For the Birds

 

“Where?” 

“Right over there.” 

“Where, ‘over there’?” 

“Right ... there!” he pointed, hard. “Look under the birds!” 

David Campbell was getting impatient with me, that he could see what I so obviously couldn’t. The wheeling, bone white gulls finally keyed me in on the ferocious, chopping-water action going on beneath them. The sand bass were up, bustin’ the surface, and then some. 

“Oh, yeah,” I said stupidly, transfixed by an eruption of fish, water, and gulls about the size of an average gymnasium floor. 

It happens every year about this time. Call “this” early fall if you want to. This time of the year, the weather turns off cool at odd times (what, August is not an odd time for cool weather?), and remains thus for several days running. 

In spite of what the weathermen want you to believe, it is not unusual for this early cool spell to sneak in, and just as quietly sneak out leaving 100 degree weather yet to come. I am 91 years old, and have seen it happen dozens of times. Big deal. 

It is a big deal if you anticipate it and get out on the lake (any big lake with sand bass in it) and position yourself on a windy point with plenty of baitfish skipping around on it, and just wait. The fish are apt to show up for chow at anytime throughout the day, but particularly at daylight and about an hour before dark. 

Then you want to throw a shad-colored bait, spinner, spoon, twist tail grub, or crankbait right into the melee of swirling, charging predator fish when they start chasing the baitfish to the top. If you are as dimwitted as I can be (hey, c’mon. I’m old.) you can locate the fish by looking for the gulls that chase the shad from the top that the fish predators are chasing from the bottom up. Look for birds; even those just apparently sitting on the water biding their time, which they are. 

It’s sorta’ like you waiting in a drive-through line waiting to pick up an order. You’re not going to leave before your order arrives are you? 

Birds, either on the water, or just hovering about, indicate a good spot to begin. The birds are not there by accident. Short and fierce as a bird’s life is, they don’t have time for accidental behavior, and know it. There is hardly a more “purpose driven life” than that of a bird. 

Coach Campbell and I found the fish out on the end of what many of us old timers call Houseboat Point, that place where the Cimarron intersects Salt Creek in Lake Keystone. There are always fish out on that point, year ‘round, but particularly in the fall. What a wonderful, wonderful place to hook up with something that pulls hard. 

And watch the seasons change. 

The gulls helped us locate those fish, and we eased closer to get our lures into their swarm. Bingo. 

We both were into fish on our first casts, strong, big ones; sand bass that we both honestly (well ...) judged to be near three-pounders when we got them in the bottom of the boat. Nice, meaty, slab sandies that we immediately released as previously agreed: “You want to clean a mess of fish near midnight? No. Me, Neither. Gotcha’. Everybody back into the pool.” There will be at least a hundred good days of this type of spectacular fishing between now and first freeze-up. What’s the point of filling your freezer with fish that will dry-burn before you get to eat them, when you can catch them fresh all along the way, right up to Thanksgiving? 

David hammered me with that hammered-silver spoon he bought at that little mom and pop tackle shop in Cloquet, Minnesota just south of the Boundary Waters, a place I have frequented for years. 

You used to be able to buy all the old-fashioned spoons, those that actually look like a table spoon, that you wanted, for sixty cents apiece. You no longer can, or if you can, I want you to tell me where I can buy some more. I lived off of them in college, wearing them out in Lake Texoma, and frying the results on a hot plate in the dorm. 

Anyway, David had one and I didn’t. Mine were all at home in another tackle box where I needed ‘em, right? His silver spoon was catching ten fish to my one on twist tail grubs (white) and white roadrunners. I threatened to cut his line two or three times if he didn’t quit showing off. At one point, I counted fifteen straight casts of his that caught fifteen straight fish. He didn’t deserve them, but he caught them anyway. 

It was getting dark. 

We quit at sundown with a three-pound striper I caught on a roadrunner, a good fish that fought hard and tried to beat my ears back, four-pound line and all. 

It was dark enough when we quit we had to employ the boat’s running lights. Had we been near trees, the bats would’ve been out. It was almost crisp enough for light jackets. Had not the smiles all the way in not been so big and warm, we could’ve died out there. Would you have cared? C’mon. An eighty year old man?

© 2015 Conrad M. Vollertsen