Cast a Net

There is that place in Luke, Chapter 5, when Christ in his travels pauses at the shoreline of Lake Gennesaret followed by a swarm of people wishing to hear him speak. So huge was the crowd, my Sunday school teacher told me when I was six, their collective mass threatened to push Him over into the water before he could get a word out. 

Apparently He didn’t want to get wet, and spying a fisherman pulled up on the bank a few feet away and cleaning his nets from a night of work, Jesus asked him if he might stand in the bow of his boat, push off a few feet so as to gain some room from the pressing crowd, and begin his lesson to the multitude. The fisherman, named Simon, said no problem. 

When finished speaking, as way of thanks, Jesus told the man to cast his net on the other side of the boat in a little deeper water. Simon said, more or less, “Man I’ve been doing that already all night and haven’t caught a blamed thing! But, if you say so...”, and the rest, as they say, is history. 

Simon’s net was so full of fish from that one throw it nearly broke, and he hollered quickly to some nearby fishermen friends cleaning their own nets to come, quickly, and help him haul in his catch, which all of them agreed was the best catch they had ever seen. As a result of the miracle, Simon, and a couple other fishermen there, hardened men, all, that had seen many strange things in their years spent on the water, decided to put down their nets (and their livelihoods) and follow this other “fisherman” for awhile. 

That happened to Brian Loveland and me one time up on Lake Keystone back in Appalachia Bay casting for bait shad, and we were close to the bank when it happened as well. In fact we were standing on the courtesy dock letting the boat warm up, when Brian, as an afterthought I think, gave his thrownet a little four-foot toss, and started hollering as he tried to pull it up out of the water. I jumped out of the boat and had to help him lift the net out onto the dock so full of fish it was. 

Later, we both tried to guesstimate the number of shad in that net that spilled like slopped silver all over the courtesy dock. Several hundred at least, was the only number we could come up with. Most of them we shoveled back into the lake, sideways with our feet, soccer style. Ask Brian. Of the two of us, I am the only known liar. 

I was already a committed fisherman before that day in Sunday school so many years ago. Since, I have maintained a fascination for a method already ancient by the time nylon came onto the scene. 

Imagine: Simon’s net was made of woven bark and tree roots, both incredibly heavy when wet, and he had been fishing all night long when Jesus told him he had a better throw still in him. It had to have been hard for that fisherman to believe that one last cast could possibly make a difference, but which of us that loves the game hasn’t made that “one”? 

You can buy a cast net, thrownet, which ever you prefer to call it, at any major tackle shop in this county. Live bait will improve your fishing no matter the species you pursue. Read the instructions accompanying the net, or hit on a friend that knows the method, go out into your driveway (or street) and start making mistakes. It’s the only way I know to learn. 

Notice I did not say, “Your yard.” Do that and you will spend a lot of time cleaning your net of grass as Simon would tell you were he still fishing on this side of the river. Once you can successfully make that net spread in mid-air in your driveway, you’re ready for the lake/river. Take a bucket with you. 

Lately, the raceway below Keystone Dam has been a dynamite place to throw a net for a little bait, no miracle to it. Eddie Bostic called me the other night to tell me of a recent foray for bait there. For over a month now, with all the high water discharge coming out of the dam, he has had no trouble finding the shad stacked on the northside of the dam close to the wing wall and all the way downstream for a couple hundred yards. 

“I usually get all I want in one throw,” he said. He takes them home, covers them with ice in a chest, and heads out the next day for catfish on any one of several different lakes within easy driving distance. 

The other night, he saw a couple of Vietnamese men using long-handled dip nets to get the same bait Eddie was after with his throw net. Their method worked, too, as they waited to pounce with their handled nets as schools of shad swam by their assumed stations on the walkway there below the dam. 

Different strokes for different folks they say. Still, the net remains the king. 

There is only one drawback to casting a net, but it is not a minor one. If you are long getting your bait, you are going to get tired tossing the net, and the older the net thrower gets, the quicker this fatigue overtakes him. Well, “her”, too, if you insist, although I have never seen a lady throw a net. Well, wait another minute: There are nets, and then there are nets, right? 

Three of the best throw netters I have ever seen in action are Alan Karstetter (he just about won’t fish without using bait), Leon Mears, and Jack Test. All of them, like me, are “getting up there”, and know the feeling fruitless casts brings to the shoulders, back, and lungs, even. Especially in hot weather.

I’ve watched them just about wear themselves out, and then say, “There they are”, feeling that old familiar thumping a squirming mass of bait transmits right up the net’s handline and into the netter’s fingers, “I was beginning to think it wasn’t going to happen.” 

Oh, ye, of little faith. Simon was at the exact same spot on the shores of Gennesaret two thousand years ago. Can you not make just one more cast?

 © 2015 Conrad M. Vollertsen