we used to vacation every summer at a lake in upstate new york. there is much merit to vacationing in the same place all the time. it's a home-away-from-home but it's more than that because at home dad had to go to work and we had to go to school. a vacation home has none of that responsibility and none of the daily humdrum, yet you're with your family and in a house you have come to think of as a home.
so you have this idyllic care-free time that you experience over and over again in the same place. and all of the sensations in your memory are good ones and bring back the experience of the whole. even now i can still smell the way our cottage smelled, i can still hear the sound the water made as it lapped at the shore, i can still hear the sound our footsteps made on the wooden outside steps and on the porch.
we always stayed in the same place, rew's cottage. mr. rew had yellow buck teeth and had his own house next door. the cottage was just that, exposed beam ceiling, spartan. we didn't stay there because it was "charming" or "quaint" but because that's what mum and dad could afford. dad was the sole breadwinner of course and there were four children.
lake chatauqua was renowned for a couple of things, neither of which were the reason we went there. one was the world-famous chatauqua institute, a medium-brow intellectual and cultural center with its own potemkin village of truly charming pastel-painted gingerbread cottages. the institute sponsered concerts and lectures--woodrow wilson spoke there once if memory serves--and the concept became quite popular in fin de siecle america. "chatauquas" sprang up all over the country.
the other draw of lake chatauqua was the fishing, specifically its muskelunge fishing. the muskelunge, or "muskie", is a deep, cold-water lake fish, a cousin of the pike, and is prized for its fighting ability. the muskies grew huge in lake chatauqua and pictures of fishermen holding them, 4'-5' in length with the distended bellies of the prize catch were in all the fishing cottages along the lake.
my dad didn't fish so we never went muskie fishing out on the lake but when i was eight or nine years old my oldest brother introduced me to fishing. we fished streams where the catch was trout. after that i fished off the dock at lake chatauqua whenever we were there.
our white dock extended out 30'-40' into the lake and to a point where the lake was then about 6' deep and unpleasantly cold at the bottom, even in june.
one summer there when i was ten or eleven and had been fishing for 2-3 years i noticed a female rock bass that had made its nest under a portion of the dock at a depth of maybe 4'. the water was clear and you could easily see the fish. it was decent size, maybe 8"-12", larger than normal for a fish that close to shore and i concentrated my fishing "skill" on catching her.
i don't know if the species has the reputation for wiles but this one did. because it was under the dock, i couldn't cast to it in a way that brought the bait by it in a convincingly natural way and the bass would not stray from the shelter of the dock to come out for the bait. dozens of times from every conceivable angle and at all times of day i cast, hoping to lure the rock bass out. i tried leaning over the dock and throwing the bait under to get it to settle by the fish. she would have nothing to do with me. fish can't smirk but this one almost did at my efforts. she would look up at me with those fish eyes and then turn her tail to me dismissively. she was like a pretty girl at a party who you make a clumsy pass at and who is more uninterested by the clumsiness of your attempt. i had as much chance of getting that fish on its back on the dock as i did getting marilyn monroe on her back on the dock.
as you grow up you learn the value of certain qualities. you learn for example that persistence can overcome clumsiness and hone technique, and that summer i learned the value of persistence. one day at dusk, while the rest of the family was in the cottage i went down to the dock to make another pass. cast-rejection, cast-rejection. i then had a "eureka" moment which led to another realization, that ingenuity and creativity can make a female make a BIG MISTAKE. i decided to drop the bait down between the slats in the dock, the way ice-fishermen drop their line through a hole in the ice. the salmon egg dropped into the water and drifted down. it drifted right in front of the rock bass' mouth and i can still see it open its mouth wide and swallow the bait.
she fought gamely, a trait of the bass species, but she was hooked good. i had her, or thought i did. my ingenuity had come hard up against one of my inherited limitations of which i am constantly being reminded: low intelligence. after all, i come from a stock of people who, like many others, left the old world for the new and its streets paved with gold. my people were coal miners in cold, harsh, mountainous northeast england and so decided the place for them was the cold, harsh, mountainous northeastern united states where they became, coal miners.
i began reeling the fish in but realized that my eureka moment had not accounted for the dock being between me and the fish and that there was no way for me to get her topside.
in my excitement i repeatedly yanked at the line, which produced nothing more than a rock bass with a bloody nose as it bumped against the underside of the dock. i screamed for mum and dad and tom, my younger brother. they came bolting through the screen door and raced to the dock to see me frantic with a punch-drunk fish on the end of my line.
ingenuity gave way to persistent clumsy attempts again. i grabbed the line and tried to flip the fish onto the dock. she proved too strong at first but weakened and in that way i finally got her up on the dock. the tables then turned again. when she hit the top of the dock she began thrashing about in the usual manner and dislodged the hook. i pounced on her but she squirted through my arms, off the dock and back into the water. i jumped in after her.
now she was back in her medium and i was out of mine. while back in the safety of the water however she was stunned from all the fighting and didn't swim away right away. i grabbed her and held her against my t-shirt and brought her back onto the dock.
i cleaned and filleted her and that night we ate her and recounted the evening's action, the story of the one that didn't get away.
-benjamin harris.
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