Pretty Fly for a Bait Guy

I've fallen away from my roots in the last decade.  Or perhaps I've evolved.  I'm not entirely sure there's a difference.  One thing is certain, I don't fish with conventional rod and reel nearly as much as I used to.  I don't fish with anything nearly as much as I used to, period, but we'll cast that aside for the time being.

It's a natural progression, much written and talked about in fly fishing circles.  Some of us, through boredom or the love of a challenge or the coveting of more sexy gear, eventually leave our spinning rods and baitcasters standing in a forlorn corner obelisk to chase fish and dreams with fly rods.  It happened to me, and it had been quite a few years since I'd been in a good old fashioned bait shop, until recently.

Buddy on planer board watch. Como Lake.

At the farmers market one morning I spied a woman sporting earrings similar to, but not quite spinner blades.  With Randi's birthday approaching, my mind leaped to fashioning earrings for her out of actual spinner blades, knowing she'd appreciate the outdoorsy bent.  In a feat resembling a protracted archaeological dig, I managed to lay hands on my own crawler harnesses from the old catfishing days on Cherokee Marsh and Como Lake, when we used to troll the mud flats for channel cats just like you would for walleyes except with heavier gear (and to only moderate and sporadic success in our case).

There were plenty of blades in my old collection in many sizes and colors, but only a few matching pairs, and mostly beaten and nicked like cheap old diner spoons.  One hatchet blade in bubble gum pink and black would've been perfect were it not for the lack of a matching partner and some unidentifiable crust of fish goo or worm innards.  Not exactly the makings of jewelry for most, although I do know a couple catfishermen who, finding a woman willing to don earrings of such earthy patina, would begin the search for an engagement ring in earnest.  Their wedding colors would be Realtree and Copenhagen, and I'd be there to tap the first half barrel in a plastic tub of ice.

I was about to order some shiny new blades from an online retailer of such things when a novel thought occurred to me... I should go to a bait shop.  I live mere miles from the the biggest inland walleye lake in Wisconsin.  I didn't need the latest in hyper-graphic paint jobs and blade design to fool fish, simply some clean and shiny jewelry fixin's.  Surely a bait shop in walleye country would have a surplus of old blades in bulk.  I was suddenly stunned I hadn't thought of that in the first place.

For the uninitiated: while both fly shops and bait shops exist to provide the tools necessary to chase fish using different methods, there exists an undeniable gulf of differences between the two.  They are, in general, two massively different sides of the same coin.

Many modern fly shops may be described as stylish.  They're appointed and polished.  Sleek.  If a bait shop is the hardware store, many fly shops are the equivalent of a wood grain Apple Store.

If there is a shop dog it will be a German Shorthaired Pointer or a setter, some pointing breed resting comfortably on a canvas and cedar chip bed from which he can preside comfortably over his fiefdom.  There will be beautifully mounted trout on the walls, and always one huge walleye for some reason (or a whitefish out west).  The shop rats will fall into a number of categories, including, but not limited to... the trimly bearded and tatted post-punk modern bug-flinger; replete with piercings, blocky hipster spectacles, and a snarky t-shirt (Fly fishing advice: free. Bait fishing advice: Don't)  He drinks only craft beer and drives a Subaru or Xterra.  The older gentleman in pressed khakis and spendy Filson flannel drinks scotch (or if he's progressive, bourbon, neat), and drives a Volvo.  He prefers to fish dries upstream, but will occasionally deign to fishing nymphs when there's no hatch on, "to pass the time."  If the shop also runs a guide service, there will be a twitchy muttering guide hidden somewhere in the corner so he doesn't bite the patrons, his shoulders copper and broad from a season of toil at the oars of a drift boat.  He drinks whatever the hell anybody sets gingerly near him.

There will be mountains of flies, organized by style, size and color in those display cases with all the little cubicles -- high rise apartments for flies.  Some will be "bought in" as they say, and some will be tied by the shop, the latter having been conceived during fever dreams in the cold off season.  The latest trends in vests and boat bags and waders will adorn the walls, a full kit of which will approach the cost of a year of college tuition.  The latest iteration of the revered Simms wading jacket alone goes, laughably, for over half a thousand dollars... for a raincoat.  Maybe that logo on the chest makes one a better caster.

The best fly shops maintain all of this with an air of comfortable welcome and free coffee near the door.  They're like walking into a nice guest cabin with a warming fire.  The less desirable among them fall deeply into the trappings of effete xenophobia.

At the other end of the spectrum we have the bait shops most of us grew up with.

Where the modern fly shop may be polished, the bait shop most often appears more lived in.  More real, bluntly.  Most are as clean as they need be while remaining a bit scruffy, much like the resident shop dog which, incidentally, will be a good workaday Lab or some other amiable mutt of indeterminate lineage and bountiful good cheer.

There will be minnow tanks in back, gurgling and churning with life and that pervasive, if subtle and pleasant aroma of wriggling life, aerated fresh water, and ammonia.  Some places let you scoop your own minnows while others leave you there peeking under the lid to watch the little guys dart and scatter willy-nilly every time you move, until you can be helped.

There will be dusty mounts of huge walleyes on the walls and always one trout for some reason.  And often, a buck of a size not often seen in that county for the last century with the arrow that felled it resting lightly in its rack.

There will be plastic bins of jigs and hooks in every single size and color ever conceived in the universe, some of them not in popular use since Chubby Checker set the world to twisting.  At the shop I used to frequent there was an eight foot wall of divided Plano boxes set as drawers and filled with ice jigs.  Brimming with thousands of them, tangled in their little prisons so you had to shake one loose to buy it.  Psychedelic pinks and oranges to muted natural tones, from minuscule one dot tear drops to monstrosities obviously constructed in pursuit of a kraken.  From factory paint slopped on junk hardware to quality one-offs from somebody's basement decades ago -- and plenty of the converse.  Well more jigs than I've seen assembled in one place before or since.

Some bait shops are stand-alone affairs, but most are tucked away in the basement of a hardware store or back of a gas station, almost as an afterthought.  In the instance of the latter your customer service representative will vary from a freaked out high school girl pulled from behind the register and afraid to scoop the "icky little fishies"... to a bedraggled guy fresh from cutting some chain and on his way to hauling some sheetrock.

The stand alone bait shops almost always have the proprietor or the proprietor's spouse behind the counter.  These are the best shops.  They know where everything is and most of them care about keeping you as a customer.  They will pass along the fishing report which can later be sussed into equal parts quality information, rumors, and mystical bullshit -- my undying favorite example of such bait shop wisdom being the time a guy behind the counter told us if we were quiet at night in our shacks, we could hear the crappies scraping the underside of the ice for bugs and follow them that way.

Bait shopkeepers are a consistently colorful bunch, and I've had the pleasure of knowing many.  There was Gene with his perpetually filthy canvas work shirt and only the merest acquaintance with the waking world.  When you could rouse him from his torpor his information was solid.  And Red, the excitable fast talker, who, upon only our second meeting, began our conversation by regaling me with a story about the time he woke up in jail after a particularly sanguine bender.

Lastly, with much trepidation, we come to the Scary Lady.

I have no inkling of her given name as she is referred to in hushed tones, fittingly, only as the Scary Lady.  Her ramshackle bait shop, attached to her rural home by a breezeway shuffled together out of warped plywood and prayers, holds a funhouse menagerie of anachronisms and dust bunnies.  It's a big place, deep and long, a warren of aisles and cubby holes festooned with dusty bubble packs and thrice-painted peg boards sporting equal parts full and empty pegs.

One is not allowed to scoop minnows at the Scary Lady's.  No, the dauntless fisherman must wait patiently near the tanks while the Scary Lady separates herself from the hapless stool that supports her impressive girth, and shuffles forward.  The organic aroma of the tanks is soon overpowered by a more feral odor.  The dreaded moment arrives when the fisherman must decide which eye to peer into, the northerly tracking one or the other, seemingly more interested in Illinois.  It should be noted that all attempts at friendly conversation will be flatly ignored.  Transactions take place only through a series of grunts and gesticulations from behind a stringy mat of frightening witch hair, followed by your purchase price appearing mercifully on the register.  Cash only.

Her bait is fresh and lively or nobody would ever go back there again.  Local lore says that during one oppressively hot and humid summer years ago, she appeared in a bathing suit and slipped into one of the bait tanks for a refreshing dip with the shiners.  I hope, for the good of humanity, that is merely an exaggerated folk tale.  On another occasion I know to be true, after I'd paid for my crappie minnows and she'd apparently forgotten in the following instant, she snarled a gravelly, "What is that... what is that," her voice growing louder as she pointed a crooked finger at the minnow bucket in my hand.   Being the staid, fully grown man of the outdoors that I am, I followed her inquiry with the most practical course of action I could come up with -- I scrambled out the door with my bait.  Some would even say I ran, but I prefer to think of it as relieving a poor old woman of her confusion.

You may think the Scary Lady and her exploits a figment of my imagination made up for the enjoyment of my readers, perhaps even an homage to Rancid Crabtree of McManus fame.  I assure you, she is quite real and more frightening than I've managed to describe.  Ask Brian.  If we deem you worthy and brave, we may even take you to visit her sometime.


So it was thus armed that I ventured into a local stand-alone bait shop recently, in search of those spinner blades needed to make earrings.  I found myself in an open and clean bait shop, one that I'd never seen before but knew through memory.

Plenty of earring blades in those dusty old bait shop boxes

The register was attended by the proprietor and her daughter while two ancient, sun-beaten men in seed caps talked about old guy stuff down the counter -- how much the recent rain would bring the river up, and the running concerns of a certain Janice and her useless bum of a husband.

When I related my search for blades as a fly tyer making jewelry,  the owner and her daughter fairly jumped into action.  The daughter is a fellow tyer who produces a locally famous walleye jig, and the mother quickly produced dusty box upon box of bulk spinner blades from the back.  Both were helpful and cheerful in our conversations.

As I finished up my purchase, one of the old guys called over to the daughter, "Hey Brenda, you got a pair of scissors?"

"Yeah... why?"

"I'm gonna cut that goddamn muskrat off his face," pointing at my substantial beard.  Laughs all around.

He continued, ambling over to me, "You ever meet the Fishin' Magician?"

"I haven't," I replied, growing slightly wary.

"Well, now you have, son," shaking my hand.  That earned another laugh from me and eye-rolls from the captive audience who'd obviously been privy to his shtick a few times before.


You can get all the lustrous "latest and greatest" in any modern fly shop, but I'll venture to bet you'll never be treated to a good-natured threat of debeardment on your first arrival there.  And I'm certain you can't get spinner blades... or sun-drenched earring selfies from a happy birthday girl.

The Curse of the First Cast Fish

It was an unseasonably warm and sunny morning on Lake Delavan.  Right around the middle of April, I believe.  Too many fishing seasons have passed to be sure now.  What I do remember is that I had to strip down to my skivvies in the bow of Brian's jon boat to get my long underwear off as we were motoring out.  While I had my bibs and union suit tangled around my boots, struggling to get re-dressed, he goosed the throttle over and over, sending me sprawling to the deck more than once.   Laughing and threatening to tumble me into the frigid spring water, he was having a grand time of it already, and we weren't even fishing yet.

We set up in area known to be good for crappies that time of year.  Minnows on gold Aberdeen #8 hooks below a slip float, a step or two up from the old cane pole on the bank, but not exactly highly technical fishing.  I fiddled with my set-up a bit, making sure the bobber stop was set where I wanted it, giving the split shot an extra scrunch, and finally, letting a minnow fly to plumb the depths in search of my dinner.

It was a thing of beauty, exactly what you want to see.  The bait hit the water, and the float barely had time to right itself before it slumped over again -- the signal that a crappie had risen to hit the minnow as it was falling.  Using the longer rod I prefer for this application, I swept up the slack line I'd not yet had a chance to mend or retrieve, and gave it that little pop of a hookset you use on papermouths.  The light rod bent into a deep arc, and soon enough, a gorgeous foot-long slabber with nice shoulders was brought to hand.  I try not to see them as only meat, but my mouth may have been watering as I tossed him on ice in anticipation of a fish fry that evening.

Then, as often happens when you count your grouse before you hit them, we experienced just about the worst morning of fishing you can have.  Not horrifically bad.  There were no gale force winds, the boat didn't capsize, and nobody died, but you know what I mean.  No more fish.  We fished under floats, we drifted, we tried every color and flavor of live and plastic bait in the boat.  It simply was not happening.  We could mark them, but the sun was high and the wind was low, and they weren't in the mood to play.  The end of our collective rope came around noon as we watched a kid no more than 12, standing on the dock at the launch, pull crappie after crappie after we'd taken the boat out.  The Curse of the First Cast Fish.

We fishermen are a notoriously superstitious bunch.  I do have a trinket or two that I enjoy using or having with me while I fish and hunt, but I'd thought myself fairly immune the mental games of The Curse... until it kept striking.

While I haven't chased them a lot in the past couple years, I do enjoy the freight train pull of the channel cat.  They dig and swirl, and when big enough, threaten to break line and bust tackle.  They always have one more run in them just when you think they're ready for the net..  A commendable attribute in any fish.  They're ugly and spiny and a little tough to handle when they thrash and twist in your hands.  I like that too.  This ain't casting tiny dry flies over timorous golden trout in an idyllic glade.  It's muddy and stinky, and everybody's probably gonna end up bleeding a little by the time it's all said and done.

The place I normally fish for them can be a real riot at the right time of year.  The fish winter in the lake.  At some point they decide to run back up to their summer haunts in the river.  I don't know if it's water temperature, day length, the angle of the sun or the season premier of Biggest Loser that sets them off on their journey against the current, but when the spring rains come, and they bunch up in the lowest reaches of the river to make their run, it can be outstanding for those of us lying in wait with cut bait and baitcasters.

 Moderation is a good thing.  Sometimes two rods are all I can manage in that spot.

We're allowed to use up to three separate lines here, but when they are in the river in spring, I seldom get more than two rods in the water.  The bite is too fast, and the third rod just ends up taunting me.  As if somehow, if I could only get that third line in the water, the catching would be that much greater, when in reality, it would most likely lead only to tangled lines, missed fish, and creative cussing.

On the other hand, more than a couple times in that very spot, the hammer of God has fallen after that first cast fish, and rendered me with a nearly empty cooler (and belly).  I remember a fine April morning that appeared perfectly nasty for the cats in my spot.  A warm wind barreled in from the west, churning the little backwater nearly to whitecaps, beating the last remnants of busted shore ice into submission.  The sun shone, but not too brightly, and the water level was very high.  All excellent conditions for chasing the bewhiskered torpedoes of bone and muscle.

I leaned hard into the wind as I walked down to my favorite shore fishing spot, having decided it was slightly less idiotic to fish the gale out in the cover of willows than in a boat.  I was thrilled to be out in perfect conditions for the spot, battered by gusts and vernal hormones.  I cast hard into the teeth of the gale, my cut-up sucker falling well short of the intended target, but it did not matter.  Before I could get the second line in the water, I heard a bait clicker screaming over the howling wind and looked to see the first rod bent over nearly double.  Perfect, I thought.  This day is going to be spectacular if we don't end up getting blown to Kansas.

But that was it.  The only fish of a long day watching clouds whip by at a very impressive clip.  The Curse was at work again.  It's to the point that I almost dread catching a fish on the first cast now.

So it was last weekend at camp.  Most of us arrived Friday for Drink Beer Burn Wood 2012.  Handshakes abounded, venison made it's way to the grill, and glasses were raised between friends.  Saturday morning, a handful of us headed down to the tiny lake at the end of the road to assess the mood of the panfish under the ice.  On the advice of a friend who had seen a solitary ice fisherman out there for part of the week, we drifted out to his spot, and popped a half dozen holes.  I may have marked a fish or two on the Vexilar, but it was pretty barren so we packed up the gear, and headed to a bigger lake down the road.

We trudged out on snow gone soft and mushy in the sun.  I know this lake much better.  A hole was drilled in a likely spot, I knelt in the snow and lowered down a miniscule teardrop jig tipped with a sliver of scented plastic, my first try on that water for the day.  I saw him racing up from the bottom on the Vexilar, and almost before I could react felt the distinctive pop.  I hoisted my smallish perch to the topside of the ice, and that was it for me.  Hours later, after many holes and every combination of jig and bait I could think of, every drop speed and jigging motion I could muster, my count held steady at one perch.  And that single fish did not even have the common courtesy to call up a pike as he struggled below my tip-up the rest of the fishing day.  We marked fish most of the morning, but could not get them to bite, which may be a topic for an entirely new post on outdoor frustrations that make you want to punch yourself in the face

I did, however, manage to accomplish my singular goal for the trip.  Richard, a native boy of the south transplanted to the land of hard water fishing by marriage, was along for the trip.  While I promised nothing, it was my secret hope to get him his first fish through the ice.  Not long after I landed my behemoth, he was able to pull an equally impressive ringback from the grassy depths.  And then, just as I had shown him, he succumbed to the Curse of the First Cast Fish.  

Sorry, bro.  I promise not to catch one on the first drop next time.