mile, almost to the lake and then drift and fish our way back down. Jim would always row; he insisted on it. And with good reason. I was small framed and while my legs were pretty powerful from all the wading I did through the muck and swamps along the creek, I didn’t have anywhere near the strength in my arms Jim did. He was skinny, but his arms were sinewy and powerful and there wasn’t an ounce of fat on him. He could cover the half mile in less than 20 minutes.

About half way up the stretch of creek towards the lake, there was a downed tree that fell across the full width of the stream. Eventually, somebody would come along in a boat with a chain saw and take it out. But until then, you had to duck low in the boat and grab the trunk of the tree to push the boat underneath and through to the other side. We didn’t mind doing this. The way we figured, like the clouds of mosquitoes, downed logs across the creek were another form of protection of our kingdom from discovery and exploration by outsiders. One thing would lead to another and eventually, they’d start catching our bass. Our paradise would be exposed and violated. We certainly didn’t want that.

One day, Jim rowed us up to the highway bridge that spanned the creek just downstream from the lake. This was our traditional starting place for these float fishing excursions. It was Jim’s turn to sit in the bow and get first crack at all the new water as we drifted along. I took the middle seat, using the oars to keep the nose of the boat pointed forward between casts. We drifted our way downstream, picking up a few bass here and there until we reached the downed log. Jim ducked and he and the bow passed under. I set my rod down and hunkered low in the boat in preparation of doing likewise. In the meantime, Jim made a cast over to the far bank. Just as I was about to pass through beneath the log, Jim yelled out; “Hey! I’m snagged over there. Grab the log and hold us steady so I can get my lure back, willya?” Make perfect sense to me. Bass lures cost around $1.50 each back then and I made about $6.00 a week on my paper route and most of that money went right in the bank to help pay for college someday. It was serious business when you were in jeopardy of losing a lure. So, I grabbed the log and hung on so Jim could free his snagged plug. But I no sooner grabbed the log than Jim lunged ahead, grabbed the oars and rowed the boat right out from under me. There I hung over the creek with both arms wrapped around the log and my good sneakers completely soaked. Jim held the boat in place for about 30 seconds, roaring in delight while I writhed and screamed at him to bring it back. The water beneath me was only about 30 inches deep and I was in no danger of drowning, but it was the principle of the thing. Finally, he took a couple pulls on the oars and put the boat back underneath me so I could let go of the tree trunk. I resolved right then and there that were would be no more faked pratfalls for his benefit, not if he was going to pull that kind of stuff on me. Additionally, I started making fun of his ears more than I had been lately. But I had to be careful not to take it too far. He was a lot bigger and stronger than I was. But I got him back, even if it was on the installment plan.

As I sit here now thinking and writing about these things that happened 40 or more years ago, it isn’t the tricks that Jim pulled on me that come to mind first. Oh, I remember each and every one, believe me. But what I remember most is Jim’s lean frame silhouetted against the backdrop of the hemlocks that anchored the mud banks of our creek. He’d be bringing his rod ahead in an overhead casting motion, trying to put his Rapala just a couple inches closer to the edge of the bassy-looking weed bed 50 feet down the near bank from where he stood. The lure would land right where he was aiming it (for once..) and he’d turn the handle once to flip the bail over. The Rapala would twitch in the water and a silver green bullet would engulf it. The bass would make one hard run and then try to kiss the sky, his head shaking and gills flaring. “Got him!”, Jim would exclaim. He would fight the bass as its runs and lunges slowly became weaker until it finally allowed itself to be landed. Jim would reach down and grab the bass by the head and hoist it from the water for me to see. “This one’s gotta go at least 16 inches”, he’d crow. Usually, he was about 3 inches long in his estimates, but that’s OK. I did the same thing when I caught one. It was all part of being a boy, blessed as we were with this wonderland and angling classroom all but at our doorstep. That’s what I remember, the wonder and magic of the thing. Our creek, our bass, our kingdom.

The years went by. We graduated from high school together. We drifted apart. I paid for the first semester of college with my paper route money and was off on my academic adventure. Jim went to work in a factory and soon after, his greetings from Uncle Sam arrived and he was drafted. It was early in the first term of the Nixon administration and the war in Vietnam, while slowly winding down, was still hot. Jim was lucky, he managed to stay stateside and spent a good deal of his Army hitch exploring the excellent bass fishing opportunities around Fort Hood in Texas.

Years later, when we were both well into our 30’s, one evening when I had just arrived home from work, the phone in my apartment rang. I picked it up and there was Jim. He told me he had heard of a secluded steamer pond along the rail line that ran between our boyhood hometown and Cambridge Springs, a town about 10 miles down the line. These ponds were fairly common when I was a boy. They were leftover remnants of the days when the trains would stop and fill up their boilers with water to run the steam-powered engines. He said he heard the pond was full of big bass that hardly anybody ever bothered fishing for. Did I want to go with him and check it out?

That decision took all of two seconds for me to make. Tell me about an under fished, new place to explore and I lose all ability to make rational choices. All I want to do is go there right now. I told him I’d meet him at his place in the morning. He said great, we’ll park by the big trestle pool on French Creek and carry his canoe down the tracks to the pond, which couldn’t be more than a half mile from where we parked. Piece of cake..

Well, it was more like a mile and a half on one of the hottest days of the summer. With my hands occupied carrying my end of the canoe, I was at the mercy of the mosquitoes and they were drilling me pretty much everywhere there was exposed flesh. So, I was snorting, swearing, waving my free arm and was generally miserable. Which Jim seemed to enjoy. At least that hadn’t changed.

Finally, we arrived. It was indeed a nice looking pond. Deep with downed timber on one end and a nice weed bed on the, opposite, more shallow end. Lots of good looking bass cover. I was pretty whipped from the long carry. I set the canoe down and stepped onto the big white gravel bed that is a ubiquitous feature of just about every rail line. I took one more step and the gravel went out from under me and I went bouncing 25 feet down the steep grade on my butt all the way to the edge of the pond where I came to rest with my nose in the mud and my feet flapping in the air. Back up on top with the canoe, Jim was howling with glee and holding his sides. Same old Jim… We launched the canoe, caught a few small bass and decided it was a dud. Sometimes, that’s the way it goes. But like every time I go fishing, it was magic. It always is.

I hope Jim’s doing well..