Every Day Was Special

by William G. Tapply

  Mr. Bass

  Twenty years ago I got a phone call from a stranger that transformed my life.

  “My name is Andy Gill,” he said, “and I want to take you fishing.”

  At that time I had a nine-to-five job and a wife and three little kids at home. I fished when I could, which was nowhere near as often as I liked, mostly with my dad, and never farther away than I could get to and back home from in a day.

  Andy mentioned a mutual friend—a guy named George—and then I remembered George mentioning Andy to me. Andy, George had said, was some kind of hotshot bass fisherman. He belonged to a club, owned a fancy boat, competed in tournaments. In fact, Andy was the reigning club champion, which had earned him the title Mr. Bass.

  “You’re Mr. Bass, right?” I said to Andy.

  “Oh, jeez,” he said. “That’s embarrassing. So how’s a week from Thursday work for you?”

  A week from Thursday was the Fourth of July. My family was expected at a neighborhood cookout that afternoon. “I’d have to be home by noon,” I said.

  “That’s okay. We should be on the water no later than five. We’ll have a super morning, I guarantee. I got a great place in mind. Secret spot. Big bass. Meet me here at my house at four.” He gave me directions. He lived on the other side of town. “See you then, right?”

  His enthusiasm steamrollered me. “Okay,” I said. “Sure.”

  Mr. Bass was sitting on his front steps sipping coffee when my headlights shone on him at four o’clock Thursday morning. A pair of aluminum crutches lay on the ground beside him, and his right leg from toes to knee was encased in a white cast.

  I got out of my car, went up to him, shook his hand, and said, “What happened?”

  “Ruptured my Achilles tendon. Driveway basketball game. Happened about an hour after we talked the other day.”

  “You still want to go fishing?” I said.

  He rolled his eyes. “You kidding? I always want to go fishing. You gotta drive, is all. Throw your gear in the truck and let’s get going.”

  I had brought my usual bass-fishing outfit—a medium-action 8-weight fly rod, a reel loaded with a floating forward-taper line, a spool of 2X tippet, a tube of flotant, and a box of deer hair bugs.

  A sleek bass boat was trailered behind Andy’s truck. It had two swivel seats and a live-well. A 50-horse Honda outboard hung off the transom. A little electric motor and an electronic fish-finder lay on the floorboards.

  I’d never ridden in a real bass boat.

  When I stowed my stuff in the back of Andy’s truck, I saw three tackle boxes the size of suitcases and at least a dozen rods of various lengths and designs.

  Andy hobbled over and hoisted himself and his crutches into the truck. I slid behind the wheel. “I never drove a trailer before,” I said.

  “Nothing to it,” he said. “Let’s go. Fishing’s best before the sun hits the water. Step on it.”

  I drove through the darkness and Andy gave directions, and twenty minutes later he said, “Right up there’s the ramp. You gotta back down.”

  I’d watched fishermen back trailered boats down a ramp to the water plenty of times. It looked easy.

  But it wasn’t.

  Finally, Andy got out, leaned on his crutches, and shouted and waved directions at me. By the time I managed to steer the trailer into the water, unhook the boat, get my fly-fishing stuff plus all of his rods and tackle boxes transferred, and park the truck, the sky was beginning to brighten in the east and Andy was stumping around on his crutches muttering, “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.”

  I stood there looking at the water. I’d been so intent on following Andy’s instructions as I drove his truck through the night that I hadn’t paid much attention to where we were going. “Wait a minute,” I said. “This is the Charles River, right?”

  “Yep.”

  “The Waltham Watch Factory is right over there.” I pointed into the darkness. “My grandfather worked there during the Depression.”

  He nodded. “Urban angling.”

  “It used to be great for largemouths,” I said. “But last time I fished here it stank so bad I couldn’t stand it. Dead water. No fish.”

  “When was that?”

  “Close to twenty years ago, I guess.”

  “They cleaned it up,” he said. “You’ll see.” He cocked an eye at the sky. “Let’s go fishing, okay?”

  I smiled. “Okay.”

  “You know how to run an electric motor?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve never been in a bass boat before.”

  “I’ll do it, then. You’ve driven outboards, I hope.”

  “Sure.”

  I helped Andy and his crutches onto the pedestal seat up front. Then I shoved us off, took the stern seat, and ran the outboard.

  I steered us up the broad, barely moving river for a couple of miles, following Andy’s signals, and killed the motor at a bassy-looking cove when he pointed and held up his hand.

  He turned on his electric motor and selected a baitcasting rod from his arsenal.

  I grabbed my fly rod, tied on a deer hair bug, and fingered some Gink into it.

  “Bass bug, huh?” said Andy. “Good bait.”

  “Easy decision,” I said. “It’s the only, um, bait I ever use for bass. What’re you using?”

  “Jig-n-pig,” he said. “I got a hundred options.”

  Andy, up front in the bow seat, raked all the likely spots in the cove with his jig-n-pig bait before I had a chance to burble my deer hair bait over them, but the first fish of the morning sucked in my bug.

  “Hey,” said Andy. “Okay.”

  I lip-landed the fat 2-pounder, backed the barbless hook from the corner of its mouth, and slipped it into the water.

  A few minutes later I caught another bass about the same size.

  Andy muttered, “Humph,” then stowed his jig-n-pig outfit and selected another rod.

  “Now what’re you using?” I said.

  “Stickbait.”

  His stickbait was a surface lure. Pretty soon a bass hit it. It came unbuttoned on a jump. It looked like a big one.

  “Nice fish,” I said.

  Andy grunted and resumed casting. Grimly, I thought.

  We had no more action there, so he directed us to another cove.

  This one was rimmed with overhanging bushes and littered with blowdown and patches of lily pads.

  “Wow,” I said. “Classic.”

  “My secret spot,” he said. “I anchored my boat and won a tournament right here a few weeks ago.”

  A 3-pounder ate my second cast, and a few minutes later I caught one that Andy estimated at close to 5 pounds. He had one half-hearted swirl at his stickbait before he switched again.

  “What’s that bait?” I said.

  “Spinnerbait. If this doesn’t work… ”

  A few casts later I caught another 3-pounder on my now-bedraggled deer hair bug.

  When I released it, Andy put down his rod. “You realize,” he said, “that you’ve caught five nice bass and I haven’t caught any?”

  I shrugged. “I wasn’t counting.” I cocked my head at him. “I wasn’t competing, either.”

  “You didn’t change baits once,” he went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “You just kept throwing that bug close to the structure and made it go ploop and burble. You’d have won most tournaments with those five fish.”

  “Structure,” I said. “Bait. Vocabulary words.”

  “Meanwhile,” he went on, “I’m changing baits, changing rods, changing tactics, applying all my hard-earned tournament-tested skill and wisdom, and I hook one measly fish. And he throws the damn bait.”

  “Largemouths are simple fish,” I said. “They’ll eat anything. It’s all just luck.”

  “If it was all luck,” he said, “would I be Mr. Bass?” He turned on his swivel seat and grinned at me, letting me know that he didn’t take any of that stuff all that seriously. “You got another one of those deer hair baits?” />
  “It’s a bug,” I said, “not a bait. You got a fly rod?”

  “I’ve got three fly rods here in the boat,” he said, “and about two dozen more at home. I’ve got three pairs of waders and a hundred boxes of trout flies and salmon flies and steelhead flies and saltwater flies, too. You think this is the only fishing I like?”

  I shrugged. “I didn’t know. You are Mr. Bass.”

  He rolled his eyes. “I don’t think I’m gonna live that down. Listen, seriously. You been to Montana?”

  I shook my head.

  “Alaska? Labrador? Patagonia? Belize?”

  “No,” I said. “I dream about those places.”

  “Want to?”

  “What? Go?”

  He nodded. “Next summer. A week in Montana. You owe it to yourself. I’m not taking no for an answer, okay? The Bighorn. The Yellowstone. The Madison. The spring creeks. You with me?”

  I gazed up at the sky for a moment. Was I with him? It seemed like an important question.

  I looked at Mr. Bass and nodded. “Yes, sir, I am. I’m with you.”

  The next summer Andy and I went trout fishing in Montana, and we’ve been doing it ever since. Belize, Labrador, Alaska, Patagonia, too, and many, many fishy places in between.

  As I said, that phone call twenty years ago transformed my life.

  Somewhere along the way, Mr. Bass let his club membership lapse, sold his bass boat, and crammed his baits and tackle boxes and spinning and baitcasting rods into a closet, where they’ve been gathering dust ever since.

  The Perfect Fish

  The little pond covered no more than ten surface acres. Its wooded banks sloped sharply and were overhung with thick brush. Lily pads grew in the shady coves. Here and there, an old oak tree lay half-submerged in the water. Frogs grumped and burped from the shore, and neon dragonflies and damselflies darted around, and… well, it looked as good as the rumor that had lured us there.

  The rumor: Big largemouths that had never seen a bass boat. Access limited to a long winding path through the woods. Strictly carry-in.

  Doc and I had toted in his little 13-foot aluminum canoe.

  Doc won the toss and elected to paddle. I would’ve done the same. That’s why our partnership has endured.

  We’d barely traveled 30 feet from the little beach where we’d launched the canoe when my deer hair bass bug disappeared in an implosion of water. I lifted my rod and felt the hard pull of a strong fish.

  Doc chuckled from the stern. “This might get boring.”

  “Never,” I grunted. “I love big bass.”

  The fish never jumped, but it fought the bend of my 7-weight bass-bugging rod with hard circling runs, and it wasn’t until I had it alongside the canoe that Doc started laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” I said.

  “You got yourself a bluegill, there, bud.”

  “Can’t be,” I said.

  But it was a bluegill, all right. A rather large bluegill, in fact.

  “Nuts,” I grumbled as I eased the barbless bass bug from its mouth and started to slide it back into the water.

  “Hang on there,” said Doc. “Take a look at that fish.”

  I couldn’t get my hand around it. It was almost as big as a dinner plate. Its throat was brilliant orange, its belly golden, and its flanks glowed in subtle iridescent shades of olive-green and sky-blue. “It’s gorgeous, isn’t it,” I said.

  Doc nodded. “So what do you say?”

  “Huh?” I said. “You wanna fish for bluegills?”

  “Hell, yes. If that’s a typical bluegill from this pond. . .”

  “What about the bass?”

  He waved away all thoughts of bass with the back of his hand. “Rig up that four-weight of yours, tie on a dry fly. This’ll be great. Think about it. The bluegill’s the perfect fish. It’s pretty and strong, eats bugs off the surface, thrives just about everywhere, tastes terrific… ”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” I said.

  Doc grinned. “Adjust your thinking, pal.”

  I was a mere toddler when I derricked the first fish of my life out of the water. It was, naturally, a bluegill. I can still see the sudden twitch and dart of the homemade wine-cork bobber, and I can hear my father, squatting beside me, whispering, “Wait … let him take it … okay, now!” I yanked back on my rod, then came the circle-swimming tug and pull, and I yelled, “I got him! I got him!” before the little fish came skimming across the surface to me.

  I still have the yellowing old black-and-white photograph to commemorate the day a bluegill hooked me on fishing, and it’s probably that photo, rather than the specific memory, that makes the moment so clear to me after over half a century. I’ve watched a lot of cork bobbers twitch and dart since then, and I’ve crouched beside three toddlers of my own, whispering, “Wait… let him take it… ”

  In my family, anglers are initiated as soon as they can walk without falling down. A wine cork is split and bound to a leader and a worm is threaded onto a hook and lobbed out beside some lily pads. Then the rod—in my family, it’s a fly rod—is handed to the child with the certain knowledge that it won’t be long before a bluegill eats the worm and jiggles the bobber and creates a fisherman.

  Bluegills occupy a special place in my angling heart, of course. But how can you take seriously the first fish you ever caught, and, a few years later, the first fish you caught on a fly? It’s hard not to think of the bluegill as a kid’s fish. Serious fishermen just naturally move on to more serious fish and leave the bluegills for the children.

  These were the thoughts I had as Doc and I drifted on our little bass pond that July afternoon. “Adjust your thinking,” he’d said, and as the afternoon slid into evening, and as we continued to catch big bluegills on trout-weight tackle, it became easier. They sipped dry flies, just like trout. They weren’t sleek sprinters, and they didn’t jump, but they were muscular street fighters, dogged and powerful.

  No, they weren’t all foot-long “pounders” like that first one, and yes, they were almost too easy to catch. They were neither selective nor wary, and we caught them until our arms ached.

  As much fun as it was, I knew I would not give up trout and bass and salmon to devote the rest of my fishing life exclusively to bluegills. But something important happened to me that afternoon, something that I realized had been missing from my fishing life for too many years: I relaxed. I fished without self-imposed goals or expectations or pressures. I knew I would catch enough fish, and I knew I could make some mistakes without blowing the opportunity of the season.

  Once in the late afternoon, Doc and I stopped casting for several minutes to watch a heron stalk the shallows and to admire the acrobatics of a kingfisher diving for fish, and it never occurred to us that we were wasting precious fishing time.

  With their relatively small mouths and their customary diet (about 85 percent insects, 10 percent crustaceans, and 5 percent baitfish), bluegills are made for smallish flies and trout-weight gear.

  On a good day, at a good pond, any toddler can catch a barrel of bluegills on worms or crickets or grubs. A well-twitched nymph will perform at least as well. Call me stubborn, call me a purist, but I rarely fish for bluegills with anything but a surface fly. When the water’s flat under low-light conditions at dawn and dusk, and on any soft, overcast summer’s day, I’ll catch a barrelful myself. When conditions are poor I might only catch a few bucketfuls.

  Bluegills are easy to lure to the surface. They cannot resist a fly with lots of wiggly, jiggly parts—buggy stuff like marabou, soft hackles, and rubber legs. Maybe it actually resembles something—an ant, a beetle, a damselfly, a spider—but a box of bedraggled old dry flies that you’ve retired from the trout wars will catch tons of bluegills for you, too. Cast toward shoreline cover—lily pads, overhanging bushes, fallen trees—or over a drop-off, and let it sit for a moment. Give it a twitch. Wait while its buggy parts quiver and the ripples die. Bluegills like to hover right under a fly, studying i
t, allowing themselves to be seduced before they lift their noses and suck it in.

  Sometimes they slash like largemouths, leaving a hole in the water. More often, though, bluegills sip like trout. You’ll hook almost all of them if you hesitate for a count of three before you set the hook with an easy strip strike.

  Bluegills thrive in a wide range of water types, from cold and clear to warm and weedy, and they’re found in all of the contiguous forty-eight states. You don’t need fancy, high-powered watercraft to track them down. Low-tech transportation such as a canoe, a creaky old rowboat, or a float tube suits a low-tech fish like the bluegill. On a sultry summer afternoon, I find it refreshing to shuck off my shoes and socks, roll up my pantlegs, wade the shallows of my local millpond, and cast a bug along the weedy shoreline. Bluegills are generally scattered everywhere.

  You can catch them year round, although bluegills are especially vulnerable during their spring spawning season, typically when the water temperature rises to about 67 degrees. They build their sandy saucer-shaped spawning beds in water 3 feet deep or less. The nests are easy to locate and logical targets for the angler. After the spawn, the male bluegills remain to guard the nests while the females, which generally run larger, lurk nearby in deeper water.

  The world record bluegill was a 4-pound, 12-ounce monster taken in Alabama in 1950. In many waters, bluegills tend to run to a specific size, and 11- or 12-inch “pounders” like those Doc and I caught that day are certifiable lunkers. Where you consistently catch hand-sized (or smaller) bluegills, you are unlikely to find any much larger. A spot like Doc’s and my secret pond, therefore, is a treasure, and worth keeping secret.

  Bluegills reproduce as aggressively as they strike, and will, if unchecked by predators, outpopulate their food supply, so it’s almost always a good idea to harvest them. Keeping a mess of bluegills is a good idea for another reason: Deep fried in beer batter, or rolled in cracker crumbs and sautéed in butter, bluegill filets are a gourmet’s treat.