Over a lifetime a fisherman may make tens of thousands of casts...

Over a lifetime a fisherman may make tens of thousands of casts. Obviously to numerous to count. Most are simply repetitive casts made on auto-pilot and produce nothing more then a good time on the water.


There are some casts however that one just never forgets. I’m not talking about the cast you made when you caught that record bass, even if it was just a personal record. I’m not talking about the time you caught a fish on the very first cast of the day or the last cast of the day when you said, “Okay, one more cast and I’m leaving”. I’m talking about that everyday cast that you’ve made before, ten thousand times, and this one time made a difference somehow.


As I sit here on the bayou and make yet another everyday cast, I think about that one, and each time I cast, I wonder, “Will there be something about this cast that I’ll never forget…”


As a boy growing up in Oklahoma, my Father, brother, and I, fished a favorite private lake just south of Oklahoma City. I learned to Bass fish on this lake watching my father and brother. I watched as my father made the perfect cast to exactly the right spot time and again and filled stringers of Bass for the table.


I watched as my brother made the perfect cast, as instructed by my father, and laid the Chugger Spook inside the open door of an old refrigerator that lay on its side and let the Chugger Spook sit perfectly still for a moment. Then doing just as my father had instructed, twitch the lure, and drag out his first six-pound bass.


I personally caught many fish by following my father’s instructions to the “T”. I learned “When daddy gives instructions about fishing, do exactly as he say’s”, after all, my daddy was a fine fisherman.


One summer when I was about ten, my father came home one afternoon with a used fourteen foot aluminum deep “V” row boat. This was a perfect boat for this lake. Oh, a small motor would have worked fine but was not needed. Fishing was as good in most any given spot on this lake as it was in most any other spot. There were of course special spots, the spots where the big fish’s laid. And we knew pretty much where all those spots were.


There was a small island in one corner of this lake. The island was round and no more then fifty feet across with five-foot high banks. At one point the island sat only a few, maybe ten-feet from a short point that extended out from the shore and had a small footbridge for access. Beneath this bridge was a prime spot for one of the many, big, Large Mouth Black Bass that inhabited this lake.


One afternoon we approached the island and entered the little “harbor” that the island created. My father sat in the bow; I sat in the middle, and my brother in the stern. As we worked our way around the island catching fish we soon approached a location where my father would be clearing the island and would be able to make the sixty foot cast to the little spot beneath the foot bridge. With my brother gently rowing from the rear seat my father instructed us both to be perfectly still and do not move.


“Just a little further”, he told my brother. My brother barely stirred the water, moving my father forward inches.


“A little further”, and again he moved inches.


Quietly now, “Just a little bit more”, he said as the little bridge came into my view.


I am not quite sure what came over me to this day but in that moment I made a cast I will never forget. My Chugger Spook was arching through the air in a most beautiful and graceful trajectory. A slow motion beauty and grace I had never before experienced. The lure landed beneath the bridge, in the shady spot, precisely in the eighteen inches of open water, between the bushes, where the big fish lay. The explosion was a sight to behold. My father for the first time had no instructions to give. Fact of the matter is, I think it was safe to say, he was speechless.


A mighty battle ensued as I dragged her out from beneath the bridge and fought her for sixty feet across the water. And then, just as my father had taught me, I lipped the big fish and held her up for all to see. She was a beauty, and my father laughed the laugh of the truly tickled, and beamed with pride at my audacity. He also beamed with pride at the fruits of his labor, for you see, something had changed in his young son, something had happened that I would never forget. Unlike the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of casts I had made before, on that one cast, I had quit merely fishing, and had become… a fisherman. A bass fisherman no less.


Gridleak

 

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