Lost Art

 

The easiest thing for me to do would be to look out my window (which I am doing right now) and give up. There is snow and ice everywhere, with only the promise of a warmup. That will come, the weatherman just said it, after the next snowstorm. Jeeminy Christmas.

It’s all a show. The “party” is over. Winter is over. Winter is like the last guest to leave the party; the one you have to bodily push out the door. March slams the door on winter, every year.

Take a look around. If you took out the garbage today, or did any chore at all that put you outside, you heard birds singing in the snow. How odd, and yet how perfectly appropriate. Birds don’t read calendars, they “read” the position of the sun, and they count the hours of daylight.

Every duck, goose and swan is headed north by the last week of February, and that is how far away? I can’t give up, now. Neither can you. You do what you want; I’m going fishing.

For years, late winter fishing for Dave Hladik and me meant trips to Lake Tenkiller to troll Cookson Bend, Carter’s Landing, and the famed Horseshoe Bend with Bill Norman Little Scooper baits, medium runners, in either purple and silver or black and silver. Couldn’t beat ‘em, and they were cheap even in that age. They still work, when you can find them at market; frequently flea market, now.

Trolling for our part of the country is an interesting phenomenon. It’s interesting because practically nobody does it anymore. It’s a bygone art form (yes, I really called it that) of the 1920’s, 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s just after the outboard motor was invented, and just before the electric trolling motor which, ironically, as used today, is not really a trolling motor at all (‘nother story).

From a distance, any boat puttering along as slow as it can manage, pulling a small lure behind it on a long line, must look like one of the most boring sports imaginable; worse, maybe, than soccer. But that’s trolling. Better it is, to most, to blast off at fifty miles an hour to the next single, fishless stretch of water, on ad infinitum. Such people are not after a fish, but an image of fishing.

There’s a reason bass fishing tournaments ban trolling as a method. What trolling does, particularly in the last cold days of winter, is put more fish (all species) in a boat than can be possibly imagined. I have never found that boring, particularly with a constantly changing view of the scenery thrown in.

Any boat will do for trolling, even a magnum, gas busting, bass boat, but trolling is particularly well adapted for the small-monied fisherman, with a small boat and motor to match. Look at a map of the lake you want to fish. Try to find a lake section with several points jutting out into it in about a one-to-two mile area. Head for one of those spots.

With some exceptions, points extend out into a lake under the surface of the water much the same as they do on top of the lake. That is, in a gradual decline or slope out into deep, deep, and even deeper water. Gamefish, all winter long, congregate on these slopes to eat the baitfish that congregate there for food and protection in underwater rock rubble.

As weather progresses through its various changes, gamefish and bait alike move up and down these points like you and I do on escalators when changing levels at the mall, and for the exact same reason it suddenly occurs to me. We’re all looking for something, right?

What the wise troller does is change the levels and depths he trolls over the end of his chosen point until he finds a level that is holding fish. “Voila”, as one might say. Let the catching begin, the most fun part of fishing. Any hard, plastic bait that resembles a shad, or crawdad, will do.

Sure, a depth sounder will aid in this discovery process, but, believe me, it is far from being absolutely necessary. You’d be amazed, all you young whippersnappers out there, at how many fish those old timers could troll up back in the old days when all of them knew how to read a shoreline like Daniel Boone read tracks in the sand.

There are “fishermen” today that will not go out on the water without their GPS, and certainly not without their electric “trolling” motor. Jeeminy Christmas.

Fishing without electronics. Trolling. It could be the new thing. Right.

Sometimes in the middle of a winter’s night I will come wide awake to the smell of hot summer creek water, wet canvas float tubes, and water moccasins. The other night I awoke, I know, to the low mutter, mutter, mutter of a 1949, teal colored, hand crank, Evinrude outboard. Three horse. Ordered out of a Montgomery Ward catalog.

Because I was already awake, I went to the large picture window in the living room, and looked out. It was snowing. I knew winter was over. I’d have to call Dave when the sun came up.

I can’t explain it.

© 2014 Conrad M. Vollertsen