Fish story

Morgan's first fish: half-pound largemouth bass, a private pond near Bedford, Virginia, bait: half a fat nightcrawler. This is important here, as I'm sure it is in most places in the country. People -- my Texan scion-of-cattle-ranchers brother-in-law, our Virginian hosts on this occasion -- treated it as a hallowed moment.

I remember my first fish: at the Bellevue Reservoir, Ohio, early 1980s, a half-pound bluegill, hooked through an eyeball, bait: none, worm had already fallen off the hook. I can't say it was traumatic -- it didn't get me involved in the animal rights movement or anything -- though a catfish spine later that year certainly was painful. I was slightly nonplussed as the bobber hadn't moved and the waters seemed to be teeming with the critters. I never really warmed to fishing and always had lousy luck. Perhaps I should have just stuck to flailing an unbaited hook through water.

In 2003, I bought a cheap rod and reel and tried to fish for dinner on a backpacking trip in the Eagle Cap wilderness in Oregon. Didn't even catch a rainbow trout. Luckily I reserved some of the sharp Cheddar cheese for myself, or I would have gone hungry.

If there is good conversation or views or there's a good whitewater moment in it for me, I'm fine. On this occasion, we were at a pleasant enough pond in a holler at my brother-in-law's boss's house about 20 miles from the lake. The big lake itself is considered difficult to fish, even by tournament anglers.

I was longing slightly for a hike in the mountains and a square picnic lunch instead of hours of beer at a pace of about one every hour and a half, which seemed scarily sustainable though I felt a little wan and desiccated by 4pm. Compared to the open waters of the lake, the little pond inevitably reminded me of rustic ol' Estonia, except for the searing 32 degree temperatures and the chigger bites around my ankles which have got to be some of the itchiest things in this world. The half-acre pond was also good for a dip, and amazingly, on account of being in such a deep hole, cooler than the big lake.

The boss, who gave us a box full of fancy tackle that was pretty useless in the pond, stayed up to putter up at his garage. He was an interesting man, grizzled like an old captain, apparently a native Virginian but unaccountably does these southwestern collage paitings with turquoise coloured paint and cattle skull motifs.
Like so many people, a contractor who has become quite wealthy and, it seemed, not uneccentric.

I caught sight of some crossbows in his other (yes, the other two-car garage), and I asked one of his younger relations about them, the younger guy was a tattooed sort of edgy but urban intellectual seeming guy -- or as urban intellectual as you get in the countryside around Roanoke. No, he said, shaking his head, he personally didn't go in for that, and I nodded, but then he invited me to shoot some guns sometime. When I told him I had never fired anything but a .22 rifle, he was quite perturbed.

Morgan soon snagged a second crappie of several pounds, though for him the canoe ride on the pond seemed to be the main attraction. That and the buggy ride up the steep hill. I thought briefly about Dave Matthews Band member Leroi Moore, who was killed in an ATV accident on an estate probably not unlike or too far away from this one, but everybody remained responsible and indulgent of the little man.