by Gary Paulsen
The Ninth Street Bridge
Real summer comes first when the lily pads and weeds along the edge of the river began to grow. It does not happen slowly, does not seem to occur gradually. One day the pads are not there and the weeds are all dry and brittle from winter and the next day the pads appear and the weeds are green and the summer water has life it did not have before.
The second sign of true summer is when the rock bass start biting down by the Ninth Street bridge.
It is thought that they start biting simply because the water temperature reaches a certain point—that would probably be the scientific answer. Or the weeds get a certain height, or the moon moves into a quadrant of the sky it must be in to make them hungry.
Whatever the reason, when they “come to start biting,” as the old people say, it marks the start of true summer fishing, and in this business of the Ninth Street bridge there are the first seeds of the real art.
It is not enough then nor now to simply bait a hook and lower it into the water and catch a fish and eat a fish. It has perhaps never been enough.
There are a hundred ways to do everything, but this principle seems truer of fishing by the Ninth Street bridge than of other things. Nothing is ignored in the search for perfection.
The rod, the kind of line, the hook—all are argued over, discussed to death.
“If the line is heavy you won’t feel their mouth on the hook.…”
“Too much weight and they’ll spit the bait.…”
“Wash your hands before you bait up or the stink will drive them back—nothing’s as bad as man-stink.…”
It is likely that if a bent pin were hooked to a piece of baler twine and some bait wiped on the pin, the rock bass would bite, but nobody believes it, nobody wants to believe it.
It must take more.
And so the ritual begins. Any worm would work, but the worms from Halverson’s backyard over near the corner of his clothesline back by his mother’s favorite flower bed in that crumbly dirt that smells of sheep manure just after it has rained …
Those worms, those worms are the best.
They must then be carried right. Best is an old lard bucket with some of the dirt from where the worms were dug and a little water to keep the dirt moist plus just a dab of Steve’s father’s stale beer to “feed” the worms and kill the man-stink. (The beer is open for much argument—as to whether it works or not, what kind of beer is best, how stale it must be, and the best way to make it stale. Steve contends two days open is enough, but Wayne Kline swears that it takes longer, and Harvey Overton says none of it works unless you pee in the dirt on top of the beer, except that nobody likes to reach into the can for a worm if Harvey pees in it.)
Types of worms—large, fat, short, thin—also make for discussion and for a long time it was thought the sex of the worms mattered. This until it was found that worms are dual sexed; but none of it, none of the talk of baits or rigs or time of day or temperature or peeing or not peeing …
None of it compares to the complication of the actual fishing for the rock bass.
All fishing is complex, but this first true summer fishing seems the most important. Later in the summer mistakes can and will be made but this first time things must be perfect, and even the arrival at the bridge must be accomplished carefully.
Rods are carried across the handlebars, hooked in thumbs, and the bikes are old, fat-tired, hard to pedal, but are ridden carefully across the bridge and allowed to coast to a stop lest there be any undue noise. This in spite of the fact that trucks cross the bridge regularly and rattle the old timbers until dirt falls in.
Bikes are hidden. Chrome reflects light into the water so they are pulled well back and laid carefully, quietly on their sides and the edge of the bridge abutment approached.
The water moves past the rocks and concrete sidewall dark and murky, still looking muddy from the spring ditch runoff, coiling in tight eddies and swirls, making black holes where the year before or the year before that Roger Vetrum who was just fourteen and a doctor’s only son and the papers said had everything to live for fell in and went under not three times but just the once. Just the one time and he didn’t come up and never came up until they found him two days later a quarter of a mile downstream with mud in his eyes and his mouth, packed and dark and thick and bite marks where the turtles had been at him.
Along the abutment wall is where the rock bass are, nose up into the current, smelling for food.
The worm goes on the hook one of two ways. A small hook. Either the worm is threaded full on the hook, the metal shank and curve going through the body so it is hard to pull loose, or it is threaded on in loops with a tail left on to wiggle and tease in case the fish are not biting well.
A heavy sinker is used to fight the current, or a light one is used and the bait swung forward and dropped to drift back.
Willy read an article in Field and Stream about fishing. In the article the writer talked about “presenting the bait” to the fish, and only Willy read it, so for summer after summer in conversations about fishing he was an expert:
“Yes,” he would say. “But that all depends on how you present the bait.”
“No,” he would say. “That depends on how you present the bait.”
And while we laughed at him and made fun of him, we all secretly, in our hearts, thought he was right.
We all thought it mattered, and we thought of it that way—not as throwing the hook in the water or lowering it but as “presenting the bait.”
It had to be “felt” into the fish’s mouth, lowered along the wall high to let the current float it back, slowly lowering the line and the bait until it comes to a rock bass.
They don’t bite hard, don’t seem to bite at all. They come to the worm and in some way make a grating feeling on the bait, a rubbing feel/sound that somehow comes up the line and can be felt with a wet—not dry, but wet—finger and thumb just where the line goes into the reel.
Still it is not time to set the hook. Many times fish are lost because the hook is set too soon. Waiting is everything. The grating starts and then the fish will move away, come back, must be coaxed to bite. The bait must be raised, lowered, teased until the grating comes again and maybe even a third time, and then, when the bait is well in the fish’s mouth, the hook can be set with an almost gentle but sudden raise of the rod tip.
The rock bass are seldom very large. A pound is rare. But they are very active and fight hard and often get loose from the hook, and, it was thought, learned from the experience to not bite again. At least we thought that until Duane Severson caught the same one twice, having dropped it by mistake the first time after landing it and recognizing a scar on its back from where a northern pike raked it.
The first one seems to take the longest, and some days they never bite and stringers go home empty. But when they start it can be hot and heavy for a time and usually enough are caught for a large meal for a family, and there is something special about the rock bass from the bridge. They are scaled but the heads left on for flavor and fried in clean fat, the fish rolled in a crushed-cracker batter, cooked until the skin just comes away from the meat and eaten the same day as they are caught, while everybody talks about catching them, bragging on this or laughing about something or another while chins get greasy and there is the knowledge that a whole summer is waiting to happen.
Lazy Fishing
After the rock-bass fishing down by the Ninth Street bridge there came the first “lazy fishing.” There were times all summer when fishing would get lazy, but the first lazy fishing was a reaction to winter, to the length, the coldness, the depth of it.
When the first warm night came, a good solid warm day, perhaps even hot, followed by an early evening when the dog would barely raise his head when somebody walked by the hardware store—when it became that warm and soft something would pass between everybody and without really talking about things, without knowing how it happened, it was time for bullhead fishing.
/> Bullheads are northern catfish. Always fairly small—a pound and a half would be large—they were considered by the unintelligent to be rough fish, not worth eating. In fact in some small lakes and swamps they were poisoned out so “good” fish—walleyes—could be planted.
The poor knew better. The boys knew then why they would later come to be called such things as “fresh water lobster” and “fish filet mignon.”
Because the state considered them to be rough fish—as they did perch and dogfish—there was virtually no limit and almost no control on the way they were fished.
The idea was to spend a whole night on a riverbank catching bullheads and dozing and then eat them with watermelon for dessert, but here too there was a form. A way that things must be done.
The place to fish was important, and many things entered into picking the right location. Since it was in the north there would be mosquitoes after dark—hordes of them—and so a small fire would have to be maintained with poplar leaves or grass thrown on the coals now and then to make smoke to drive them away. A place with dry firewood had to be found on the bank of the river where it left town and it had to be next to an eddy in the current so there would be a hole.
The bullheads like holes. Deep, dark, still holes.
They never bit during the day and only started about ten-thirty on a warm summer evening and after they started the biting was steady most of the night.
We did set lines and fished with rods as well. The set lines we made by putting a hook and leader every four or five feet. Each hook was baited with worms or cut-up pieces of dead rotten chicks from the hatchery in town and the line thrown out with a rock to weight the end for distance. The set line would be left on the bottom where it fell for most of the night until most or all of the hooks were filled. (It is perhaps important to note that almost all of these methods are illegal in the north now.)
Along with the set we would work with rods with just one hook on the end. The advantage of a rod and reel was that we could cast past holes where there were only small bullheads and perhaps get larger ones, or a walleye—although walleyes were rare then in that river.
The bullheads bit like Huns. They would come in and swallow everything whole, taking the bait and hook and line well down their throats. They were very hard to get off the hook, requiring pliers, and were dangerous to work with because they had a spine in the top of their back and one on either side that had a mild poison on them and would hurt and swell when they got you. We quickly discovered a way to hold them, from the belly, with the palm against the belly and the thumb up in back of one spine and two fingers up alongside the other-side fin, and they could be worked off the hook and put on the cord stringer.
Biting ran in fits and starts. When they bit, they bit hard and came fast, but when they stopped—sometimes for half an hour or more—it was time to nap or put a little wood on the fire and talk.
Talk. On our backs with the stars up above us, showing through wisps of smoke, the fire warming one side then another when we turned, talked and talked through the dark night.
Talked of girls.
Geraldine this and Sharon that, Shirley and Linda and Dianne—girls and more girls to talk about, dream about, sing about. This one to take to a movie, a scary movie, so scary that in the bad parts of the movie maybe she would throw her arms around … dreams and wishes, stories hoped to come true. We’d be walking along the sidewalk and she would be there and she would smile and her bicycle would be broken or her cat up a tree or, or, or … and she would be helped, saved, and she would be so grateful.… All night stories, dreams, prayers. When I get older and the pimples are gone and I have some money and my hair goes into a perfect flattop and I have the right clothes and I have a car, oh yes, a car like Harlan’s ’34 Dodge with the windshield that cranks up and I am popular, then she’ll wish she’d gone out with me, been nicer to me, seen me.
In the middle of the night, finally, sleep comes and the fire dies and there is nothing until the first gray line comes up across on the east side of the river and the morning birds sing.
The set lines are pulled in and almost always there is a fish on each hook. They are added to the stringer, and if somebody thought ahead they remembered to bring the washtub and a wagon for hauling it. River water is put in the tub and all the bullheads are dumped in—upwards of a hundred of them—and taken home to clean. Depending on where they are to be cooked sometimes the fish are cleaned at the river, the guts let to slide with the current and feed other bullheads and snapping turtles that come up from the muddy bottom to strike at and grab the fish heads like something from a monster movie. That’s if the cooking is at Wayne’s house because his mother doesn’t understand about things and doesn’t want fish guts around even though we promised to turn them into the garden, which makes for good potatoes. But at other places there are cats and dogs to eat the guts and heads and the fish are taken home because some swear that the longer the heads are left on the better bullheads taste, although it is hard to see how they could taste better.
Hard to see how anything could taste better.
The fish are cleaned, the heads cut off and the meat washed in cool water and wiped with a towel to get the slime off the skin—they have no scales. The meat is a rich reddish color and when they are clean and wiped they are dipped in batter made from eggs and stale beer and then rolled in cracker crumbs mixed with pepper and fried in butter. They are done when the skin separates from the meat and the flakes of meat open like a book when they are pulled with a fork. There are some who fillet the bullheads but they are generally considered foolish because that takes away the skin, and the skin—crackling and tasting of butter—lends flavor to the meat and is itself good to eat.
You cannot catch enough of them. Maybe there aren’t enough of them in the whole world. Jimmy Breshkov said once that it’s impossible to keep up; that you could fish and catch bullheads and clean bullheads and fry bullheads and eat bullheads and by the time you buried the bones in the garden and went back to the river you would be hungry again and you could just keep going that way forever, catching and cleaning and eating them, but Jimmy is the same one who says ants never die because it’s never been proven. He says nobody has ever seen an ant die of old age and Jimmy says that they’re like the weeds in the Sargasso Sea that never die—one end shrivels off while the other end grows and they live forever, and he says there are plants that were alive when Columbus came through and so it must be true of ants as well.
But the bullheads do taste good, even if Jimmy is wrong, and it is tempting always in the summer to try his theory and see if it works; see if it’s possible to eat your way through a summer on bullheads and raw-fried potatoes and watermelon for dessert.
Walleye Fishing
These summers were long ago, so long ago that cigarettes were given to high school students by cigarette companies as a way to get them started and hooked; so long ago nobody had television and there were shows on the radio to listen to in the nights, back when portable radios cost an arm and a leg and took close to four pounds of batteries just to keep the tubes going for an hour and a half; and African-American people were kept from voting in the South and other places and did not have schools they could attend except for shacks. So very long ago that a teacher could—and often did—take a hardwood cane to a wiseass student (it made welts that lasted a week), and there were dress codes and curfews and tent revival meetings in the middle of town, and almost no drugs except what doctors prescribed and not a glimmer of the horror of AIDS, and all the streams and lakes in the north had not been fished out by greedy people.
There were truly large fish, many of them. Northern pike were considered not very good to eat because of the Y-bones down the side. They were eaten when caught but not favored and sometimes released. Once Duane Severson’s father won a fishing trip up into Canada by bush-plane at a saloon raffle, and when Duane came back he told stories of not keeping any northern pike under twenty pounds and had the pictures to pr
ove it. After that only really large northerns were kept and eaten, and even when Bill Wenstrom found a French recipe for baking northerns with the slime still on and they turned blue, people didn’t eat them much if there were other fish available.
Walleyes were the cream of fish and while nobody yet called the big ones “Junkers,” they were thought of that way.
The problem was that in the town the river had been pretty much fished out as far as big fish were concerned. So many people came down to the banks in the summer and worked there with rods and reels and set lines that respectable fish were virtually wiped out.
To catch big walleyes it was necessary to go out of town.
People who had money—we thought of them as rich people though they were probably only lower-middle class—had sleek wooden boats and trailers and would head out to the many lakes that surrounded the area, but we could never afford such luxury. Other people had canoes and would work the rivers and streams with them, but we could not afford even that until later.
There was the river.
It moved through town like a muddy huge worm, headed south below the power plant and dam and came from the north. South it went shallow, and so much farmland drained into it that the chemicals used by farmers for fertilizer and herbicide leached from the fields to the river and killed everything.
But north it came from the woods, was fed by a thousand small streams and swamps where fish could hatch and grow large and not be poisoned. North of town even a mile it was a different river, covered over with large trees that were so full of leaves they almost met overhead, making it a green tunnel filled with birdsongs and rustling brush so that it became impossible not to think of every Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan movie ever seen at Saturday matinees.