Leeches and Love

 

Slender Lake, Ontario? Two weeks ago? The fishing was great, and then it got better.

I told outfitter Mike Henry (1-807-482-1143, catchfish@pfo.net) before we got there that all Pam and I were interested in was the “down time” away from home to celebrate our fiftieth. Maybe we’d fish, maybe we wouldn’t. For sure we were going to appreciate the peace and quiet, time to ourselves, and the distant skylines gone jagged with spruce. 

Sure, you know we were going to fish, but at our own pace and whim. The breakfasts would be long and unhurried; the coffee hot, aromatic, and in a seemingly unending supply from that silver pot over there on the stove where the mouse lives. That, quiet talk, and a good book or two is all that would keep us off the water. 

Mike warned me: “You’d better take some leeches or a few crawlers in there with you. Those Slender Lake walleye and smallmouth like meat.” 

Look, you’re in Rome you do what the Romans do, right? Not if you’re a hardheaded German. Pam and I have for years fished the North Country with topwaters for smallmouth, so much do we like the smashing, airborne strikes they produce. Smallmouth up there have a habit of coming out of the water and down on top of a topwater in a manner that will make you yell outloud and cause the loons to yodel, and you’re never ready for the strike when it comes. 

We caught plenty of smallmouth that way fishing late in the evening, but nothing particularly big. Pound-and-a-halfers; two pounds, maybe. That was it. But, I told you what our attitude was, right? We grinned all evening long three days in a row, then went “home” at dark and put steaks or pork chops on. 

One time in camp on Lake Tenkiller, just at dark, frying fish with just the evening star out, Pam’s dad, Mo Filson asked me famously, “Wonder what the poor folks are doin’?” I mentioned it one of the evenings to which I refer up on Slender, and it brought a quiet grin to both our faces. She likes thinking about her dad. Me, too. 

Somewhere just past noon the next day we were throwing plastic grubs around a weedbed Mike had circled on a map as good for walleyes, catching some small bass and pike when Pam looked up and said, “Oh, my goodness. There’s a boat coming right at us!” 

The sudden appearance of a boat on collision course had caught us off guard. It was the kind of thing you expect back home on Keystone, but back in here?

It was Mike, come to the rescue to check on us, and favor us with a load of leeches. He pulled right alongside our boat, grinned, and said, “Get ready to catch some fish!” 

“We are catching fish,” I told him. 

“No, no. I mean big fish.” 

We motored back to the cabin, less than two blocks away. Mike got into our boat with the leeches, and motored us right back to the spot we had been fishing. Out of a plastic “leech locker”, similar to a plastic minnow bucket, came the leeches, one terrifying critter at a time. 

Maybe you’ve never seen a leech in real life, just in a movie. We have a small species here in Oklahoma which I have pulled from my legs while wade fishing. Leech populations are a sign of quality water as a general rule. They are not black, but a very dark olive green so as to appear almost black. 

They can move about like you wouldn’t believe, are not snail-slow at all, and can be very hard to impale on a hook. Pam and I were having some trouble doing that. The girl I married fifty years ago was not a bit afraid of the blood sucker, her daddy had taught her better, but she couldn’t get one of the slimy critters to hold still long enough to run a hook through it. 

“Pam”, Mike said, “the best way to get a hook into one of them is to allow it to attach its sucker to you in the palm of your hand, and ...” 

“Where?” 

“...anywhere it wants to, and then take the point of the hook and run it up under its chin while it’s sucking on you.” 

It worked for both of us, and in less than a minute all three of us were in the water with leech baited eighth-ounce lead head jigs, pink in color, nothing else, back trolling the boat’s forty-horse Yamaha motor as slow as it would go along the edge of the weedbed as marked by the Lowrance E-400 locator. 

Bam! Mike had a fish on, a good one he could not pull up off the bottom. A good fish stays deep for a long time, and this one was doing that. Finally, maybe five minutes later, after several runs around and under the boat, Mike had what was to me a giant walleye alongside the boat. I have caught walleye up to five pounds all over the North, but this was the biggest I had ever seen outside of a TV show. The fish was huge as walleyes generally go, and I said so. 

“I’ve caught two right on this spot that went fourteen pounds,” Mike said, releasing the fish. 

“Hey!” Pam yelled, “I’ve got one!” and did she ever. Her rod was bent into a nearly perfect circle, and headed under the boat, threatening to pull her with it, both the reel and the girl screaming for help. 

Ping! went the line, broken, and blowing in the wind. I tied on another jig head for her, and she grabbed her own leech like an old pro and got her rig back in the water. 

“I got another one!” she yelled just that quickly, and just that quickly, ping!, went the line again, breaking the girl’s heart by the looks of her. 

“What am I doing wrong? Is it the line?” 

“The line’s brand new. Six pound test. I put it on before we left home. Hand it to me. I’m going to loosen your drag,” which I did, whereupon the kid was immediately hooked up again to something huge and angry. This time the drag rolled with the punches, and in about another five minutes, Pam had an eight-pound, quarter-ounce walleye flopping at her feet. She was speechless. I was speechless. Mike was laughing, at us. Both of us. 

We were the kids in the candy store. 

I was next to have my line broken, drag loosened, and onto another walleye giant which Mike “gilled” right next to the boat, and over the side it slid, all thirty inches, nine pounds of it, absolutely the biggest walleye I had ever seen in person, let alone caught. I looked at it, gorgeous gold and olive body; mouthful of jagged rippers, that weird eye that gives the fish its name, and then turned it loose into the waves lapping the side of the boat. 

“Mike, we’ve never caught walleye that fought like this; as tough as giant northerns.” 

“People say that, I know they’ve never caught a really big walleye.” 

We caught several more, keeping two five-pounders (the smaller ones are better eaters): One for Mike and Renae, and one for Pam and me. Some of us were tired. 

“Mike,” I said, “we didn’t come up here to have heart attacks. Let’s go back to the cabin, clean what we’ve got, and call it a day,” which is what we did. We had a bucket of leeches, and four more days by ourselves to burn. 

Some of that time was going to be spent eating walleye fillets fried golden brown with fried potatoes, onions, and fresh-buttered white bread on the side. You remember the size of those fillets, because I told you last week, right?

I’m done.

Copyright © 2016 Conrad M. Vollertsen