Long Lake Leviathan

Something from the tackle box:

       For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;  The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land,  (SS 2-11-12 KJV)

       There is an old man who has been fishing the waters around my place on Long Lake for much longer than I have, or even my grandfather who owned the place for many years before I did.  For all I know, he may have been fishing Long Lake since before my grandfather was even born, back in 1912.  I believe so.  He was present on the lake, and known by all to be an ancient fellow, way back when my Grandfather first bought the place and I began going there to relax and fish as a youngster.  He’s still there, fishing the waters in and around the cove where my cottage sits.  Everyone who lives on the southwest side of the lake knows him.  I call him - the Old-timer. 

       Indeed, the Old-timer might not be an old man at all.  I do not know enough about turtle anatomy to tell a male snapper from a female one.  But, if women in general are more naturally law abiding citizens then men are, he certainly is an old man, because this old fisherman is an unrepentant thief, a stealer of other folks’ caught and caged suppers.  He has been that way for as long as I can remember.

       The cove my cottage sits by, which I call Delmar’s Cove in honor of my grandfather and to differentiate it from several other good fishing coves around the lake, marks an inlet to the lake from a large spring fed marsh on the other side of the road.   There is a large culvert that allows the water to pass under the road from swamp to lake.  I believe this culvert is the Old-timer’s trail from his home to his hunting grounds.

       There was a reason that my granddad always cleaned and refrigerated the fish he caught on Long Lake just as soon as he came in off the water, even if there were only one or two of them to clean.  You could not leave your catch on a stringer tied to the end of the dock for very long before the Old-timer would catch the scent, move in from underneath, and quietly start munching away on your pan-fish.  And he has quite an appetite, let me tell you. 

       As a younger man, back when my grandparents still owned and spent their summers at the place and I just visited, I remember catching a nice smallmouth bass right from the dock.  It was no giant, but I think it was the first bass that I’d ever landed up there, and I wanted to show off my catch before letting it go (no one in my family eats bass).  As everyone was in town and wouldn’t be back for a bit, I poked the metal clip of a chain link stringer through his bottom jaw, tied him to the dock, and went into the cottage for a root beer.  He would be comfortable enough swimming in circles until everyone got back and I could lift him out of the water to the “ooohs” and “aaahs” that I coveted.  But when the grand moment for my glory finally came, with parents and grandparents gathered at the shoreline, I went to pull that fish out of the water, and found nothing but half of his head still attached to the metal clip, his tail fin lying on the lake floor beneath it.  The Old Timer had added me to his long list of victims for the first time, - and it wouldn’t be the last. 

       I don’t mind cleaning fish at all, but I am not as enthusiastic about cleaning one or two fish at a time as my grandfather was.  If I go out in the morning and catch a couple of perch, and plan to go out again after dinner, I would just as soon save the few I already have alive to add to that night’s catch, or even the next mornings catch.  I’d much rather clean half a dozen or more fish all at once than set up shop several times to clean two or three at a time.  It’s just the way I’d prefer to do it.  But my methods require letting the early catch swim around in fresh lake water for half a day or more, you can’t just keep them that long in a bucket of stale water, they won’t make it.  The usual method it to keep them in a wire mesh fish basket tied to the dock.  Well, - if you fish at my place, - it had better be one sturdy piece of work to keep the Old-timer out, more of a fish Alcatraz than the Pumpkin Corners County Jail!

       I learned this lesson by loosing a couple batches of fish to the Old-timer.  The first time I suffered a basket break in, I had been fishing in the morning with limited success, just two six inch Sunfish and one very nice foot long perch.  I came in about ten-thirty to go to lunch in town with my folks and didn’t have time to clean the fish first.  I could have left them in the bucket on the deck and they would have probably been all right until I got back, but I wanted to get right back out on the lake upon getting home and didn’t think they would go all day.  Then I remembered seeing an old wire fish basket with some of Gramp’s old stuff in the storage shed.  Why not give it a try?  It might do the trick, and the Old-timer might not even come around this afternoon anyway.

common fish basket

       I went to the shed and, sure enough, it was there, though it looked a lot more rusty and fragile than I had remembered it being.  Still, I figured it would do the job.  I put my fish in it, hung it in the water, and went to town.  Well, guess what!  I came home from lunch and found that basket chewed up like the scraps left from someone’s rusty wire spaghetti dinner.  Little bits of perch were suspended in the water over the busted up strands of wire.  The sunfish were completely gone, - hopefully escaped.  I might as well have tried keeping those fish away from the Old-timer in a brown paper bag tied off the end of my dock.

       The war was on!  I figured that perhaps the Old-timer’s total destruction of my fish jail was due to the extremely decrepit state of that antique basket from the shed.  Perhaps a new un-corroded one, fresh from the store, would hold up better.  My next trip to town would see me make that purchase. 

       Well, that was twelve bucks down the drain! The Old-timer may not have chewed it into little bitty pieces, but the very fist time I put fish in it off the end of my dock, I returned to find it ripped open from top to bottom cleaner than if the local handyman had taken his wire nippers to it.  I actually watched the old poacher swimming away from the scene of the crime!  Turtles can’t smile, but he sure seemed pleased with himself.  As I turned my attention back to the torn open basket I saw that he had left one fish-head and a couple of fins inside to add insult to the injury!  He was mocking me!

Dad's super fish basket

       Then I had an ally come to my relief.  I am not handy with tools at all, but my dad can build just about anything he puts his mind to, and he put his mind to building a fish basket that would keep the Old-timer out.  Heavy gage, galvanized, welded, animal cage fencing, cut and formed into a barrel, with a flip open top and heavy-duty latch.  I didn’t ask him to make it for me, but the Old-timer had gotten a bit too brazen, and I think he felt that something of the family honor was at stake.  It is impressive.  I have had my new industrial strength fish basket for two seasons now, and have caught the Old-timer poking around it twice, looking and figuring.  He hasn’t enjoyed any more fish dinners on my tab to date, — but I’m not too sure he’s really tried all that hard, either.  Time will tell. 

      

Something to take home in your creel:

       When I was a much younger man, in my twenties, I had nothing against catching a snapper and eating him.  It was quite a chore to dress one out, but turtle meat is very good and it was worth the work.  The Old-timer has done more to deserve this reciprocity of treatment from my hands than any other edible critter I’ve ever encountered.

       But, - I just can’t do it now.  Once the ruddy blush of youth began to noticeably dissipate from my own physique, thirty or more years ago now, and I began to comprehend the nature of my own mortality, I came to feel that it is a crying shame, if not a downright sin, to eat anything that is older than you are.  And the Old-timer is certainly that. 

       As I said, the Old-timer has been hanging out in the cove just to the west of my place since I first came here as a teenager.  He was big back then, maybe the biggest snapping turtle I’d ever seen, and he’s grown in the forty plus years since that time. He is a grand sight, a fixture on the lake, and is now considered to be an honored resident by all who share the lake with him, his fish stealing ways notwithstanding.  Delmar’s Cove and its nearby waters, including my dock, is where he is most often to be spotted by those who are looking to catch a glimpse of him, as many do when they paddle or putter by on the water.

       This past summer, on an afternoon when my wife took our five-year-old grandson, Nolan, out for a spin in the peddle-boat, the Old-timer decided to check them out, and spent several minutes swimming around near the surface within a few feet of their craft.  They were delighted with his presence and it was an event they will both remember for a very long time. The Old-timer now has actual fan base in my own family.  Maybe I’m getting to be one, too.  My wife has recently painted a portrait of the Old-timer to grace the walls of our home, and I am not opposed to hanging it up. That mossy backed old sinner has nothing to fear from me, — the Thief!