After exploring the land of Canaan forty days, the twelve men returned to Kadesh in the Paran Desert and told Moses, Aaron, and the people what they had seen. They showed them the fruit and said: "Look at this fruit!" The land we explored is rich with milk and honey. But the people who live there are strong, and their cities are large and walled. We even saw the three Anakim clans. Besides that, the Amalekites live in the Southern Desert; the Hittites, Jebusites, and the Amorites are in the hill country; and the Canaanites live along the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River."
Caleb calmed down the crowd and said, "Let's go take the land. I know we can do it!"
Almost forty years ago, when I was a young man in my early twenties, I worked an early morning shift at the Battle Creek Post Office. The scheduled hours for sorting clerks, getting the mail ready for the carriers and the outgoing trucks that day, was from three in the morning until noon. When I got out of work, I would make the twenty mile drive, north and west out of town, to my home in the countryside of northeast Kalamazoo County. Once home, I would eat a bite of lunch and then drive over to pick up my very young son from his morning at daycare. We two would then entertain one another until my wife got home from her job in Kalamazoo, around five in the afternoon.
That was my usual routine in those days. It was a full day, most of the time, and I was not able to fish nearly as much as I do in my present circumstances. Even so, about once or twice a month, I would make arrangements to pick up little Zac a bit late that day, so that I could get in an hour or two of fishing for the middling sized trout that populated a small stream, Augusta Creek, I passed over on my route home. It was a very comfortable arrangement that lead to some idyllic afternoons, as well as some fine pan-fried trout dinners with my family that night.
As relaxed of a little trout fishing situation that this was, I'm writing this story to tell you that the biggest bass that I ever caught, at the end of the biggest fight I've ever had with any fish, came on a day when I had gone fishing on my way home, intending to catch two or three dinner-sized brownies.
Augusta Creek winds its way through the countryside east of Gull Lake, in the area where Barry, Calhoun, and Kalamazoo Counties all come together. You can get a small canoe down the Augusta, but nothing bigger, and it has pretty thick cover on both banks, as well. You couldn't fish it with a fly rod in most places, with any ease. But, just about any old place, a fisherman with a small spinning rod, some worms, and a good set of waders, could be fairly confident of coming away with a meal's worth of the trout that State would stock that stream with each spring.
If you worked your way upstream, any more than a quarter-mile from where you got in, you had to stay in the water, as the banks on both sides were posted. Because of this, fewer people fished that far north of the bridge. But I didn't mind at all. To me, it was worth the time to work that far just to not have others fishing right around me, which was often the case if you stayed near the bridge, or fished downstream from it. I also thought that the fishing was a tad bit better, once you got a good way north of the bridge, but I never told anyone else that.
Anyway, on the day that this story took place, my judgment on that point could have been called into question by anyone who was watching. I had worked my way further up the Augusta than I ever had before, a good half-mile or more, and I was having no success at all when it came to my fish count. Not so much as a measly "kipper snack" had been I tucked into my canvass creel. I was about ready to start working my way back downstream, to my waiting car and home, when I remembered something Mike B had told me about fishing this far upstream, way back when we had first talked about it, a story that I had been a bit skeptical about at the time - and still was.
"I'll tell you about a little 'hot spot' if you promise to keep it under your hat, because I'm not sure if you can legally hit it any more, - exactly. But, if you go a good half-mile or so, upstream from the bridge, you will see where a little, slow running, tributary stream runs into the Augusta. It's pretty densely packed with thicket on both banks, brambles that weave together over top of the water, most of the way. So most people miss it, or don't bother with it if they do see it, 'cuz it's too hard to fish. But the stream itself averages about six to eight feet wide, and one or two feet deep, in most places, and the trout are in there. So you can legally fish it - if you're willing to fight your way through all that brush to do it. But you have to stay in the water, because both banks are heavily posted, 'No Trespassing!"
"Now, it's not really worth going up that stream for the trout. They aren't any better than the ones out in Augusta Creek proper, and way more work to get at. They aren't what you're pushing through all that junk for. If you've got the gumption to push through all that crud, for about two hundred yards or so, you're going to find that this little stream flows out of a spring-fed pothole lake, only about three or four acres in size, I'd say, - but - it is deep, - and it is clean, - and it is full of monster bass!"The whole pond is on the property of one crotchety old man. I think he must put bass that he catches in other places in that hole, 'cuz it ain't natural for that many big fish to be in that small of a lake. I heard that he feeds them off his dock, on corn, every day, like they was pigs or somthin'. And he must, 'cuz some of them are huge! He's got a woven wire fence running through the water, right where the stream runs out, to keep all the big fish in that pond from escaping downstream!
"Now, the lake is natural, and the stream running into it is "technically" navigable, so you used to be able to get to that pothole without leaving the water, and you could fish into it right over the top of his fence, which he shouldn't have there anyway. Of course, you had to take his cussing if he caught you doing it. I've done so myself, a couple of time, some years back, but not lately.
"A couple of years ago, that crusty old bugger went and cut down two big sycamore trees, on on either bank of the stream, right near where it leaves the lake, and he let them fall so that their tops formed a fence in the water. Now you can't get past that mess without getting out of the stream and trespassing on his property. As far as I know, those bass have been all his ever since. I've a mind to go back there sometime and see if it's changed any since then. But maybe you could go sometime, and then let me know how it is."
That is what I remembered Mike telling me, about three years earlier, and he had said that it had been a couple of years before that, when the trees had been felled into the creek. I hadn't put a lot of stock in Mike's story when I first heard it.... but then.... a lot can happen in five years..... and...... I was this far upstream anyway...... so I started looking around. It wasn't five minutes before I found where that little tributary stream ran into Augusta Creek, and it looked exactly as Mike had described it.
It was tough work, busting the brush and working my way up that little creek, as no one had pushed through it in a long time, I could tell, but I did it. When I had gone the predicted two-hundred yards, and gotten in sight of the end of the headwaters of that little stream, I found it to be just as Mike had said; two big old trees were felled, one on either bank, with their tops entwined in the middle of the stream, right at the edge of the pond. The only difference was that a lot of time had passed since those treetops had been put there. All of the smaller branches were gone, long ago dried up and removed by current and weather. Even many of the two or three inch thick branches had broken off, and floated away to decay downstream. Would it be a puzzle to get through? Yes. Was it an inpenetrable wooden/iron curtain? No.
I'll admit that it was a chore. Climbing over branches was the easy part. I was on my hands and knees in the water twice, getting under branches that I couldn't get over. My shirt was soaked. Getting my rod, creel, and landing net through the puzzle of branches, along with my carcass, was trickier than threading threading a raw spaghetti noodle and a Kleenex through a ball of wadded up barbed wire without breaking or tearing one or the other, - but I did it! And, once I was on the further side of the tangle, I found nice big branch that would support my weight. It made a nice bench to sit on while I made my cast over the half-submerged fence, about five feet in front of me, that still kept the pond-monsters from running downstream. It felt good, and adventurous, to be there.
There wasn't going to be any "muscling" this fish in, I knew, not with the light trout tackle I was using. I only had 4lb. test line on, and so quickly set the drag on that fish as light as it would go without actually throwing the line into the lake after him. Even so, that fish had my little rod bent into a horseshoe, drag screaming with the velocity of the line running off, as he dashed from here to there across that pond. It's a good thing that little pothole was so small. I had enough line on that he couldn't tear it all off my reel, even when he ran to the furthest point of the lake from me. The hardest work was getting the line back on when he was moving on an angle towards me. I had to crank like crazy when that happened to keep line tight.
The old monster broke the surface a number of times in the fight, showing his size to my eyes. To do so was probably a good tactic on his part. Seeing the fish actually magnified the incredulity of the whole situation in my mind. It added to my anxiety over handing him, and being able to prove to the world that this monster indeed existed! I was tense, for sure, and fish break off on fishermen who are tense. But, somehow or other, this one didn't. He finally began to tire a bit, and I was able to coax him closer and closer to my fallen treetop perch, in between his shorter and shorter runs away from me. Finally, I had him sloshing around in the water just on the other side of that mostly submerged woven-wire fence, stretched across the creek mouth, just five feet away.
Now came the tricky part, that I hadn't anticipated. How did I get the fish over that fence, close enough to get my hands on him? The stream was much deeper, and soft bottomed, right there where it exited the lake. There was no way I could get off my perch, to stand in the water, and reach my arm over that fence! And my light line wouldn't even come close to bearing his weight, if I tried to lift him over the top of it with my rod, from where I sat! I was beginning to realize that the whole expedition had been an exercise in futility.
Well, I would just have to cut my line and let him go. I would be pushing my way back through all of that tangle, and wading the half-mile more downstream, with nothing but another fisherman's story to show for it all. My heart was sinking. - And that's when it happened!
As I was sitting there, pondering the injustice of it all, that old monster had been gathering his strength. He decided to make one more jump in a last ditch attempt to shake the hook out of his mouth and run free. He came up straight out of the water, further up than he had on any other leap in our match. I didn't even have time to think about it, I just reacted out of instinct, while he was mid-flight in his leap, and gave a jerk on the line while he was flapping in mid-air. It was enough to pull him over the top, from one side of the fence to the other. With that, he was exhausted, and it wasn't five seconds before I had him lifted out of the water by his bottom lip. The biggest bass I had ever caught, or ever even seen in person.
But that wasn't the end of the story! As I sat there, holding up that fish and looking him up and down with a huge smile on my face, I heard whistling and applause coming from across the lake. I looked over, and there stood the old codger on his dock, an open bag of what looked like cheap dog food lying at his feet. When he saw that I had seen him, he cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted over:
"Well done, young man! Well done! - That was, without a doubt, the finest piece of fishing, by man or boy, that I've seen in my en-tire life! You go ahead and keep that fish, if'n you want 'em, 'cuz you've earned 'em. He ain't the biggest one in this pond, anyways, not by a long shot. - But NOW, - I suggest that you take my advice - and get your scrawny butt out of here! And don't come back! Cuz, if you DO, and I catch you, I'm gonna pepper it with rock salt! - Now GIT!
From my vantage point right about then, his advice seemed very sound, - and so I took it.
Something to take home in your creel:
I have no desire to retrace my steps, of that long ago day, to see if that honey-hole even exists anymore. The events I've just related took place almost forty years ago now. No doubt, the old codger, who kept those bass in his "private" lake, is long gone, along with his monster fish. At least I'm content in believing so, without knowing for sure.
I believe that older men tend to respect property rights much more automatically than young lads do, at least as a general rule, and I'm an older man now. That is the way it's always been, - I think, - and that is as it should be, - I guess.
While I still don't believe that I was technically in violation of any letter of any law, in getting to that place on that day, I certainly had broken the spirit of it. For that, I owe the old codger an apology. I had no real business in being there to catch that fish in the first place. I wouldn't do it now. Indeed, I wouldn't have done it even a few years after I did do it. Even at the time that I did do it, I never went back to work and told Mike that I had done it. Even then, I knew that it had been a dubious adventure, at best.... But a genuine adventure, nonetheless!
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