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Escape (Guest Article)
by Alan Gordon

Elizabeth, my college sweetheart, wanted to go see her family, hard-workin’ country types from rural northeastern PA. The kinfolk had been politely hospitable in earlier visits, but they didn’t have much time for a literate, sensitive college boy like me. I wasn’t looking forward to this “vacation.”

“Are there any rivers near your family’s house?” I asked her as we packed our suitcases.

“A little one. Why?” she asked in reply.

“I was hoping I could do some fishing,” I answered, not telling her that my primary interest lay in finding some excuse to duck out of her family’s uncomfortable presence during the visit to their home.

“My cousins used to fish in it, but they never caught anything, and I don’t think there’s anything big there,” she answered.

“Well, I guess I’ll pack my rod and reel then, just in case,” I said.

The river, a rocky creek as wide across as a four-lane highway, was beautiful. I walked down to it from the embankment under an old iron one-lane bridge. Looking up at the trestle, I sighed and breathed. Here, by the river, I could find some refuge from the taunts of Elizabeth’s country relations, which ranged from jokes about my lack of muscle to a hail of blueberries thrown at me by her mother for no reason I could understand. Here, though, at the river, I was at peace, surrounded by the rounded green mountains unique to Pennsylvania’s geography, wading a rocky stream that looked almost perfect for smallmouth.

As I began wading, I became disappointed: in both directions, upstream and down, the river was deceptively shallow, its black-rock bottom giving a false sense of depth. Only in rare patches was the river even a foot deep. I could see no sign of fish but for a few schools of minnows.

Without much hope, I took a few casts with a shallow-running Mepp’s bucktail spinner, and, to no surprise, got not a single strike.

I continued wading upstream for nearly an hour, covering perhaps a mile of river, with no change of events. I knew I wasn’t going to catch a thing, but I was happy to be out of the house, and so justified my continued exploration, pretending that a deep hole might be found around the next bend.

After a while, I even quit casting. When my legs grew tired of wading, I looked around. The water seemed a little faster and deeper where I stood than I had seen in a while, and the minnow schools seemed to be gaining in number and size.

One such school darted under a rock which appeared to have a hollow under it, perfect cover for a bass or large sunny, and so I reflexively cast towards the shadowy hole. Despite the fact that the rocky shelter couldn’t have been more than two feet deep, I had hopes that by imitating the minnows which swam there, I might be able to lure a sporty little gamefish on my ultralight tackle.

As I feared, no game-sized fish showed itself, not even a sunny, but much to my surprise, a two-inch minnow struck at my spinner and was hooked. My surprise grew even larger when this cheeky fishlet, who had struck at a lure as large as he was, turned out to be a baby bronzeback.

So there were smallies in this creek. “Where could they be spawning?” I wondered to myself. “Are they all stunted from shallow water?” I thought, seeing that the creek bed was significantly below the high-water line owing to a state-wide summer drought. “Could there be any big ones in this tiny dried-up stream?” I asked myself.

I decided that this was not the time to turn around and walk back, not while there might really be a deep hole around the next bend, a hole that could support spawning-sized bass during the heat of the summer.

Lo and behold, the water did seem to get deeper and slower, just around the next bend, and suddenly, there was the textbook perfect smallmouth hole I had always dreamed of, a deep spot abutting a steep rock cliff on the inside of the river’s bend. Smallmouth could enjoy the depth carved by the river here, while feasting on insects and amphibians falling from the rock face. In places like this, bass grew fat, for they could enjoy the cover of deep water while garnering the nutrients found close to shore. If there were any decent fish in this river, they had to be here, I thought.

There was no way, short of a long walk back downstream, to where the bank was less steep, to get upstream of the hole. I could not climb the rockface to get past it, and wading past it on the other side of the river left me similarly disadvantaged: in order to get within casting distance, I would have to wade through chest-high water with a mud bottom, an undertaking for which I was neither dressed nor brave enough.

Thus handicapped, I was all but forced to cast upstream at the spot. My spinner floundered with the current, its blade parachuting outward uselessly from back-pressure, rather than keeping tight to its shaft and spinning rapidly as it is designed to.

Three or four times I cast, but quickly abandoned the spinner as unworkable in these conditions. Cursing myself for not bringing a better tackle selection, I picked through the mini-tray fastened to my belt, but could find nothing but other spinners and spinnerbaits, my preferred offering for stream bass.

“If only I had a surface lure to bounce off the rock,” I thought, for as a youth, I had caught scores upon scores of smallmouth by so imitating insects falling from cliffs nearly identical to this one.

A fish rose in the hole to eat some bug or other, taunting me. I didn’t get a look at it, but I just knew it was a bass -- what else could it be?

Finally, I knew what I had to do: I needed to select a lure which I could drift-fish, but I had none. Fly tackle would have been ideal, but was not an option. The only choice available was bait.

The accessible banks looked too rocky and dry for earthworms, but after a little poking and lifting, I found a nice long, wriggling, striped salamander, which I attached to a hook by the leg. Lacking a proper weight, I cast the newt well past the hole, to allow the bait to drift to the bottom by the time the current carried it to the deep spot.

It never got there. Almost as soon as it hit the water, the newt was hit hard by a feisty ten-inch smallie, who cartwheeled and flipped across the water gallantly.

That li’l bugger was one of the most satisfying fish of my career, ‘til then and since -- the chase was more important than the capture, and the mental and physical difficulty made each of its ten inches seem like double that.

After releasing him, I sat on an exposed rock and lit my pipe, savoring the moment. After a few minutes of relaxing rum-flavored ‘baccky, I tapped out the pipe and went back to work bait-hunting. I was unable to find another newt, but I found something better, the ultimate bait of bronzeback aficionados: a hellgrammite.

This ugly bug is the larval form of the Dobsonfly. When full grown, this insect is a scary sight: six inches of wings crowned by three-inch long sharp, powerful, horn-like pincers. Even the larval hellgrammite looks mean -- it is hard-shelled, black, and also pincered (although these weapons are less than an inch long at this stage of life, they grab with determination at anything within their reach, and can cause a nasty pinch to an unwary finger). No bait is more prized by smallmouth bass or those who fish for them.

This time, I had to wait for a strike, but not for long. And when my bass (a little larger this time) surfaced, I saw he was not alone, for two other bass swam up with him, perhaps hoping to steal the morsel hanging from his lip. The one I hooked was perhaps a foot in length, and seemed smaller than the ones with whom I had seen him swimming. This one did not jump as the first one, instead running deep with powerful lunges which bent my rod double and caused a delightful ache in my wrists. Upon inspection, I noted the contrast between this fish’s dark brown, muted patterns (typical of those bass feeding primarily near the river bottom on crawfish and insect larva) and the last fish’s lighter greenish hues (typical of those fish which feed closer to the surface). I have since learned that the coloration reflects the coloration of the bass’ choice of foods, and serves as camouflage in the zones in which the fish hunts.

After my long walk and extended bait-foraging, the day was growing short and the shadows long. I had time for a few more fish, I thought, but I had to find bait more quickly. I had overturned dozens of rocks finding my hellgrammite and newt, and wanted faster progress.

I knew what I had to do. Setting my rod across the rock where I had sat and smoked, I began wading through the shallows looking for small submerged rocks. And, as I suspected, I found a perfect bait-sized crawfish under the very first stone I lifted, an inch and a half long, tan and speckled. To my delight, I noted that it must have recently molted its shell, for it was soft to the touch, clearly having just emerged from shedding its old, outsized shell for this larger one which had not yet hardened. I knew that bass preferred soft-shelled crawdads over tougher ones for food, and that my quarry was unlikely to spit out a “sof’shell” once mouthed.

Gingerly, so as not to tear my hook from the delicate crayfish, I cast the crustacean to the spot where I had just caught the last bass. Like the earlier cast, I placed the crawdad upstream of the hole, letting the current carry it back towards me as it sank.

I could tell that the heavy bait was sinking quickly, perhaps even swimming for the bottom. Soon after it disappeared from sight, a felt a “tap” in the slack but vibration-sensitive nylon four-lb. test.

“Was that a fish, or was that the crawdad hitting bottom?” I wondered. Upon reflection, I suppose it was the bait reaching the bottom, because an instant later, I felt the difference between that “tap” and the bait’s seizure by a fish.

My line shot out as if I had snagged a freight train, heading in a beeline directly upstream, past the rock cliff. Before I had a chance to flip the bail open, it took up all slack and nearly tugged the rod from my surprised hands. Recovering from the shock of the fish’s full weight and strength, I opened the bail for a moment, hoping the bass wouldn’t wrap my line around some underwater rock edge.

When its first run seemed to be abating, I closed my bail and pulled my rid tip up. The fish continued stripping out line, now against the weight of my drag. I was losing too much line, and the fish was getting too far away, but I hesitated to tighten the drag, fearing that this obvious monster would easily part my gossamer ultralight string.

Fumbling with the drag, I tightened it ever-so-slightly as I stumbled through the water, trying to gain a few precious yards on the fish. To my great fortune, the bass seemed to grow annoyed with the new pressure it felt against its run, and turned back toward the hole where it was first hooked. So quickly it swam that I, even reeling as fast as I could, I was not able to catch up with it, and the fish re-entered the deep hole with a good bit of slack on the line, a loop of which was now drifting in the current.

I reeled so fast that I banged my knuckles on the handle, for a slack line in rocky water is a sure way to get tangled and lose a fish. I thought I was indeed tangled or “wrapped around,” for suddenly, the reel stopped turning, blocked by some invisible force, with my line pointing almost straight down into the black hole at my feet. But then I felt the fish moving -- what I thought was a rock was just my fish, refusing to budge from his deep shelter. This was a monster.

After a few more shorter runs and some impressive bulldogging by the fish, I finally wore her out and landed her. A stunning 16 inches of solid muscle and fat, this football-shaped behemoth fought like the last bass, never jumping, favoring tractorlike ploughing of the bottom in its attempts to escape, and it, too, was brown, like the last. Upon release, she gave a mighty bodily heave, splashing me thoroughly, and reminding me that she had merely decided to let me land her, and that she still had plenty of energy in reserve. I will never forget the surge of raw power I felt travel up the arm which held her by her lip -- it felt as if she had more power in her foot-and-a-half long body than I had in my entire arm, and I’m no weakling.

Three casts, and three fish, each bigger than the last. The afternoon was at its very end then, and I knew I’d have to wade back in a hurry if I wished to make it back to Elizabeth’s family’s house before dark. Relighting my pipe, I took a last look at the rock face and pool, etching them into my mind forever, and began trudging back downstream.

After that slice of heaven, I was even ready to face Elizabeth’s uncles again, any doubts of my manliness having been settled in the fishin’ hole.