By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, July 5, 1941.
Faraway pools look better to fishermen. But these two anglers can’t agree on which faraway pool is best
“Have you seen,” inquired Jimmie Frise, “those new sectional punts for carrying on a trailer behind your car?”1
“I’ve seen, boats that you could haul on trailers,” I admitted, “but not sectional.”
“This new one is a swell rig,” enthused Jim. “If you get a boat small enough to haul on a trailer, it is too small for comfort on the water. But this sectional punt is in two parts. It’s cut in half in the middle. You just bolt the front and back half together when you want to use it. And when you want to travel overland, you just unbolt it, hoist the stern half, which is like, box, on to the trailer wheels. Then you sow the front half in the box, and there you are.”
“That sounds pretty good,” I agreed.
“You can put all the rest of your junk in the outfit, too,” explained Jim. “It is as handy as any trailer, yet it’s a boat.”
“Maybe after the war,” I suggested, “we might be able to get one.”
“We’ll have one for our first bass fishing trip – this week,” cried Jim. “We can rent one. A chap I know had built a dozen of them this past winter and has them all ready for rent right now. In fact, I spoke for one for this week-end.”
“Now, that’s what I call enterprise,” I congratulated him. “There is always a lot of risk about renting a boat at the opening of the bass season. You get to where you want to fish and there isn’t a boat for love or money.”
“We’re all set this year,” said Jimmie. “We can go one place and if we don’t like it, we can unhitch in half an hour and be on our way to a better place. Who’s in the party this trip?”
“Just you and me” I said firmly. “Two’s company, three’s a crowd.”
“Aw,” said Jim, “it’s livelier with a gang.”
“All right, who will we take?” I demanded. “If we take Bill, he’ll go to sleep. If we take Vic, he’ll be fishing all the time we’re getting lunch, and the minute we’re through, he’ll see a fish rise and dash off just when the dishes are to be done.”
“How about Bumpy?” asked Jim.
“He’ll want to go ashore and sun bathe,” I protested. “And if we take Skipper, he’ll take charge of the party before we’re out of the city and boss us all over the place.”
Lure of the Bass
“See,” said Jim. “You want to be boss.”
“Boss nothing,” I retorted. “Let’s just go alone. A bass fishing trip is better with only two. Anyway, the boat will only hold two comfortably.”
“Any boat will hold three comfortably,” said Jim, “on a fishing trip. I like an extra man on the trip because then the majority can rule. If two of the three of us want to go one direction, then it’s easy to decide. But with only two of us in the boat, and want to go different directions …?”
“Now, when did we ever have any trouble agreeing which way to go?” I snorted.
“Okay, okay,” said Jim hastily. “I just thought it would be nice to have a third man.”
“The trouble with our friends, Jim,” I explained, “is, they are all fishermen. They all want to fish. And what’s more, they all have ideas as to where the best place to fish is, and how to fish and everything else. What we ought to cultivate is a friend who hates fishing. A guy that just likes to come along on the party. A guy that prefers to row the boat than fish. Somebody fond of camp fires and cooking and washing dishes, and that sort of thing. There are such people. We ought to cultivate one of them.”
“He wouldn’t mind cleaning fish, either,” added Jim.
“That’s the sort I mean,” I agreed.
“Well, we’ll go alone then,” said Jim. “And I’ll make all arrangements about the boat. And it’s agreed we fish Stoney Lake?”
“Agreed,” I said heartily, for Jim had shown me some grand bass he had caught in Stoney.
“Bass,” said Jim, lovingly and rolling the word around in that dreamy way you sometimes take a word and fondle it. “Bass. Bassssssss! What a lovely word. And what a swell fish.”
“Inch for inch,” I quoted the famous Dr. Henshall, “and pound for pound, the gamest fish that swims.”
“Isn’t the English language wonderful?” cried Jim. Think of that word bass. Bassssssss. It fairly pictures the fish. Short, sharp, rough, with the hisssss of a leaping fish or a racing line in it.”
“The word bass,” I informed him, “comes from the Dutch and Scandinavian word, barsh, meaning bristle. Barsh refers to the spines or bristles which are characteristic of bass. The word brush comes from the same root. So the English corrupted the word into bass, from barsh.”
“Corrupted?” scoffed Jim. “They took a silly word and made a beautiful word out of it. Bassssssssss!”
“It’s just the associations in your mind that make it beautiful,” I informed him. “A foreigner would think the word bass an ugly word.”
“Ah,” ignored Jimmie, his eyes raised, “what lovely associations. A little breeze riffling the water along the rocky shores. The reeds bending and waving. The lily pads lifting their hems. The chuckle of the water on the sides of the boat. And me sitting there, quiet as a mouse, casting and retrieving along the shore, selecting each spot to drop my lure, and trying, with art and science, to lay it exactly in that right spot…!”
“It’s the explosion of the strike I like,” I cut in. “No form of fishing has quite the excitement of that sudden explosion from the quiet depths when a bass comes up and takes the fly or the plug.”
“Anyway,” said Jim, “We agree that bass fishing is hard to beat.”
The Sectional Boat
Which closed the discussion until the next day we were well on the way to Stoney Lake with our curious boat trailing merrily behind us. The trailer wheels had a mere skeleton platform on them to which you bolted the rear half of the boat, a sort of box, and into this the front or pointed half nested. In these empty halves was plenty of room for storing all our fishing gear and luggage. It was a mighty nice little outfit. Jim wanted to go to the south end of Stoney, because it was a west wind that would make the return home easy. I preferred the north end of Stoney because, though I had never been on the lake, it was certainly less inhabited than the south end where there were farms and highways and villages.
“Of course,” said Jim, “I’ve only been on the lake about two hundred times. I wouldn’t know anything about it…”
“There are hundreds of people born right on the lake,” I retorted, “who don’t know where the good fishing is.”
So we agreed to go to the north end of the lake, where the map certainly showed fewer indications of habitation.
“Isn’t it a pity old Skipper isn’t along?” said Jim, apropos of nothing. “We’d have plenty of room in that punt for him.”
“Three in a boat is too crowded,” I replied.
“Let’s go right on to the north end of the lake,” suggested Jim, “and inquire at the gas station where’s the best place to launch the boat.”
“Listen, Jim,” I delivered, “what does a gas station know about where to fish for bass? All he knows is where the bass have been caught. We don’t want to know where they have been caught. We want to know where they haven’t been caught.”
“Okay, okay,” said Jim. “And how are we to find out where they haven’t been caught?”
And after scouting down a few side roads at the north end of Stoney, we came to a lonely looking bit of road, just a couple of ruts leading down to a farm where the farmer assured us it would be perfectly all right to park our car and launch our boat on his shore.
The shore looked magnificent. There were bouldery beaches stretching out in points, where the bass would just love to congregate in the evening to seek their favorite of all food crawfish. There were small bays filled with reeds and rushes and lily pads, where bass would love to take shelter from the sun during the heat of the day, keeping a lively eye skinned all the while for any frog that might venture to hop around the lily pads.
“Jim,” I said, “I can fairly smell bass.”
“Many’s the day’s limit I’ve taken out of it,” he replied, “though mostly at the southern end.”
We lifted all our gear out of the boat trailer and lifted the bow half out of the big box which was the stern half. We unbolted the stern half from the axle framework and laid them end to end. It was no trick at all to bolt them together. Steel lined holes for the bolts made a watertight joint and in a jiffy we were lifting the punt down to the shore.
“We’ll row turn about,” said Jim. “On the hour, we change.”
“Okay, you row the first hour,” I proposed, “because I’ve got my rod all set up anyway.”
“Okay,” agreed Jim. And stowing our tackle aboard, we pushed off.
“Turn down,” I suggested. “I like the look of those little bays.”
“Let’s turn north,” protested Jimmie, “and then it will be easier coming back down with the wind.”
“You’ve got wind on the brain,” I told him. “There isn’t enough breeze to make any difference.”
“Look at those gravelly points,” said Jim, still rowing north. “Try at those points and if we don’t get anything, I’ll turn back down the shore.”
“I should think the man who has to do the fishing,” I stated, “should have the say as to where he wants to fish.”
“I gave in,” pointed out Jim, “about which end of the lake we’d come to. Now let me pick the direction we’ll fish.”
“My dear man,” I said, “it is not a question of taking turns. It’s a question of where the obviously best fishing is. Anybody who knows bass fishing can see that those little bays…”
Jimmie dug the oars in so violently that he nearly dumped me over the back of the punt. It is curious how a man’s temper seems to get on edge the minute he goes out of doors. The greatest test of a man is to get him in the great out-of-doors. That’s where the seams show.
“Cast there,” said Jim, slackening the oars and indicating the first gravel bar.
“No self-respecting bass,” I said, “would be exposing himself in broad sunlight on a shallow bar like that.”
Jim rowed a few boat lengths farther on and at the next point, where large boulders beneath the water gave shade for any crawfish-hunting bass, I cast my plug and started to retrieve. It had only come four or five slow turns of the reel before there was that sudden glorious explosion and boil in the water, and when I tightened the line on him, he came out in a furious leap that was practically part of the original rush.
“What did I tell you?” yelled Jim.
“A stray one,” I said, “but a beauty.” He dived deep to see what was the matter. Then he came to the top again in an enraged rush, my line hissing through the water, until like a bronze bomb he burst out and shook himself madly, like a bulldog shaking a rat. But my plug clung to his jaws. And after a little while, and two or three more leaps, he began to tire and I told Jim to sink the net.
“Now, now,” I commanded, “sink it. Put it under the water and I’ll lead him over the net. None of this scooping…”
Jim, all eagerness as the bass came slowly fighting his last; sank the net well under water and I started to lead the bass over it. But Jim, to my horror, suddenly made a vicious swipe with the net. The rim caught the bass amidships. With a desperate shake, the bass jerked the plug’s hooks into the mesh of the net and with a wriggle, he was free. Over the rim he slid and back into the water.
I was speechless.
“Of all the…” I said apoplectically.
“Okay,” said Jim grimly. “Okay, okay, okay.”
And to my astonishment, he seized the oars and began rowing straight to shore.
“I’ll take the front half, you take the back half,” he said between his teeth. “You go south. I’ll go north. Okay, okay, okay.”
The boat grounded on the pebbles, Jim leaped out and hauled her half ashore. With a twirl of his fingers, he undid the bolts. And then he calmly shoved my half off, and tossed one of the oars in after me.
“See you later,” he cried cheerfully.
“Jim, don’t be an ass,” I shouted. “This thing won’t steer.”
“It’ll steer a lot better than mine,” called Jim, shoving his half of the boat in. And it was true; because the pointed end of the punt was a pretty skimp barnacle of a craft on the water.
As Modestly as Possible
“Jim,” I protested, “this is ridiculous.”
“It suits me fine,” he called back. “Now you can go south as far you like.”
So I seized the oar, there being nothing else to do, and experimented at propelling half a boat. It was tippy. It was cranky. It went where it listed. But somehow I got south and around the first point. And not until I was out of sight of Jim did I start to fish again.
My prognostication as to the good fishing spot was right. Almost on my first cast, I was into a fine two-pound bass. And when I had tired him out, I drew alongside, sank my net, drew him over the net and gently lifted. And there he was in the boat.
“Now,” I said aloud to myself, “that’s the way to do it.”
In the next hour, I had 15 strikes, and connected with two, both of which got free, due to the unwieldy character of my half-boat. But in less than two hours, in those reedy bays, I have five of the most beautiful bass you ever saw. And then I heard the car horn blowing mournfully.
“Poor Jim,” I said. “Fed up and ready for home already. That shows what comes of a hasty temper.”
And I thought of him whirling round and round in that front half of a boat, casting vainly on those barren rocky bars and getting nothing but exercise. The horn honked sadly.
“All right, all right,” I said, looking happily at my five glowing beauties laid out in a row in the bottom of the craft.
This would be a lesson to him. This would show him that it is best to follow the lead and counsel of a bass-wise man.
I reeled up and took the oar. I paddled back against the wind and it was, hard but cheerful going, with five such fine object lessons on the floor. When I rounded the point, I could see Jimmie sitting abjectly on the running board of the car, his half of the boat pulled up on the beach waiting for me.
I decided to be magnanimous; to let the whole matter rest. I would carry my five fish up to the car as modestly as possible.
“Well, sir,” I called out as I drew near, “it’s a pity to quit.”
“I’ve got my limit,” replied Jim happily, “so I thought you might want the other half of the boat.”
When I beached my half, Jim came down and looked at my five in the boat.
“Mine are just mates to those,” he said, holding out his hand. So we shook.
“It’s been a swell afternoon,” I gloated.
“It’s a pity we didn’t have Skipper along,” said Jim.
“Good old Skipper,” I said. “We should have brought him.”
Editor’s Notes:
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