I was about 10 years old walking the bank of a creek feeding into an inlet of
Watts Bar lake in east Tennessee; looking for snakes. I had a store bought cane
pole with me because the last time I’d left the pole plus night crawler on the
bank I met my first carp who had the pole bobbing up and down about 100 feet
from shore. Fortunately a near-by boat retrieved the pole and carp. Thus began
my vendetta with Cyprinus carpo but those are other tales.
It looked like good black snake territory but there in the middle of the creek swam three, foot-long, shiny fish; taunting me. They’d probably been talking to the carp. I don’t remember if a conventional approach was tried. If it was it failed as some other tactic was plainly needed.
In east Tennessee there grow thorn trees. The trees aren’t especially big but the thorns are. And store bought cane poles come in sections. Thorns come off thorn trees and fit, well enough, into the metal section connectors of store bought cane poles.
Now I know what you’re thinking. ”Fat chance kid”. It’s probably what I was thinking and possible what the three skipjack (Alosa chrysochloris) were thinking. As I said, they had probably been talking to the carp.
Well the story two of the skipjack carried back to Mr. Carp hopefully wiped the silly grin off his face. “On the first throw, we couldn’t spawning believe it”.
This was not the first, or the last, sawed-off sportsman adventure but it does capture the genre.
ML
1/17/07
(Title by ED)
