The tide was coming
in to meet me as I walked down the edge of the creek toward bigger water. The
sun was still low with not a stir in the air giving good visibility into the
water. A grass shrimp hatch was going off and periodically I could see schoolies rush the bank and pick off shrimp as the water flooded the grass roots.
Watching this I clipped off the streamer on the seven-weight and tied on a
Crazy Charlie.
My destination was a
spit of mud that stuck out into the main body of the creek. From there I would
be able to cover a great deal of grass line where three finger creeks entered the
creek proper. Applying the adage, “Don’t drive past feeding fish”, I made a few
casts along the bank in front of me as I walked and picked up a couple micro stripes.
They were not big fish, the largest about fourteen inches, but these smaller
fish tend to be violent and pissed off when they take a fly and fun to mess
with.
I stood in my spot
for a while mostly blind casting along the bank but managing to “sight-cast” to
a handful of fish as they cruised along the edge. I saw a big push of fish go
around the corner of the creek in front of me toward an area I knew held a deep
hole. I had fished back in there in my boat on a flood tide once but had never
been able to get to it on foot. I decided an expedition was in order and set
off to find new water.
I back-tracked,
hop-scotched mosquito ditches, made some not so graceful long-jumps in full
waders and back-tracked some more. After a little more than an hour I found the
hole I was looking for. I set up where I could make a long cast over the hole
and retrieve back across it and over its edge into the ditch in front of me. I
made a cast and stared out at the marsh in front of me and slowly stripped the
fly.
My morning was
disturbed as I saw a blue and white Atom Popper go sailing down the ditch
landing right where I had just cast. I followed the line with my eyes back into
the grass and saw a Texas Rangers ball cap about twenty feet to my right. I
walked up to the hat and found a young boy underneath it sitting on the edge of
the creek ripping that popper across the water like he was on Saturday morning
television.
He looked up at me
like I was the teacher who had just caught him smoking a Marlboro in the bathroom.
“I didn’t see you
over here”, I said as a form of introduction.
He shrugged and told
me he had watched me jumping around through the marsh and followed me because
he figured I knew a good spot.
He stood up and
said, “You know, it’s a lot easier getting out here if you just follow the line
of trees back there and then walk out here in a straight line from that big
rock, there’s only three ditches to jump over and one has a plank across it.”
“Thanks.” I replied.
“I’ll have to keep that in mind on the way back.”
The kid made another
cast and I looked at the tackle box next to him. “What else have you got in the
box?” I asked. “That popper may be a little big for the stripes that are in
that hole.”
“I haven’t fished
for stripers much. I don’t really know what I’m doing.”
“They’re keyed up on
all these little shrimp, you need something smaller.”
He opened the box
and showed me a collection of top-waters, a bag of plastics and a few metal
spoons. I picked out the smallest Kastmaster and said, “I’ve got an idea, if
you’re cool with trying it I’ll bet we can get you hooked up.”
I set about removing
the treble hook from the Kastmaster and asked the kid questions about himself
while I worked. The short story was he loved the Rangers, had just turned thirteen,
lived in Fort Worth, and his father had sent him here to stay for the summer
with his grandparents because his mother had left and the details of the
divorce and selling the house were being worked out.
I asked him about
the Red Sox t-shirt he was wearing with the Rangers hat. He said that he had
been to two Sox games with his grandfather since getting here and they bought
the shirt at Fenway.
I asked him who his
grandparents were, thinking I might know them. I didn’t. He told me his
grandfather liked to fish the creek and marsh back by the parking area and had
shown him the way so he could ride his bike there when he wanted to. I asked if
he liked fishing and he said that he and his friends back home fished almost
every day in a local pond after playing baseball.
“The hard part is
not being with my friends for the summer and being stuck here. I don’t really
know my grandparents and they don’t know me. I’ve only seen them a few times. Grampa
is retiring at the end of the year and they may move back to Texas to help my
dad.”
I tied a short piece
of mono to the spoon and rummaged through my gear for a small Clouser. Without
looking up from my project I asked, “So, did you bring your bike with you from
Texas?”
“No. Grampa took me
to buy it the day I got here.”
“What’s your
favorite ice cream flavor?” I asked.
“Chocolate but I
like Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food too, why?”
“What kind of ice
cream does your grandmother have in the freezer?”
“Um, chocolate…and
Phish Food.”
I tied the
Kastmaster/Clouser combo on to his spinning rod and asked one more question.
“Who did the Sox
play when you went to Fenway?”
“The Yankees and the
Rangers.”
I trimmed the
Clouser to match the length of the grass shrimp, handed him his rod and said,
“So your grandfather showed you his favorite fishing spot, got you a bike so
you can ride here, they have your favorite ice cream in the fridge and they
took to you to see your favorite baseball team play the Red Sox. I think they
might know you a little better than you think they do.”
“I never thought of
it that way. I guess you’re right.”
I told him where to cast, how to retrieve the
rig and let him have at it.
“Are you going to
fish?”
“No way,” I said,
“I’ve never seen someone from Texas catch a striper on a spoon and fly rig before
so I’m going to watch.”
About ten minutes of
baseball talk later the rig worked and my new friend brought in his first
striped bass. He handed me his phone and I took a photo of him with it before
we released it. He immediately sent it to his dad.
He made another cast
and looked at me and said, “It’s going to be hard when I go back. Mom’s living
with this other guy in another town and I’m staying with my dad in an apartment
so I don’t have to change schools. Everything is different. It’s so hard. It really
sucks.”
I wasn’t sure how to
respond or even if I should. Thankfully the awkward moment was broken up with
another stripe on the line. I reached down to lip it and while removing the
hook said, “You’re right, it does suck, everything is upside down and all you
can think about is how hard it is. I can tell you having gone through divorces
as a father and as a son, you’ll adjust, you’ll learn how to deal with all the
changes. You won’t believe this right now but this is not the hardest thing
you’re going to have face in life. Take it all head-on, don’t run from it. You’ll
get through it.”
I let the little
stripe go and said, “Next one is all you cowboy, catch it, release it…all you.”
A few casts later he
went tight to another fish, a little bigger than before. I snapped a few more
photos of him with his phone while he removed the hook and let it go.
“Nice fish, dude.” I
said as I gave him a high five.
He looked at the
photos on the phone and said, “They’re not very big. I thought they’d be
bigger.”
“Well, bigger fish
are gonna be out in cooler water. These little guys live inside along the river
during the summer while they grow. This is fishing, dude. Worrying about how
big or how small your catch is…that ain’t fishing. That’s something else.”
“What do you mean,
what’s the something else?”
I handed him his rod
and said, “You don’t need to worry about that right now. You’ll find out soon
enough. Right now you’re a kid. Be a kid. Have fun.”
We walked out of the
marsh together so he could “show me the way.” I gave him my cell number and
told him to call me if he had fishing questions or needed to talk. I told him
to keep the rig we had built and gave him a couple of Clousers to put in his
box. He said thank you, jumped on his bike and rode away.
One evening about a
week later I was out in the marsh and saw the kid with his grandfather fishing
near where I met him. From behind them I watched as he lipped and released
a small striper that his grandfather had just caught. The kid gave him a high
five and said, “Nice stripe, dude!”
I heard his
grandfather laugh and say, “I thought it would be bigger.”
 |
| Illustration by Abigail Rice |
The kid shrugged, made
a cast like a pro and said, “This is fishing, Grampa…worrying about how big the
fish is or isn’t…that ain’t fishing…”
From the journal
North River, MA
Summer 2013
