My Week of Big Smallies

Something from the tackle box:

       You cannot fool God, so don’t make a fool of yourself!  You will harvest what you plant.  If you follow you selfish desires, you will harvest destruction, but if you follow the Spirit, you will harvest eternal life.  Don’t get tired of helping others.  You will be rewarded when the time is right, if you don’t give up.  We should help people whenever we can.  (Galatians 6:7-10a CEV)

 

As close as I would get catching a trophy fish in Alaska. (sigh,)

        When measured on my personal fishing satisfaction quotient, this past summer’s angling covered a very wide spectrum indeed.  I experienced both enormous disappointment, as well as wild success.  My biggest disappointment, one of the biggest of my life, came with having an opportunity to spend an afternoon fly fishing for trout and salmon in the wilds of Alaska!  

       'How could that be a disappointment,' you ask!  Well, going wasn't.  It was one of the biggest thrills of my life.  The disappointment came in catching nothing more than a five inch long sculpin, a nasty little baitfish, while the other two in my party came back with pictures of themselves holding up silver salmon and Dolly Varden trout to show off to friends and family.  For weeks afterward I mentally ached over my lack of success on that day.  I can honestly say that I felt physically ill over it.  I still get twinges of depression when I think about it now.   

It is embarrassing to show you this.

       However, despite my bitter disappointment over not catching a decent fish on my Alaskan adventure, I am convinced there was a God intended reason for the way that expedition turned out.  If you are interested in finding out the details of my feelings about that, please go to my blog archive and read the last story I posted in the month of September, Fly-fishing in Alaska – Part 2.  If you don’t care about the details I will give you the short version, as follows: 

       While I wasn’t able to catch a trout on my one and only chance to fish in Alaska, I was able to show the face of Christ’s compassion to a young man I was fishing with.  That was a blessing I would not have been able to pass on to him if I had been catching nice fish myself, or at least not as easily.  While being enabled to provide a blessings to someone else wasn’t the proverbial ‘balm of Gilead’ for my fishing frustration that day, it certainly did take some of the sting out of it for me.  Actually, it took more than a little bit away.  I was glad I have had the chance to be a fisher of men, or at least of one man, on that trip, and I believe that God has blessed me for it.

       Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe that God pays out, ‘tit for tat,’when it comes to your good works, or your bad, in this life.  As Paul tells us in the verse I have from the tackle box above, rewards come when the time is right, and our hope should be in harvesting eternal life rather than destruction when that time comes!  Expecting a nice sunny afternoon in return for helping an old lady across the street in the morning isn’t really how the whole thing works.  I know that. – But – that kind of thing might not always be totally out of the question, either! 

       All I know for sure is that, just two short months after the biggest disappointment of my fishing career, a disappointment which better allowed me to perform acts of kindness that I believe touched the heart of a fellow fisherman with God’s love, I landed the four biggest Smallmouth Bass that I’ve caught in my entire life – in the span of one week!

       Now, I’ve been fishing Long Lake in Cheboygan County since I was a teenager, way back in the early seventies, and it’s always been a very good smallmouth lake.  I’ve caught plenty of that athletic and acrobatic species in my forty plus years of angling there. I’ve caught them on dry-flies, wet-flies, worms, jigs, and crank-baits.  Many of them have been pretty decent fish.  I’ve landed many fourteen, fifteen, and even the occasional sixteen incher in my day, all good fish, but I’ve never hooked into, much less boated, any real giants.  That is, - until this past August.

       As I said, Long Lake is a great smallmouth lake.  Many people come here just to run their bass boats and work their crank baits for that species in particular.  But those that I have caught have almost always been taken incidentally while fishing for the sunfish, bluegills and perch that I’m usually after.  That may be the biggest reason why I’ve caught no real giants before.  I’ve been offering small rubber spiders and the tiniest of poppers with my fly rods, and little wax worms on small hooks when bobber fishing or jigging.  The bigger fish don’t even pay much attention that kind of miniature foodstuff, even if they ever see it in the first place.  But this past August was different, - because they did!

       The first two big Smallies I caught came on the same day, one in the morning and the other in the afternoon.  I had taken the boat a quarter mile down the shoreline from my place and anchored in water twenty feet deep, just about fifty yards out into the open lake from the mouth of Old Doc’s cove.  I knew this to be a good spot to maybe find some perch by running a small jig lure enhanced with a wax worm straight down from the boat within a yard or two from the bottom.  Once you had that rig set up you could just let it sit while using a long noodle rod, rigged with another jig and worm suspended a few feet below a bobber, to cast up towards the mouth of the cove and tempt some of the sunfish that often hung out in the shallower waters of that spot.  Working two rods at once for panfish like this is not a hard job, if you know what you’re about.   

       Well, I got the deep jig down where it belonged and laid that rod down with the rod tip hanging several feet over the gunwale, so that the natural motions of the water on the boat would do my jigging for me.  I took up my nine foot noodle rod and had just made my first cast towards the cove entrance, when the butt end of my jigging rod jumped about a foot into the air off the seat beside me threatening to vault over the side of the boat and be lost forever! 

       Now, a nice perch can make a resting rod bounce a bit when it grabs on, but it isn’t going to pull it overboard.  This was something else altogether.  I managed to snag the flying rod with my left hand as I laid the other rod down with my right.  As I grabbed on, that jigging rod tipped over in a big bow and the drag on the reel started to wiz.  No perch for sure. 

       The fish stayed deep and I honestly thought I had hooked into a walleye that had wandered up into the twenty-foot depths from its normal hangout in the forty to sixty-foot deep water over on the opposite side of the narrow lake from where I was fishing.  It was a reasonable assumption.  When I was a young man the Lake Owners Association used to stock walleye into Long Lake.  Fishermen still find them in those deeper waters of the northeast shoreline, but not in the great numbers of those bygone years when we planted them every so often. 

       Anyway, walleye, or maybe a pike, was my gut feeling as the fish stayed as deep as it could under the boat as I tired it out and worked it up to the surface.  Either way, I figured I would lose it as soon as it managed to chew through my monofilament line with whatever kind of nasty teeth this particular fish was equipped with.  But it just kept fighting without breaking off.  When I got it up to within a couple of yards of the boat the crystal clear water of Long Lake allowed me to see that it was a bass – and a nice one too. 

17 inches.  Not Bad.

       Once I had dragged the tired fish to the surface, I reached over the side and picked it up by its lower jaw to examine it.  No record book bass, but it looked bigger than any I’d ever lifted out of Long Lake before.  I grabbed the tape out of my tackle box and, sure enough, it was a full seventeen inches long.  I took a picture, lowered it back into the water, swished it around to perk it up, and then watched it dart off into the deep water again.  That was fun!  I praised God for the experience and went back to trying to catch my panfish knowing I’d have a good story to tell the folks back at the cottage.  I didn’t know that it wouldn’t be the last one I’d be telling that week, or even that day!

       Late in the afternoon of that same day I decided to go back to that same spot and work the same tactics.  I’d caught a few nice sunfish that morning after I’d let the big bass go and I wanted to get enough to treat my mom and dad, who were up to the cottage for the summer, to some fresh fish for dinner the next day.  I was working both rods again, but this time the big bass would take the bait under the bobber cast up towards the mouth of Old Doc’s Cove. 

       Usually, when panfish are showing interest in bait slung under a bobber, you will watch the float dance on the surface of the water for a while as the fish bump and play with your bait until one of them gets worked up enough to actually take it and run.  Half the fun of bobber fishing is waiting for the float to dip hard enough that you know one of them has the rig firmly in its mouth and you can set the hook.  But on this cast there would be no such fishing finesse needed.  No sooner had the rig settled, with the stick of my bobber pointing towards the sky, than the whole thing just disappeared quicker than a tiger at a Siegfried and Roy magic show. 

18 inches.  Even better.

       As my noodle rod bent over into a half circle, and my drag began to whine like a pinched baby, I knew I had another big fish on.  The big boy came out of the water for a jump just once, and when it did, I said, “That looks like the same fish I caught here this morning!” 

       But I was would be wrong about that.  As the fish tired fairly quickly I tightened my drag a bit and got him up to the boat in short order.  I picked it up and grabbed my tape.  At eighteen inches in length this one was a full inch longer than that morning’s fish.  After a quick pic with my camera, back in the water he went.  Two in one day!  I was feeling very blessed, catching two such fish in one day, and I shared that feeling with the God who had created both the fish and fisherman.  Number three would come on the very next morning. 

       Still wanting enough panfish to treat my folks to a fish lunch before heading back south to my home in Lake Odessa that afternoon, I decided to go out in the morning and work a spot at the south end of Camp Walden, directly across the lake from where I’d fished the day before.  It was a spot that I had not fished very often in all the years I’d been on Long Lake.  It had, however, been one of my Grandfather’s preferred spots – when he wanted to fish well away from the cottage and still be able to be seen by Grandma – if she used the binoculars. (Grandpa was legally blind with macular degeneration and, understandably, Grandma liked to keep an eye on him from the house when he was out in the boat alone, - which he usually was.)  Once I got over to the other side of the lake and settled into a nice spot on the edge of a weed bank I could understand why my Granddad had liked it so much. 

       It was a nice quiet morning with a gentle breeze, and I was getting some pretty good action from the bluegills around the edges of the weeds I was tossing a rubber spider at with a very light #3 weight fly rod.  The only noise other than those I was making was a bigger fish that kept busting the surface, every minute or so, about fifty yards down the shore from where I was anchored. 

19 inches.  Now that's a fish!

       He seemed like he might be a pretty nice fish, as he was making some good splashes every time he grabbed something off the top of the water.  I calculated that if I pulled anchor quietly, and just drifted, the breeze would push me down somewhere close to where that fish was feeding in just a minute or two.  My fly rod was awful light for anything as big as I was thinking could make all that noise, so I put it away and rigged up a big black jitterbug to an old fiberglass spinning rod I had in the boat before I pulled anchor and started to drift. 

       It all worked like a dream.  On about my third cast into his feeding area that big bass gabbed my big bug and took it for a tour of the bottom of the lake.  It was a good fight.  Once he came up to the top there was no jumping clean out of the water, but a whole lot of thrashing around right on the surface.  As you can see from our selfie, he was a real nice smallmouth at just over nineteen inches, the biggest I had ever caught – up to that point!

       I let him go, motored back to the cottage, cleaned the bluegills I had, fried them up for lunch with my folks.  After I had cleaned up, I told Mom and Pop that I’d be back the following week for another few days with them, and headed out on my four and a half hour drive home to Lake Odessa. 

       It was one of the happiest rides back to my home in the south from up north that I could ever remember.  I’d just bagged the three biggest smallmouth bass I’d ever caught on Long Lake in the space of a day and a half.  I thanked God for letting me have the experience a good number of times on that ride home, and I credited it as fair recompense for my disappointments fishing in Alaska just weeks earlier.  Little did I know that the fishing blessings were not over for me.  Next week I would have one of the best fights with a fish that I would ever win, and the biggest smallmouth bass that I’ve ever caught by a long shot!

heading down to the boathouse in the fog

       The morning after I got back up to the cottage, I woke up early to the kind of pre-dawn environment that I just love to fish in, dead calm and a thick fog on the water.  I got it in mind to slowly putter the two miles through the fog down to the far end of the lake, to a spot I really liked because it was less developed with cottages and homes down there. I hadn’t had much success at the far end of the lake yet this year, but would be a fun slow ride through the fog, and I should get there just as the sun was breaking over the treetops. 

things are about to get exciting!

       It worked out just like I planned.  I was anchored, had my jigging rod set out, and was making my first casts out away from the boat with a fly rod as the sun started shinning through the fog.  The dead calm held as I watched the fog lift off the surface and dissipate into the air.  The sun rose into a sky half blue and half fluffy with white clouds.  And that’s when things started to get really interesting, fishing-wise. 

       I was using the same light fly-rod I’d brought the week before.  It was rigged up with a little panfish popper because that’s what I was expecting to find.  A few casts, and all of a sudden the water where my popper landed exploded like a dept charge had gone off underneath it.  My reaction was to set the hook, but when I did all I got back was my line and leader, minus most of the 5X tippet and the popper that had been attached to it!

       OK, - if she was there to feed off the top, she’d hit again!  I wished I had a heavier fly-fishing rig in the boat, but I didn’t.  So I brought up my jig from under the boat.  I was glad I’d brought out a little heavier rod than usual to jig with that morning.  I tied an antique surface plug I had in my tackle box to the end of the line and tossed it out where the mine had gone off. 

       One cast. – Two casts. – Three casts, - and the water exploded again!  RATS, - I missed him!  Almost hit myself in the face with the old plug flying back at me as I tried to set the hook. 

       Four casts. – Five casts. – Six casts. – BANG!  This time the hook set!  Line started peeling off my reel like I’d hooked the bumper of a passing Mac truck!  After about ten seconds of constant drag scream I thought to myself, “Wow. - I hope I’ve got enough line.  This fish might run all the way to the other end of the lake trailing every bit of my rig behind her!”

       But then she slowed down and started to swim back and forth rather than straight away from me.  I managed to work a little bit of my line back onto the spinning reel, as she wasn’t going further out, but not much line, as she wasn’t coming in much closer either. 

       A minute or so of that and she decided to come to the surface and do some aerial acrobatics for me.  She was fairly far out for her first jump.  She was completely out of the water for several shakes.  When I saw her flying through the air I didn’t figure I’d ever be able to boat her!  She was a giant of a fish and she wanted to get rid of that hook bad!  But the set held, and I was starting to get some of my line back in between her hard, but shorter, runs away from me.

       Her second jump out of the water was only about twenty yards out from the boat.  This time she did a back flip in the air before heading down again.  Again, the set held.  I could finally feel that she was starting to tire. 

       When I had her up about twenty feet from the boat she gave me one more air show.  Her third jump was a little less hardy than the first two, but still, she came clean out of the water and splashed my grinning face with some of the lake as she plunged in again.  What a fight! 

       A few more runs back and forth, and finally she’d had it.  I was able to crank her up to the side of the boat with only a few more feeble thrashes in rebellion. 

       I usually pick bass out of the water with my hand, but I think I was more tired than she was at that point.  As I watched at her slowly twisting in the water, head up, just over the side of my boat, I was afraid to grab her lip.  She might still have enough in her to take my thumb off in revenge! (Bass don’t have the teeth to actually do that, - but I was afraid she might thrash loose if I tried to pick her up with my hand, - she was that big.)  So I walked her up to the front of the boat where the landing net was stowed under the front bench seat.  It’s the only bass that I’ve netted out of the water since I’ve reached the size of a full grown man, but I’d do it again if I’m ever blessed enough to catch another like this one. 

       I had to just sit and look at her for a while.  I couldn’t believe I’d actually gotten her into the boat.  We were both exhausted. 

this old gal is every bit of 21 inches long, and I hope she's still swimming in Long Lake

       As you can see from the picture, she is an old fish.  The back edge of the tail fin is all ragged from years of swimming in Long Lake.  The tape measure put her at every bit of twenty-one inches long, and you can see how thick she is from top to bottom.  In my life I have caught a couple of largemouth bass that are in the same league as this one, but this is one GIANT smallmouth bass, I’m telling you!

       A few more sighs, a hard laugh, a long thankful gaze towards heaven, and it was time to put this Leviathan back into the water.  I did pick her up with my hands to do that.  It took a bit of time slowly sloshing her backward and forward to get her revived.  For a minute I thought that perhaps she’d fought herself to death, but after a dozen or so sloshes she jerked her head away from my hand, splashed a little more water in my face with her tail, and headed off to the bottom of the lake.

       I’d like to meet that fish again, - but I doubt that I ever will.  I also doubt that I would come out the winner again if we ever did have a rematch.  But that is OK with me!

Something to take home in your creel:

God is good, - all the time.  –  All the time, - God is good.  –  A-men!