A Lure

The end of September, and the freshwater fishing season comes alive as the air temperatures slowly fall.  Today however was not a fishing day but one of those days at home, stranded without a car, to complete those tasks which have been on my list for a while.  The first was the installation of a new garage door keypad – and the subsequent cleaning and servicing of the whole machinery.  A simple but lengthy job during which I had to remove two spiders nests that had been built within the gear.

The second was carried out on my knees.  No, not an act of contrition (although I must address that) but a replacement of bulbs in the driveway lighting.  Tiny twenty watt halogen bulbs are difficult enough to handle in the dry, but in the damp of the half-buried light fixtures, which seem to hold water and mud on the driest of days, they are very tricky indeed.  But now the path is lit for all to safely follow.

Saving the good wine until last, the third task involved the clearing and sorting of fishing tackle boxes.  I do this twice a year, early spring and early autumn, out of necessity. Old hooks, links, short strands of line and other discarded bits and pieces gather at the bottom of boxes.  (Once I discovered a gold dress watch and a five pound note, but that is another story.)

Today my cleaning went beyond my portable boxes and I rummaged through a large plastic storage chest that held old fishing stuff and ephemera.  Wrapped in a small piece of cloth I came across an old lure.  A three-quarter ounce minnow, dulled by age with heavily rusted treble hook and encrusted swivel.  The memories came flooding back.  The last time that lure was on the end of a line was in the summer of 1999 in Fishguard Harbour. It was a brief family holiday – one of those spur of the moment trips which turned out to be special.  We rented a cottage in Dinas, and one warm afternoon drove again the few miles into town.  The girls would spend a couple of hours wandering around the shops and the park and I would drive to the long breakwater in Goodwick which shelters Fishguard Harbour from the unpredictable moods of the Irish Sea.  And there I happily fished with that heavy minnow, and fish after fish came to the hook.  At least that’s how I like to tell the story.

Now, after cleaning and burnishing that old lure, and attaching gleaming new hooks and links, it will live to fish another day.  It will not be the same, of course, and there is no guarantee that it will catch as successfully as before, but just to cast it out one more time will be a nostalgic moment.

Water Birth

Poxabogue Pond lies about a mile as the crow flies from my home.  Fed only by underground springs and rainfall the water level is consistently erratic at best.  At certain times of the summer the lake shrinks in size by about half, exposing smooth mud flats and yellowing lily beds, but after a heavy season of rain its waters rise into the surrounding lands at a surprising rate.  I have seen levels rise eighteen inches over the course of twenty four hours, which is probably why its name (from the Algonquin language) means “The Pond that Widens.”

I have rambled on about this pond before, but late yesterday afternoon (as I stood sinking inches into the soft mud, fly rod in hand, pondering the low water level) I remembered a story about the place.  In the nineteenth century a farmer, seeing a heavily pregnant Indian woman on the road, offered her a lift on his cart.  On reaching nearby woods she thanked him and disappeared in the direction of Poxabogue Pond.  A few hours later others recall seeing her walking out of the woods carrying her new-born child.

We are told that out of all the local waters, Poxabogue was regarded by the Shinnecock tribe as having healing properties.  Her child would be considered blessed by being born in such a place.

Now perhaps we could be blessed with some rain…

“I, with my angle would rejoice…” (Izaak Walton 1653)

A message recently arrived asking me what is seemingly a straightforward question:  What kind of fishing do I prefer? I say seemingly straightforward, because my love of angling is best defined by one word.  Freshwater.  Oh, that doesn’t mean to say that I don’t fish in salt water.  On the contrary, I have spent many a content hour with a fly or a spinner in the creeks and small bays to the north of here, and one of my greatest vacation pleasures on Manasota Key in Florida is spinning off the beach, usually in the early morning, in the hope of catching something.  Perhaps breakfast for the heron that often walks with me up and down the Key.  In fact on my last visit I amused myself by catching flounder with a fly on a sinking line just a few yards from the beach!

But that’s about the extent of my saltwater enjoyment.  I have tried other means and methods of course.  Beach-casting (surfcasting) for example off the beaches of Selsea, England, as well as on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.  Using a nine foot rod to throw weights and baits over, or often in my case into, the waves, and waiting patiently for something to happen.  It did so very rarely, and on cold Sussex afternoons I was grateful for this as it gave my time to unscrew the thermos and sip tea. 

I have also tried numerous styles of boat fishing.  I’ll start with the most boring and, I believe, unsporting: Fixing a rod with line and lure into a rod-holder mounted on the rail or transom and sitting back, chatting away, while the skipper powers gently, or not, up and down the bay until a fish strikes.  I have also been a part of a chartered fishing trip where the guide put the bait on the hook, cast to the right spot, and then handed me the rod.  And wreck fishing?  Well, I may try that again if someone else pays for the charter, but the skill surely lies in the positioning of the boat and not in the hands of the fisherman.

No, I am at my happiest when I am on the bank of a river or lake (or even canal) with an appropriate rod in my hands.  Fly fishing is my ideal, but I will fish with other methods and baits, natural or not.  And for me fishing is not ordinarily about catching “the big one.”  I have shaken with excitement after landing large pike, rainbow trout or carp.  But I can also be blissfully happy sitting on a grassy bank with light tackle catching small perch, or pumpkinseed, or in the UK, roach and rudd. And sometimes I don’t fish at all for periods of time, but find a place to sit and munch on a simple sandwich – wondering what lies underneath those distant lily-pads. Or walk the bank, studying, planning, thinking.

I hope this answers a straightforward question, albeit in a roundabout way!

PENNY’S POND: A Hidden Jewel in Hampton Bays. A Mainly Pictorial Post.

Mention Penny’s Pond to many people who live in Hampton Bays and you will be met with at best a bemused look.  Yet a mere two miles to the north of that hamlet is a fifteen acre lake - a kettle pond (as its only source of water is precipitation) - that is well and truly off the beaten track.  Even the public drivable sand road leaves the explorer some way south of the pond and it takes some fifteen minutes of brisk walking along a smaller trail before the first glimpse of water.  Unable to fish that day I walked to the pond for the first time, then explored a trail to the north, and will return with the lightweight fishing tackle as soon as I can.

Notes to the wise angler:  This is not free fishing – County permits (as well as State licenses) are needed, and these are for Suffolk residents only.  The southern marked trail leads the hiker to a shore of the pond that is too shallow to fish and where lily pads are broad and far.  To even hope for an encounter with largemouth bass and other species one must find the unmarked northern path, where there are channels through the lilies and the water is much deeper. And here my lips are sealed.

Ronkonkoma: Boundary Fishing Place (Algonquian language)

 

After a friendly meeting with few words at which even less was said I climbed into my car and (thanks to the miracle of GPS on my phone) decided to visit the nearby large body of water in Suffolk County known as Lake Ronkonkoma.  Despite its size of two hundred and forty acres it is difficult to find in dense suburbia when approaching it from the west.  According to the maps there are many shady streets leading down to its shore, each one lined with that archetypal Long Island blend of clapboard houses with the interspersed shanty.  But each street ends in a severe wire fence and dense undergrowth, through which the lake may be glimpsed tantalizingly above the innumerable colonies of feral cats.  The only open views and access are on the northern and south eastern edges.

My advice when at the north end of the lake is:  Focus on the water and not on the commercial properties behind you.  For if you turn around you may be tempted to spend money on your nails, a martial arts lesson, your first tattoo, or, God forbid, sell your last scrap of gold to an unscrupulous merchant.  Oh, and get your dog groomed at the same time.  No, park the car and walk past the children’s playground to the waters’ edge.

I was greeted by dozen or more geese (including three white geese which reminded me of my childhood) and I spent a few long minutes looking out over the lake.  Almost a perfect circle in shape each shore is about a sixth of a mile from its opposite bank.  And although I did not know this – Ronkonkoma is deep, very deep.  There are places where the bottom lies ninety-five feet under water, such was the scouring power of the glacier that carved it out in the last ice age.  Coupled with its sheer featureless surface these depths make it very difficult to fish.  A man was trying his best during my brief visit, up to his waist and gently casting a floating line in front.  I hoped success for him, but I would have been more realistic had I been the angler.

I read that Ronkonkoma was a thriving resort in the late nineteenth century.  Large lakeside houses and hotels were constructed.  Even a pavilion or two, as people flocked in their thousands to the area.  Some even believed that the lake water has medicinal properties.  There was even a claimed “Lady of the Lake,” an Indian princess who fell in love with an English settler and who drowned while swimming one night. (There are so many variations of this story and no space to tell them all.  They all focus on one man, one woman, and tragedy.)

The resort gave way to residential which was replaced by commercial development, notably on the north shore.  Thankfully pockets of land are preserved in County and Town park-lands.  The rest is at the mercy of future developers.

Will I return to fish? Perhaps.  Perhaps on a late autumn day if I can find a boat and row out into the center.  Then a slowly sinking line …