Fishin' Jewelry

Field and Stream, November 1927

This is Sigurd Olson's first published magazine article.

The two of us, Wildcat Dan and I had just stowed away enough fish mulligan to last us a week. We were enduring the ominous silence that always comes between such an achievement and the inevitable suggestion, "Well, guess we'd better clean up the mess."

After some fifteen minutes of bliss, I looked at Dan and he at me, both with the same blank expression of helplessness. Finally, Dan heaved a ponderous sigh and rose to his feet. "Well," he started in, "I suppose," and he looked at me rather pleadingly. "I guess, partner, I've et too much. Let's leave the dishes tills mornin'."

"Good idea," answered I, greatly relieved. "Guess we both feel the same way."

With one accord, we pushed the supper dishes to the end of the table, just far enough back in the dark, so that they couldn't reproach us visibly at least for not washing them. It was all we could do after that to stagger over to our respective bunks. Our pipes were soon going, and a feeling of lazy comfort and peace pervaded the cabin.

As I watched the blue smoke curl up around the rafters I wouldn't have traded places with anyone else in the world. I knew then, as I have often known since, that there is nothing so soul-satisfying and conducive to perfect contentment as a full stomach and a good place to rest, after a day in the brush. Then to top it off, the rain began to patter softly against the south windows, and the hour was opportune for piscatorial dreams.

Neither of us said a word for perhaps a half hour. From my corner I could see old Dan sitting on the edge of his bunk, eyes half closed, smoking contentedly. Presently, he started taking short, spasmodic puffs, and I waited expectantly. A few long ones, and he began.

"You was askin' me t'other day 'bout bass, and since then I've been thinkin' 'bout a fellow that came up here some eight or nine year ago. He was crazier 'n you 'bout fishin', and had the dangdest outfit along I ever did see--little red flies, white ones, brown ones, colored trinkets, and all sorts of funny wooden bugs. When I saw it the first time, I asked him what he planned on doin' with all that pile o' jewelry, but he only laughed and said he was goin' to show us lumberjacks how to catch bass.

"Well, I'd caught plenty of 'em with frogs and minners and told him so, but never in all my life with such an ornery collection as what he had. Between you and me, I thought he was a little bit off, but told him to go ahead an' see what he could do.

"Then he started askin' me where they was any, and I told him we used to ketch 'em pretty plenty up at Grass Lake some twenty years ago, when this camp was runnin' logs down the river, but that it hadn't been fished much since. Right away this feller gets interested and wants to know where it was and all about it.

"I told him as clost as I could figger it was 'bout a mile northwest of Bray Lake, an' as far as I knew there wasn't no trail. Just the same he was bound to go and stayed with me all that night.

"Well, next mornin' before daylight, he was hittin' the brush an' he didn't come back till just before dark. But dang it all if he didn't have the fines' string o' bass I ever did see. Right then and there I took back all I'd said 'bout his jewelry. Before he left he gave me a couple o' those bugs an' flies, but I never did get time to try 'em out. One o' those bass he brought in musta weighed seven pounds if he weighed an ounce."

Then followed a long series of puffs.

"Son," he said after some time, "I'd like to see you go up an' try that lake. They must be some big ones in there yet. In the ole days we had a scow up there, an' in the early mornin's, jus' when the mist was risin' off o' the rushes around the aidge, we'd ketch all we could eat with a couple o' frogs before breakfast.

By that time, I was sitting bolt upright on the edge of my bunk, wondering if I was really awake. Imagine having an old-timer tell you of a lake that had hardly been fished for twenty years and full of bass up to seven pounds or more. Before I had time to ask him about its location, he told me where I'd find a stub of a pencil and an old envelope. It was too good to be true. All I had to do was write down directions and in the morning seek the promised land.

"I'm pretty old and stiff to go up myself but I can tell you pretty close how to get there," he assured me. "Now if you'll gimme your pencil, I'll try and draw you a map."

Slowly and laboriously he sketched a rough map on the back of the envelope. Then, with the stem of his pipe, he traced the trail from Bray to Grass Lake.

"Foller up the shore of Bray Lake north from the cabin till you strike a swale, then strike straight northwest for three-quarters of a mile, and there you'll find her, right in front of you. You can' miss it."

I stowed the map away religiously in my shirt pocket. "That's news to me," I answered. "If I don't bring back the brother to that seven pounder tomorrow night, I'll buy you grub for a month."

We smoked a while longer and talked bass, deer hunting and game laws till we were both sleepy. Then we turned in. I was far too excited to think of sleep, but finally dropped off, only to dream of monster black bass striking insanely at every cast. Right in the midst of it, I was awakened by Dan's "Roll out! Daylight in the swamp!"

Breakfast was finished hurriedly, and I plunged into the rain-drenched brush just as daylight was breaking over the east shore of Bray Lake. I might just as well have taken an ice cold shower, for in a minute I was soaked to the skin. I followed Dan's map carefully and in half an hour found myself on a high brushy hill overlooking an alder-fringed lake, not half a mile away. Then followed a mad scramble through some of the most dense jungle I had ever seen. The entire slope was burned over and grown up thickly with popple brush. The ground itself was a maze of charred windfalls interlaced with the prickly vines of raspberry. Half the time I was balanced precariously on downed timber or extricating myself from a network of tangled brush.

Arriving finally at the lake, I found the shore was partly sand and partly mud. All along the edge lay windfalls with inviting bunches of lily pads nestling around their submerged tips. I hit the shore at just such a spot and nervously rigged up my tackle.

While trying to fasten a brown fly to a swivel spinner, I succeeded in running the hook clean through the sleeve of my shirt. I tried most carefully to back it out, but try as I might the barb refused to come. It seemed as though I had worked half the morning before I finally ripped it out in sheer desperation.

Wading out to my waist, so that I could cast without encumbering myself with the whole shoreline, I unlimbered and let the fly sail out toward a bunch of lily pads. It settled gracefully on the edge of a leaf, rested just a second and slipped off. Bang! and a big green form splashed the whole end of the windfall. I let him have it and struck. Yes, I struck, and my bedraggled fly came dancing merrily back over the disturbed ripples.

I cast again and again, but not another rise did I get. Finally deciding that I must have hooked him pretty badly, I left the windfall and waded up the shore, casting at every likely spot. Some places literally screamed black bass, but no lure I had would bring even a half-hearted strike. By ten o'clock I had fished clear around the lake, with only one strike to my record and that the first.

I was pretty discouraged and was beginning to think that Old Dan's story was a fizzle or that I was a poor excuse for a fisherman. I sat down on a log to think things over, wondering if there wasn't some place I had missed. I did remember one, where the mud had been so soft that I couldn't wade out to cast, and had gone back through the alders to the next likely spot. It was half-way around the lake, but nevertheless I decided to try it.

Back I went, creeping carefully through the brush until I was at the water's edge. The mud was much too soft to hold me, so I stepped on a log lying near, without touching the windfuall at whose end I was to cast. It was rather a ticklish place at best, for the branch grew so close to the shore that casting was difficult.

Finding a little opening in the leaves, I tipped my rod back and sailed the fly out over the end of the windfall. It alighted gently a few inches from a big lily pad at the very top of the windfall. Slap! A boiling swirl of water, and the fly started for depths unknown. This time I hooked him firmly, and the fight was on in dead earnest. First he dashed for a tangle of half-sunken brush, and then just as wildly for the lily pads farther out. At every run I exprected to see the line come floating limply to the top. Then down he went, and by the fierce, tugging jerks I knew that he was sulking at the bottom. Keeping my balance on the slippery log made it doubly interesting.

Once, as I lost my balance, I stepped in up to my knees in the soft ooze and let out ten feet of precious slack while getting back on the log. I thought that was the finish, but when I recovered my line, he was still on. Finally he seemed to be tiring, so I began to urge him a little. But no sooner did he feel the added pressure, then out he sped again for deep water.

Out, out, he went, while the handle whizzed through my fingers. I tried to hold him back, but still the reel screeched. There were only a few yards left when all of a sudden he stopped dead and started to sulk. Here I got in a few yards of slack and, thinking he was done for, began to bring him in. This time he changed his tactics. In he rushed straight toward me, while I reeled madly.

When about twenty feet away, out of the water he came, shaking his head in a last desperate effort. Not once but three times did he come, making each jump wilder than the one before. All I could do was wind, wind, and keep the tip of my rod up.

The third jump took his last ounce of strength, for after that he came in sullenly. I slipped my hands into his gills and lifted from the water one of the finest bass it has ever been my joy to catch, and one of the best fighters. I laid him down tenderly on a bed of moss and for a long time watched the play of light on the bronze and green of his scales. It was one of those supreme moments that come in the life of every fisherman when he realizes for once that the big one didn't get away.

After that Grass Lake seemed more cheerful. The sky was bluer and the birds sang more light heartedly than ever. I had solved the mystery and every windfall after that was cast at not from the water but from the shore. By late afternoon I had landed two more splendid fish, almost as large as the first and neither under five pounds.

If I had used a boat, I would have had my limit, but I was more than satisfied. I had discovered a new sport, one as yet unrivaled for me--stalking black bass from the shore. It was almost dark before I reached the cabin at Bray Lake. As I came down the trail old Dan saw me and yelled, "What luck?"

I answered as unconcernedly as I could. "Oh, I got a few, Dan."

I had put in a strenuous day. Few times in my life have I ever worked harder physically in quest of sport and never have I had a better day. Have you ever been so tired that you felt you could not go on? Have you ever argued that question with yourself as you exerted all your will power to keep moving?

It seemed as though I never would reach the cabin, even though it was only a scant hundred yards away. I did finally arrive, however, and with great inward satisfaction spread out my catch for Dan's appraisal.

For a moment he looked at them in silence. Then he blurted out, "Well I'll be goll-danged if that fool fishin' jewelry ain't turned the trick again!"