We Made Lemonade Outta Muddy Water

 

Keystone was high, muddy, and getting higher one day last week when David Campbell of Sand Springs and I put my boat in the water off the Prairie View Ramp in Mannford. We had planned on a black bass/crappie combo until we spotted the rising red line of the wild Cimarron River. We had to re-shuffle the deck and cut the cards, again.

When you’re retired, life is full of pleasant options.

It was David’s idea to fish the rising water right in front of a tiny waterfall chuckling and gurgling into the back of a little inlet where I had caught many a bass and crappie before. He thought it looked “good”.

“Well, yeah,” I said, it looks good, but it’s a bait fishing spot. You got a bucket of minnows or a can of worms on ya’, I didn’t see ‘em when we launched the boat.”

“Right here, buddy,” he said tossing me an ancient looking, small jar crammed full of Berkley Gulp artificial bait worms. The jar label was nearly worn gone. I opened the lid. The artificial worms positively looked real, like they might start crawling out of the jar if I didn’t hurry and get the lid back on.

I put my nose down to the opening of the jar. They smelled like worms that had been held captive in a small jar for two or three years. They made me wonder what that genie must’ve smelled like when he wafted up from that lamp.

“These things smell terrible”, I said. “How long you had ‘em?”

“‘Bout three years.”      

“What makes you think they’ll work?”

“Caught walleye like crazy on ‘em up in Ontario.”

“Jeeminy Christmas, one or the other of us is really crazy. I’m gonna’ try this. I didn’t bring any bait hooks. You got any?”

He had the next best thing: a small handful of sixteenth-ounce bare, lead jig heads; practically all hook and no lead. I tied one on. Then I threaded one of the foul-smelling Berkley creations on, fully expecting it to rear back and try to bite me, so real did it look. I had a few, small red and white plastic bobbers in my bag that I use to elevate crappie jigs in shallow water. Game on.

David tied up likewise, and we settled in for what I expected to be a long wait, bobbers afloat the tiny waterfall “rapids”. Sure, the water was muddy, but catfish are famous for moving into rising water, fast or not, to scavenge nature’s flooded buffet as close to the source (waterfall) as possible. We had a chance, I guessed, “stupid” bait or not, but one attached to at least an hour’s wait. Wrong.

David had on a small channel cat in less than five minutes, what my Uncle Fritz up on the Gasconade used to call a “breakfast cat”, a fish of about a pound, pound-and-a-half, plenty big enough to fillet. The fish had eaten what was, as far as I was concerned, an alien thing, right out of Sigourney’s movie.

Then he caught another, a fish that hit so hard his bobber disappeared with an audible “pop!” It was another beautifully speckled, olive-tinged, fat, channel cat. This one would’ve gone a good three pounds, fighting and contesting all the way to the boat; stripping drag, and showing why the channel cat is listed all over the country as a “game” species.

While David was netting his “game” dinner, I got a bite that popped my cork, and headed for the main lake. Before I could loosen my drag, it broke me off, reminding me that four-pound test mono intended for crappie probably shouldn’t be used for real cage fighters. 

It was “coming dark” as we used to say down yonder, and perfectly quiet as usually attends the break off of the big one that gets away. The whippoorwills were whipping, which always reminds me of spring crappie and wild gobblers.

Had we a lantern to see the bobbers, we’d a stayed with ‘em. We didn’t. All we had was a small jarful of alien worms.

“Too bad,” David said, “the big ones always get away.”

“It’s alright. We made lemonade outa’ muddy water. I’m retired. I’ll come back.”

I am coming back. A little bit better every day.

Copyright © 2016 Conrad M. Vollertsen