Not-So-Tall-Tale:
The Billy Goat
In
my middle and late teens I discovered girls.
For a time, their appeal even outstripped that of a brown
trout. When I was about seventeen, a friend and I would
often hitchhike for a few days at a time in "cottage
country" a hundred or so miles to the north. We did
it for the sense of adventure. (The fact that we found a
girls' camp once or twice might have had a bit to do with
it, too.) We slept wherever darkness found us: at the sides
of roads, in fields, even in graveyards once or twice. I
loved not knowing where I'd be unrolling my sleeping bag
from one night to the next We traveled lightly, without
a tent, and with very little money, but I did often pack
a fishing rod and some gear.
One
morning, we spent most of our last dollar on toast and coffee
at a roadside diner-general store-bait shop-gas station.
It was situated where two lakes met on a small, two-lane
highway. We were glumly discussing the necessity of heading
home when my friend suggested I catch some fish to trade
for supplies. We approached the owner with the idea, and
he was amenable. He told us of a dam about 5 miles down
a dirt side road that was a popular spot for catching brook
trout (also called speckled trout or specs in our neck of
the woods). Our last 25 cents went into his pocket to pay
for a dozen worms.
There
was little traffic and we had to walk the whole way, but
when we found the dam we knew the owner hadn't fibbed. It
was popular. There were about twenty people fishing
there, pretty much evenly split between fishing directly
below the dam and about 50 yards away, in a large pool that
eventually emptied into a lake.
My
friend didn't fish, and, in any event, we only had the one
outfit. He said he'd cheer me on, which meant he found a
shady spot and napped. The area below the dam was too crowded,
so I made my way down to the large pool and joined the people
there.
An
hour passed and I was fishless, as were the others. The
below-dam crowd seemed to being doing just as poorly. I
kept turning my attention to the 50 yards of water that
separated the two groups of anglers. It was a stretch of
boulder-strewn rapids, with lots of churning whitewater
between and around the boulders. No one was fishing there.
It looked dangerous.
After
another hour of fruitless fishing, I decided that it didn't
look that dangerous. I was young, fit, reasonably
agile, and not overly bright. So I carefully made my way
from shore, hopping from boulder to boulder. Along the way
I found what I'd hoped I would. Every third or fourth rock
I landed on was large enough to create a small pocket of
relatively quiet water behind it.
I
dunked my worm into one such pocket and seconds later had
a nice 12-inch brookie. The next hour or so was as much
fun as I'd ever had. And I probably used up a decent portion
of my lifetime supply of luck, too. Like a sure-footed billy
goat, I dashed from rock to rock, back to shore to deposit
a fish with my friend, and back to the rapids again. Every
pocket I tried had a fish in it. I only had to use a portion
of a worm. The fish were used to reacting quickly as the
current sped food past them. They would hit immediately.
The legal limit was generous back then (the late 1960's).
I was allowed 15 specs, or 10 pounds plus 1 fish.
In
fairly short order, I had a dozen specs from 10 to 13 inches.
And not a single one of the other fishermen, who all watched
my success, followed suit. I remarked on this to my friend
as we headed back to the main road. He said "yeah,
they must be nuts," and laughed like a loon.
The
storekeeper was as good as his word. We traded ten of the
specs for bread, peanut butter, soft drinks, chocolate bars,
and cigarettes. (Did I mention I wasn't overly bright back
then?) He also promised a breakfast on the house the next
morning.
We
cooked the remaining two fish over a campfire that evening.
And they would have been good too, if they hadn't
kept falling into the fire as we tried to prop them up on
sticks. We had to settle for charred-on-the-outside-sushi-on-the-inside.
But, all in all, it was one of the most memorable experiences
of my life.
Copyright
© 2004 by Ragged Mountain Press. A McGraw-Hill Company
ISBN
0-07-141714-1
.
