Reeling In Time with Fish Tales. Brian E. Smith

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СКАЧАТЬ the line free from the sand. The fish will feel very little resistance as it enjoys its last meal. If the bail was closed, a big fish could drag the rod and reel into the lake before you could get to it. He’s pretty smart, I thought.

      “But what would happen if all the line was pulled from the reel and we didn’t notice?” I asked.

      “If you don’t pay good enough attention, you lose the rod or go for a swim,” Dad smiled.

      With the next pole, Dad just formed a two-inch cube of Velveeta cheese around the hook and I let it fly. We began to set up the rest of the poles.

      On the third pole, he threaded kernels of corn on the hook until the corn ran up and covered the hook eye. I reared back and sent that one to the moon!

      Pole number four, my push-button, was baited with three fat earthworms and cast to the lakeside of the channel. I picked the earthworm bait for my push-button rod.

      At the fifth pole, I thought Dad had cut his finger. Blood was running between his fingers dripping from his hand.

      “Dad, are you OK?” He opened his hand to show me a bloody chicken liver.

      “It looks ugly, but the catfish will follow that blood trail to the bait.” He hooked the liver on three times and I flipped it to the middle of the channel. He rinsed his hands off in the water.

      For the last pole, Dad brought a Tupperware bowl of homemade fish bait we made the night before. It was a mixture of flour, cinnamon, sugar, and water to make dough. It came out stiff, yet sticky, and it smelled like something from the breakfast table.

      If I were a fish, I’d eat that, I thought. Dad formed a golf ball sized dough ball around the hook. I pitched it in the bay as soon as he was done.

      All the rods were fishing, and it was a waiting game from there on out. Dad sat on the five-gallon bucket, placing the worm bucket in its shadow, so the worms would stay cool and comfortable. I sat on the tackle box. Our heads turned left and right, watching the poles for a bite. From a distance, we looked like we were watching a slow motion tennis match. We talked about a lot of things.

      My curiosity got the best of me and I asked, “On this whole big lake, why did you pick here to fish, Dad?”

      “Habitat diversity, Champ.” He pointed out that water moved out of the small bay, past the point and into the lake. “The neck of land forces the water to move through a narrow channel and the moving water carries baitfish with it. That means a lot of fish food in a small area, so fish stage-up around and in areas like this to get an easy meal. Furthermore, even slow moving water cuts into the bottom over time, making deep holes. Sometimes fish move into deeper water because it’s a little warmer or cooler making them more comfortable. In a nutshell, places like this offer many opportunities to find the fish without having to move around.”

      “Look at the line on my push-button, Dad!

      “You’re right; a fish is taking the bait. See the line starting to straighten out.” He said that as we ran for the pole.

      “What should I do, Dad?”

      “Keep the rod tip low to the water as you pick up the pole, turn the handle to click it in gear, and wait for him to pull the line tight, then set the hook.”

      “That’s a lot of stuff to do—” I had the rod in my hand when the line began to tumble out the front of my push-button.

      “Champ, click it in gear!” I turned the handle a quarter-turn, engaging the reel. Excitement had strengthened my grip; otherwise, the push-button would have been snatched from my hands. I held the rod up and commenced reeling. The rod tip was yanked down, pointed to the lake.

      “What’s that noise…? What’s that noise the reel is making?” The reel was making a ratcheting sound. I looked at the reel, noticing that the line was going in the opposite direction. Somehow, I was reeling out instead of in! I was screwing up the biggest fish of my life! The faster the line reeled out, the higher the pitch of the reel.

      “It’s the drag, Champ, it’s the reel drag. When you hear the noise, stop reeling, when you don’t hear the noise, reel smoothly. Trust me; I’ll explain later.” The reel surprising me, too much information, a big fish, all at the same time, had my mind spinning. My body determined that my mind was no longer capable of handling the situation! My body took over, becoming a reel monkey to the background music of Flight of the Bumblebee.

      God must have wanted me to have that fish because it was nothing short of a miracle when it wallowed up close enough for Dad to step in shin-deep with one foot to get the line and pull the fish up on shore. He dragged it up high on the beach and hugged me.

      I grabbed his neck and blared in his ear “That’s the biggest fish of my life; let’s go show Mom!”

      The fish was a four and a half-pound channel catfish that made the mistake of craving worms for breakfast that morning. Dad put the fish on a stringer, tossed it in the lake, and tied the stringer to a peg of good driftwood he had driven into the sand.

      During the excitement, Dad continued to scan the other fishing rods for a bite, but nothing had happened.

      “Time to re-group,” he said, as he reeled in the left rod, the one most distant from the point. The hotdog bait was still in good shape. He pulled up the forked stick and pushed it back in the sand right next to the stick that held my push-button. Effortlessly, he tossed the bait in the lake close to where the water from the channel flowed.

      “Hey, you’re cheating,” I quipped.

      “No, Champ, I’m sighting-in our fishing rifle. The wide pattern of fishing poles we started out with were set that way so the fish could tell us where they were hiding. Were they cruising the open flats in the lake, near the channel, in the channel, or in the bay? Though one fish doesn’t indicate much, at least, it is something to go on,” Dad was explaining as he pointed here and there in the lake, doing some show and tell fishing.

      “We need to look at your push-button and go over the function of a reel drag,” he said while sitting on the five-gallon bucket, holding my little push-button in his hands. “Look at the fishing line.” Horribly curled up, it was almost in knots. “Let’s take care of this situation first, OK?”

      He cut the line above the swivel at the knot with his pocketknife. The sinker, he put in his pocket. The hook, leader, and swivel remained as one piece, which he laid straight at the base of the bucket he sat on. Handing me my rod, he said, “Push the button for me,” as he began hand-stripping the kinky line from the reel until the line came out smooth. A nip with the knife and the bad line was gone, wadded up, and put in the five-gallon bucket.

      “Dad, the hotdog pole!” I yelled.

      Dad hot walked to the pole. I watched as he, in one single motion, picked up the pole by raising the reel from the ground while keeping the rod tip in the same position, down. He flipped the bail closed, sweeping the rod straight overhead when the line came taut. The rod tip arched downward and the reel drag chirped a bit while Dad was playing the fish in. Halfway in, the fish got mad, making the line squeal off the reel. Not reeling, he kept his rod at the one o’clock position, occasionally dipping his rod hand when the fish surged. When the reel stopped squealing, he started pumping the fish back in by quickly reeling as he lowered the pole to where it was horizontal to the ground, then he would gently raise, not jerk, the pole back to the one o’clock position and start over. At no time did he allow slack СКАЧАТЬ