Cow Creek did not run all year. In early summer it was generally broken into isolated pools, partly mud-bottomed and partly rock, lined with willows and weeds and shaded in part by elms.
Its borders were pastureland but the cropland was only a little way back and a good rain always turned the creek chocolate, the eroding wheat and corn fields only partly held by tiling. Contour farming hadn't appeared then. After a rain catfishing might be good. But there were bass in Cow Creek and I had never caught a bass. Don had.
Don had caught his bass, several of them, with an old bamboo casting rod, a Shakespeare casting reel, silk line that he dried meticulously after every use, and an Al Foss Shimmy Wiggler with a pork rind that was carefully soaked in brine between trips. When I got my casting outfit it came from Montgomery Ward. The rod was tubular steel and the reel cost ninety-eight cents. I got my plug in town, a Creek Chub Crawdad with rubber legs, and I still have it although the rubber legs have rotted away long since. At first I used silk line but I soon learned crochet thread worked just as well and was much cheaper.
You fished Cow Creek at night, pitch dark or moonlight. That was supposed to be the best time. It never occurred to us to doubt it and it was my first trip that made me a bass fisherman forever. There were three of us, Don, Joe and I, grade-schoolers in straw hats, blue shirts, and bib overalls. Joe had an outfit like mine except for the plug, and it is strange I cannot remember his lure, for all else remains so clear--the walk through dust in twilight, the slow cooling of sticky Kansas summer, the clacking scatter of grasshoppers before dark and the fireflies along the creek as night fell. We called them lightning bugs. There was the repeated hoot of a single owl later on and a segment of moon appeared soon after the sun was gone, reflecting from the Rock Hole pool. At its head was only a slow movement of water.
I had learned to cast a little at a farm pond, using a bobber and sinker, but in the dark it was difficult to spread the line evenly on the spool and I thumbed very hard to prevent a backlash, warm spray from the reel touching my face and wetting my hand. Our carbide lamp was left in the grass well back, its light averted from the water but ready for use if tackle needed attention.
We had cast patiently for more than an hour with the attitude of trophy seekers who accept days of failure for a single chance. When the bass struck at my Crawdad plug the lure was somewhere in the black moon shadow of an elm that stood across the creek. I had never heard a fish splash so loudly. I thought then that there was a mighty yank on my rod but now I believe the bass may have missed entirely by either design or accident and that the yank was an imaginary part of what I considered a demonstration of uncontrollable violence. He did not bother my plug again and the three of us stood close together as small boys do in the dark and discussed the attack in hushed excitement.
We went back to our casting and this time a fish took Don's old Shimmy Wiggler and his startled response broke the old bamboo casting rod with a snap like that of a dry cornstalk. Don backed hurriedly up the bank and what he yelled I do not remember but Joe and I dropped our tackle and rushed to help. We grabbed the line and rushed far up through the weeds and when we stopped the fish was 40 feet from water. I remember the wet form in the grass, gleaming in moonlight and flopping a little while we cut off any possible return to the creek, and we viewed the precious Wiggler with awe.
Before I slept that night I watched a cooling breeze move the bedroom window curtains in moonlight and I was sure my turn would come soon. I resolved to devote my life to catching largemouth bass.
This story originally appeared in The Part I Remember by Charles F. Waterman. Copyright (c) 1974 by Charles F. Waterman. All rights reserved.
Home | Library | Fishing | Freshwater Fishing