The Big One That Got Away

Like many a young boy before me, I dreamt of catching a really big one.

I remember one vivid fishing dream, I couldn’t have been much more than 5 at the time.  My brother’s, father, and I were fishing, off of an old wooden dock, in the San Joaquin Delta.  The day was bright and sunny, I had my trusty fishing pole, and was sitting dangling my feet off the side of the dock over the warm green waters that flowed slowly past.

We were fishing for channel cats.  Catfish, bottom dwelling creatures with wide heads and mouths and protruding whiskers.  Suddenly a sharp tug bent my pole and the battle was joined.  I reeled and reeled, sweated and tired, but slowly, gradually, almost imperceptibly the great fish was dug ever closer to the surface.

Finally I could make out the size and shape of the cat’s head rising from the deep.  It was huge.  Just as it broke the surface, that fish whipped its tail, and jerked me clean off of the dock.  I was falling, straight towards its open mouth.  Falling into the black pit of its jaws; when suddenly I hit the floor, hard, and awoke.

Later, older, I remember gathering up my fishing rod and reel and heading out to the arroyo that ran along the southern edge of town.  My brothers and I would go out there and sneak onto Old Man Baranus’ place to fish his pond (see “Seasoned with Rock Salt”) or just work the wide spots in the creek. 

I recall day dreaming of catching a big old Rainbow, 16 or 18 inches long.  Of course, looking back, and knowing that the water seldom ran more than 6-8” and was usually warm enough to poach an egg in summer, I know now that was never going to happen, but a dream is a dream, and a summer daydream is something that no self-respecting tow-headed boy could ever do without. 

Once in a while we would sneak out onto the golf courses; they had such nice looking ponds, but we never caught anything out there worthy of bragging about.   

One time though, just once, when I was ten or eleven; I caught a really big one in Livermore.

My brothers and I had decided to go out fishing at one of the rock quarries out west of town.  Those old quarries had been dug deep, deep enough that they hit the local water table, and then some deeper before they were shut down.  After that, the water table did its best to push water out into them, and the rain that fell had nowhere to go.

So over time, they just naturally filled up with deep, cool water.  Some of them had been lakes for decades before we boys first laid eyes on them.  They were the Garden of Eden to us boys.  They called to us constantly.

We would go out there with .22’s to shoot squirrels, gigs for frogs, or shotguns to jump-shoot ducks, or fishing poles, or just to swim.  Life doesn’t get much better if you’re a boy than a summer day, full of sunshine, temperatures in the 90’s, and a big old lake to swim in.

We made a trip down to the local Grand Auto store as they had a bit of everything in there.  We were drawn by the fishing lures.  I remember looking over the small rooster tail spinners, the rubber grub worms, the small minnow lures, and the flies.  But I was looking for something special, something guaranteed to hook me that big one.  I needed just the lure to catch me a record sized keeper.

And suddenly, I saw it.  It was beautiful. 

Fully four and a half inches of weighted, wooden plug.  Shaped to look like a fish, white, with multi-colored side spots, clear plastic projection in front to cause it to “wiggle” in the water like a fish swimming.  And not one, but two big treble hooks.  One mounted off of the bottom at about the mid-point, one mounted right off of the back end so that is would stream back like a tail.

I searched my pockets for all the money I had saved.  I borrowed some from each of my brothers.  I’d a cut off my left arm if the clerk would have taken it for trade value.  I just had to have that plug. 

Out to the rock quarry we went.  The 3 miles simply flew by as I was just listening to the gentle rattling of that shiny new plug in my tackle box. 

We snuck under the barbed wire fence and found ourselves a nice shady spot under an old oak tree and rigged up our poles.  I took extra care to assure that my super lure was tied on tight.  Then I snuck down to the edge of the water, cause we had learned that if the fish saw your shadow, they would spook.  I cocked my arm back and let fly with that first glorious cast.  That big white six-pointed lure sailed into the sky and arced out gracefully over the calm waters of the quarry.

It hit the water with all of the subtlety of a WWII fighter shot from the skies.

There was a huge circular ripple that surged out from the point of impact.

I am reasonable confident that the splashdown scared the fish in the next quarry to the west.

But I was undeterred.  Heck, I was basking in the glow of certainty.  Confident that this lure, this was the lure that would haul in the big ones. 

I rapidly reeled the lure back in.

I can remember to this day the wake that thing left crossing the water’s surface.  Something akin to that of a Torpedo boat racing across the sea’s swells.  If there had been any fish interested, I suspect that they would have had to run wind-sprints for a few weeks just to build up the stamina needed to chase down that lure.

I cocked my arm for the second cast.

I launched forward with even more force than before, focusing all my energy on the forward motion of my arm.  In all that energy, and focus, I forgot about position and direction. My right arm whipped forward, my thumb on the release button, waiting the ideal moment to let my lure free, when….something clonked me in the head.  Hard. Close to my right ear.  Which immediately began to transmit a sharp pain.

I ain’t real sure if it was the barb buried in my right ear, or the near concussion of the impact, that started my eyes to watering.  Only thing I am reasonably sure of is that it weren’t joy over finally hooking a “big one”.

Now, my brothers swear that I yelled “Ow”, then tugged the rod forward, yelled “Ow” again, and tugged again……  In fact, to this day they swear that I kept that up for several minutes.  Don’t you go believing them.  I am quite confident that they are making that part up; confident for two reasons.

First, because as I recall they were laughing so hard that they both fell to the ground, and their eyes had to have teared up with all of that.  And there was no way that they could have seen me tugging over and over again with all that water flowing from their eyes.

And second, because I know for a fact that by that age, my vocabulary wasn’t limited to the single word “Ow” in situations like that.

 

 

Copyright © 2013, Marty Vandermolen, All Rights Reserved