Pike Fishing by Bell

Robert Russell

EVERY river, pond, or stream challenges a fisherman. But despite the seductiveness of all water, each fisherman has his own special spot. For me that place is a patch of water lying off the southwestern shore of Hay Island, in the Admiralty group of the Thousand Islands, about two miles off the Canadian mainland. I bought a cottage on Hay a few years ago. We are on a passage connecting the Canadian Middle with the Northern, or Bateau, Channel. The water isn’t deep enough for the freighters or other big ships on the Seaway, six miles to the south, but we get a lot of traffic: Sailfish and schooners; outboards droning home with a load of groceries; cruisers from New York or Toronto, Florida or Nova Scotia, carrying children in orange life preservers or women reclining with highballs; and an endless cavalcade of rowboats, skiffs, and launches. The tour boats out of Clayton or Alexandria Bay pass five or six times a clay on their way into Gananoque.

Sitting on our front porch in midsummer, you can watch the world go by — that is, if you can see. I can’t. I have been blind since I was six years old. But one day while I could still see, my brother Bud, who was twenty, took me with him for a morning’s trout fishing on a stream near our home in southern New York state. When we reached the creek, he plucked and trimmed a small branch, tied a four-foot piece of line to one end, and making a noose at the other, he slipped in a worm, drew the knot tight, and handed me the branch.

“What do I do with this?" I asked.

“You fish,”he said, and started along the bank. I shouldered my outfit and trudged behind him. For a few minutes I imitated his every move, but then I saw a bright-green creature leap from a log, saying “Kgunk!” before he disappeared.

“Hey, Bud, what was that?”

“A frog.”

“Are there any more?”

“Sure, lots, but you’ve got to look for them. Come on!” he urged.

I shouldered my rod and started down the bank. In my haste, I overturned a large stone, and out from under it scuttled the strangest creature. He was covered with a shell the color of peanut brittle, had about six legs and a big fiat tail that he used to scramble backward. As he did so, he waved two big claws in front of what ought to have been his nose, and he kept making fists with them.

“Hey, Bud!” I cried. “What’s this?”

“What’s what?” he said, a little irritably. “Oh, that! That’s just a crawdad. Don’t touch him. You’ve got to pick them up in a special way, or they’ll nip you.” He stooped and picked up the crawdad by the back between his thumb and forefinger. “Get me that old coffee can over there with some water.”

I picked up the rusty can, dipped it half full, and held it beneath the crawdad. Bud dropped him in. I spent the rest of the morning peering into the can to watch his quivering antennae and the way he could kind of scrunch himself along backward all huddled up in an armored ball with those big claws clip-clipping out in front.

We didn’t get any fish, but I came home a fisherman for life.

A few months later, an accident cost me my sight, so I had to learn to fish without it. For years my only equipment was a package of eagle-claw hooks and an old bowed nine-foot bamboo fly rod.

I learned early to string my rod, to bait my hook, to scale and clean fish. The only other things I needed were a stretch of water and a friend to fish with, and I had both. With one of these friends and his family, I took my rod for a week’s fishing on the St. Lawrence. When I came home I resolved that someday I would spend my summers within the sound of those waves and with that big, soft, fresh wind blowing over me.

THE years passed, and eventually I became a professor of literature at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. During my first summer there, my wife and I and our four children piled into the car and headed north. We found a place on Hay Island, borrowed the money to buy it, and settled in.

My old bamboo fly rod hangs there on the wall now, waiting for one of my own boys to take it down. I have moved on to a spinning outfit, a light glass rod, and a Mitchell Garcia 300 loaded with four-pound test monofilament. With a box of snap swivels and small lures, I am all set.

I don’t despise worms and live bait; they’re just not available. The soil on my island is shallow. Thornbushes, pines, and wild raspberries do very well, but not worms. Occasionally a school of minnows and shiners passes along the shoal out in front of the cottage, and sometimes we pick up a few with a little umbrella net. But not very often. If we want bait, we have to go into Gananoque, and islanders don’t like going to town.

So I stick my box of lures in my pocket, take my rod, and go down to the shoal which drops off sheer into sixteen feet of water. My predecessors looked upon this spot as a convenient dumping ground for old bedsprings, the broken porch glider, and discarded kerosene stoves, so I have lost more than my share of lures. Often, when I would hook a good fish, he would dive down into this jungle, twist the line around a piece of jagged iron, give a couple of yanks, and swim off about his business.

Of course, we tried family fishing excursions. Elisabeth and I snapped our four children into life jackets and put them into our sixteen-foot outboard. Before starting the motor, I delivered my strict lecture on sitting still. Then, after several pulls, the old Johnson coughed, spluttered, and finally consented. With three-month-old Miranda on her lap. Elisabeth slid into the stern, and I moved to the middle seat. Before we had cleared the dock, Richie, six, started flailing an old casting rod. The tip buzzed past my ear, and I cried, “Richie! What are you doing?”

“Fishing!” he shouted.

“Give me that rod!”

“Bob!” called Elisabeth. “Make Mark sit down. He’s leaning over the side at the bow.”

With the casting rod in my hand, I worked my way forward, kicking over the bought worms, to where Mark, four, was hanging over the side, trailing his hand in the water. I yanked him back with my free hand, then put down the rod and smacked him. Over the sound of the motor and his howls, I launched again into my lecture about sitting still.

Whack! The tip of my spinning rod, with which Richie was now “fishing,” hit the back of my neck.

“This is good enough,” I shouted to Elisabeth. “Cut the motor.”

When the engine died, Elisabeth said, “What’s the matter with the motor?”

“Nothing. Nothing. This is fine. We’ll try it here. Richie, pick up the worms.”

“Daddy,” whined Mark, “my line is tangled. Can you fix it?” I started to work on the rat’s nest he handed me.

“Will you bait my hook?” called Richie from the bottom of the boat.

“James!” cried Elisabeth. “James! Stop playing with the oar. James! Come here and sit down beside me.” James, two, dropped the oar and began playing with the worms.

These short trips were not at all the sort of thing that comes to mind when one thinks of a quiet afternoon on the river.

I had to figure out some way of getting out on the river alone.

The answer came from an unexpected quarter and on a very unlikely occasion graduation day at the college. The facility was lining up in the hall of the liberal arts building in full academic regalia for the procession down to the football field to swelter through another of those grim ceremonies. Durrell Enck, the chairman of the physics department, whom I knew only slightly, came up and said, “Hi, Bob. How about being my partner in the procession? English and physics make a good combination.”

“Thanks, Durrell.”I answered. As we entered the field and made our way toward the seats of honor, I said, “I hope you don’t have to stay in Lancaster all summer. If you do, you’ll be done to a crisp by fall.”

“Yes, I’m going to be here. I’m teaching summer school. What about you?”

“Not me. I’d rather starve on my island in the St. Lawrence.” We reached our seats and sat down.

“You lucky dog!” he murmured. “I bet it’s nice up there. Any fishing?”

“Pike and bass. Mostly pike, northerns.”

“Get any big ones?”

“Sure. Why don’t you come up after summer school and try your luck? Then I can show you my problem.”

“What’s your problem?”

“Well, somehow I’ve got to get out on the river by myself. I need a way of keeping in touch with my dock — a radio transmitter or something like that.”

He was silent for a couple of minutes while the commencement speaker ground along.

“Have you got electricity?”

“Yes.”

“Well, what about a bell?”

“That’s the idea, but I can’t have a bell ringing solidly while I’m out fishing. I would be going out around five in the morning, and I have a neighbor nearby.”

“Suppose it rang just once in a while — maybe every twenty seconds?”

“That would really do the trick. Do you think you could work out something?”

“Tell you what. Come over to the lab late this afternoon, and we’ll see what we can rig up.”

At four thirty I found Durrell in the lab working with a small electric motor the size of a fat pocket watch. It was enclosed except for one shaft, which it turned at the rate of one revolution a minute. To this shaft he had attached an ordinary radio knob, but instead of leaving it circular, he had cut the sides into a square. He was mounting the motor with its revolving square knob in a little wooden box.

“What I’m going to do, you see,” he said, “is put a set of flexible metal contacts right beside the motor so that each point of the square knob will press the contacts together for a second. They’ll spring back, breaking the circuit when the point passes. When the contacts are touching, they will let the current go through to this big old bell, and it will ring.”

“Will it work?” I asked.

“It will before I get through,” he said, and it did.

The next day I took Durrell’s invention up to Hay Island. I mounted the bell on a post at the end of the dock, ran two hundred feet of lamp cord up to the cottage, where I had installed his box according to instructions, hooked it up, pushed in the plug, and started for the dock. Halfway there, I heard the chime of the bell.

I found the first mooring ring, cast off the stern line, and stepped into the twelve-foot dinghy. Pulling the boat along the dock with my hands, I came to the ring where the bowline was tied. I cast it off, sat down on the middle thwart, and pushed free of the dock. I glided out to the ding-ding of the bell. Bare feet thudded along the dock, and Richie’s voice called, “Hey, Dad, where are you going?”

“Oh, just out for a little row.” I pulled gently on the oars, and the boat slid out toward the channel.

“Can you go out by yourself, Dad?”

“Sure.”

“Will you take me for a little ride?”

“Yep! Hang on.” I backwatered till the stern bumped gently against the dock. He climbed in. We had our ride, and I docked again easily.

The gate out onto the river had swung open for me.

THE next morning I slipped out of bed at five, dressed quietly, crept downstairs, took my box of lures and spinning outfit, and started for the river. I was in the boat before I remembered I hadn’t plugged in the cord. This done, I picked up the oars and pushed off over the still water away from the sleep-filled house. Every fifteen seconds, as each corner of that square knob closed the contacts, the bell spoke, telling me all I needed to know. I pulled strongly for the southern tip of the island.

The catbirds, yellow warblers, song sparrows, and whitethroats were waking, and as they tuned up they sang that the shore was about fifty yards to my right. I rowed softly on through the silent water along the line of their singing, keeping the sound of my bell astern and slightly to the right. The gulls began to cry and complain over the river. Far behind me and to the left from somewhere out on the Forty Acre Shoals came the fluting of a loon. Perhaps a mile to my left an outboard started up and whined off toward Gananoque. Minutes later its wash passed and slapped up on the rocks, confirming my position. The sun had risen high enough to send a warm beam to my right cheek, and a light southwesterly breeze sprang up at my back.

The bell, which had unchained me from my dock, was now far astern, and its quiet ding-ding had almost blended into the other morning sounds. I pulled hard on my right oar, sending the bow further out into the channel. I coasted for a moment, enjoying my freedom and the morning. Then I released the anchor line, and the little pulley squeaked and rumbled as twenty feet ran over it. I let out ten feet of slack, secured it, and lit my pipe.

I snapped an eighth-ounce abu onto my swivel and started casting. With each toss I let the lure sink to the bottom and then brought it back in short twoor three-foot runs. On the third cast I got my strike, a firm, solid tug. I set the hook, and the reel buzzed. I hadn’t even moved him. Slowly I cranked the reel, and the weight at the other end came gradually up and in. Then the rod suddenly bent and the reel screamed as the fish, realizing that he had been hooked, dived for the bottom. A pike, and a big one, too! When he stopped his dive, I started gently pumping the rod. With a big pike on four-pound test, I couldn’t afford to take chances, and I wanted this one.

He gave ground slowly, but when he was up four or five feet he plunged again. The rod doubled, and the reel buzzed. This time he wasn’t going to move. For three minutes he lay there, stubbornly resisting. Then suddenly he rushed toward the surface. I cranked furiously to keep up with him. The line came taut again with that same logy heaviness. I led him gradually toward the boat. When he was about five feet from the tip of my rod he caught sight of me, and with a great wallow and thrash he set my reel shrieking as he sounded again. I let him go and when he had finished began urging him up gently. I couldn’t rush him, not only because of my light line but also because I wanted him really played out for landing.

You can’t net a fish you can’t see. Landing a perch, a bass, or even an eel is easy. I play them out, pass the butt of the rod along till I come to the tip, then feel down the line until I reach the fish, grab him by the gills, and pick him up. But pike have teeth, big ones, like needles. Their mouths are large enough to take a man’s hand comfortably. I had hooked a big one, so I wanted him tired out by the time I began reaching around for his gills.

Gradually he came up, then dived again. He repeated this four times. Finally he was through fighting and seemed to lie near the surface, daring me to finish the job. By raising the end of my rod, I could tell he had only three or four feet of line. It was time.

Easily, so as not to upset him, I passed the butt of the rod to the stern till I reached the tip. Holding the hair-thin monofilament between the thumb and index finger of my right hand, I worked my left hand down about twelve inches. He would explode if I touched him, so I moved the line from side to side, trying to judge how far away he was. He drifted toward me. I thought I had about another foot. I released my right hand and pinched the line just above my left, then moved my left down another six inches. He was close now. I was leaning far over the gunwale. I moved my right hand down to my left, pinched the thread again, and let go with my left.

Moving the line back and forth and raising it a couple of inches, I knew he was very near. There was no give to the line, and the arc in which I had to move it was very sharp. I would have to make my grab now, before he started thrashing. But was his tail toward the bow or the stern?

I moved my left hand down the gunwale about eighteen inches toward the stern, reached out as far as I dared, and, fingers spread, I plunged my hand into the water as deep as I could and scooped back to the boat. He was beneath the boat. My fingers slipped along the underside of his lower jaw. I had missed, but so had he.

Instantly, I pulled in about a foot of line with my right hand and made another grab. My fingers closed on his throat just behind his gills. I pressed him against the side of the boat and slipped my fingers into the gill slits. When I had a firm grip, I hoisted him out and into the boat.

When he hit the boards, he spit the lure and began to thrash. I held him with my left hand while I reached under my seat to get the sawed-off stub of an oar. Holding his head slightly off the bottom, I gave him three solid whacks on the forehead. His great body quivered and was still.

I made sure he was through before I began hunting around in my pockets for my Braille tape measure. Thirty-two inches he was, and by the feel of him he would go about eight pounds — eight and a half, as it turned out.

I dropped him back onto the floorboards and straightened up. It took me four matches to get my pipe going again. Then I sat there, calming down and slowly rejoining the rest of the world.

Far behind me, I heard the day’s first tour boat. It was coming right down the channel. Its engines would drown out the sound of my bell, so I would have to wait till it had passed before starting for home. The tour boat swung out to my left to avoid swamping me with its wash. When it drew abreast, I reached down, picked up my pike, and held it high over my head for as long as I thought they might be interested, then laid him down.

“Hey,”called a voice from the deck far above me, “hold him up again, will you? I didn’t get my picture yet.”

I held him up.

“Thanks,” he shouted.

The thunder of the big boat faded, leaving the river and the morning to me, and in the distance astern came the soft, regular ding-ding of my bell. As I rowed back along that thin, clear thread of sound, I had the wetness of the great St. Lawrence on my palms, its sounds in my ears, its smells in my nostrils, its joy on my tongue, and, at my feet, an ingot from its inexhaustible treasure-house.