The fishing line, floating on the surface behind the bait twitched, and then shot down. The line tightened quickly. I don’t remember if I helped by setting the hook or not, but I do remember the rod being bent double in my hands. The power of that fish was far more than I expected. Line peeled off the reel against a firm drag.
Calm down, calm down, I kept thinking to myself. This was the biggest and most powerful fish I had ever had strike my line in my life! Solo, ten feet above, and fifty feet away from the object of my desire, I was inventing bridge fishing on a need to figure out basis. A car passed by in the heat of my battle, but I didn’t realize it until the horn tooted.
“Get ’em, son,” a man yelled out the window. It broke my concentration. Strangely, I felt somewhat heroic, in an embarrassing way. In a blink, I was back to the fish at hand. The fish swam across the canal to the right, then stopped, and ran back to where it came from. Tense minutes passed with each give and take of the line. It took time, but I managed to work the fish to the bridge. The fish was giving its last efforts directly below me.
I have to get around the guardrail and down on the rocks to land this fish. Somehow, I needed to play out enough line to give me room to swing around the guardrail, while keeping just enough tension to hold the fish, but not so much to pull the fish against the rocks, where it would surely breakaway. Things were getting complicated! My mind was racing faster than my body could respond.
The fish surfaced semi-tilted to its belly, and lay cradled in slow moving brown water. I won! I won! I thought, as I was moving off the bridge toward the bank. However, with a headshake, the thin lip skin that had tethered the fish and I together tore, and the hook fell away. The fish wallowed off, exhausted. I stood in silence at the end of the bridge, my mind screaming. Nooooo! Nevertheless, it was over. The biggest fish of my life was gone. I had no words for my disappointment. Like the words that you search to say to a dear friend at a funeral, the silent, uncomfortable moment ends in a long wet-eyed hug. Crushed, I reminded myself it wasn’t nearly that bad. I was young.
What did I do wrong? How could I have prevented that? What should I have done differently? There was no one there to get answers from; I had to figure it out on my own.
I decided to try casting from down on the rocks. From there, I wouldn’t have to worry about making the trek down from the bridge. If I started where I needed to finish, it would eliminate a large part of the problem. It made sense, but it was near impossible to cast a quarter-slice of bread. It was like throwing a kite against the wind. It just wouldn’t work.
In addition, I had the sensation that the fish were aware of my presence. The fish were accustomed to the car noises crossing over the bridge, but weren’t used to a shadow figure next to them on shore. For some unknown reason, I felt unwelcome on the rocks. I trusted my little voice and left.
I needed to get the bread from the bridge, carried by the current to the fish. What would happen if I lowered the bread from the bridge then swung around the guardrail before the fish took the bait? When I tried it, however, a loop of line formed as I moved around the guardrail, down on the rocks. The line loop produced enough resistance to either usher the bait next to the rocks or pull the hook from the bread. That idea didn’t work either.
I needed to fish from the bridge because it was the only way to be effective. When a fish was hooked, I had to manage my way quickly, around to the landing rocks, in the early part of the battle. That was when there was enough line out to let me swing around the guardrail.
The letdown taught me that if the fish was too close to the bridge, I had painted myself into a corner with fishing line. Nevertheless, would there be a next time? At least I had a game plan, if it happened.
I tore the centers out of three slices of bread. The big centerpieces, I broke into quarter-sized wafers and trickled them over the bridge to form a loose chum train. A big hunk of corner crust was the caboose, carrying the hook. I watched and waited, playing out line from the reel so the caboose kept up with the bread train in the sluggish current. The lead locomotive piece of bread made its way down the canal, carrying an entourage of minnows. The second piece of bread slipped down the canal with its following of minnows, as well. The third piece vanished off the top of the water, sucked up by a Mick Jagger set of lips. As was the fourth, fifth, sixth etc… the crust was the next in line. Rhythmically, on by one, they disappeared.
I flipped the bail over, letting the slack line play out before setting the hook with the upward sweep of the rod. The pole doubled over with an explosion in the middle of the canal. The fish bolted down current taking line, squealing the reel drag. Holding the rod high in the air, I hip-swung around the nearest part of guardrail like working a pommel horse in the gym, watching the fish as I went down the rocks. I stumbled when a rock the size and shape of a bowling ball rolled under my foot. Reflexes kicked in so fast I impressed myself, but I realized from there on I had to watch where I was going until I made it to the water’s edge. Balancing on the rocks, I took up line when it was given to me, letting line go when the fish demanded. Twenty feet off the rocks the sowbelly got the first glimpse of me. It got scared, bolting straight down the canal for thirty some feet. The spool on the reel burned around. I touched the revolving spool with my index finger to assist the drag. It was the first time I had ever done that. Instead of fumbling with the knob on top of the spool to adjust the drag, I simply applied light pressure with my finger; pressure I could apply or take away at any time with a fine and infinite adjustment. I had learned how to do something important in fishing during a need to figure out situation. I learned how better to play a fish, using a spinning reel.
After a few minutes of easy give and take, the fish was worn out. Exhausted, lying on its side, cradled in a form-fitted, low lump of brown water close to the rocks. I was standing near my pot of gold, it was just out of reach. It was going to be a delicate situation getting the fish from the water without tumbling in myself. The rocks were far from a sandy spot on which to slide the fish up. I had to think about things before doing anything stupid. With my right side facing the water, I held the rod horizontally with the rod tip four feet directly over the fish. I squatted down, tilting the rod tip up and backwards, while pushing the rod away from me, as far as my left arm would reach. The fish slid across the surface of the water toward me. My right fingers gently slipped under the gill plate of a very tired fish. I stood up heaving a fifteen pound, plus, carp from the water.
It was awesome! I set the rod on the rocks and took my left hand to support the tail section. It was awesome. Armored in huge, thick, hard scales, and colored brilliant orange with brownish black trimmings, it was a beautiful specimen. The eye was a large white marble with a big black pupil. The fins were overly sturdy. The mouth was a reddish protruded toilet plunger that disturbingly, sucked at the raw air. I had to look away from the mouth to admire the rest of the fish. After thinking about it, I realized what I found hard to look at, the mouth. It did have form, and function for a fish that sucked up its food. A short straw for a mouth was the perfect feeding tool.
I held my first trophy fish, for me, and there was nobody there. Alone on the rocks below a bridge on a drainage canal, I was as proud of my fish as any of the saltwater guys I’d seen photographed at a marina with their citation fish. I thought about taking it home to show Mom and Dad, but that would have been an ordeal on a bicycle. There was no need to kill the fish anyway. I held the fish straight up and down with my right hand still under the gill plate and leaned it against my leg with the tail just touching the ground. It came up to my hip. I became excited at the thought of me saying, “and it was this long,” while marking my hip with my finger. I bent over and put the fish back in the water. In a couple of seconds, it swam off in a lazy manner.
It was a perfect moment for reflection, but I was young and the only thing on my mind was getting back up on that bridge and getting another fish. That evening I caught two more carp that looked like brothers of the first fish. Twelve minutes before hard dusk, I pulled myself away from the bridge, readied my bike with my joisting rod, and peddled off to home.
I cruised into the driveway to find my dad finishing some yard work. He looked at my two-wheeled, rod-carrying contraption and smiled.
“What have you been doing?” he asked.
I