It's not where you fish, it's the Barbie bait you use By Anthony Buccino |
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My pal Stinky sliced a bit of liver
from a stash in his mom’s old Tupperware container, put it on
the hook, cast it out, and, wham, another trout.
In
those long ago summer days, he could have been driving us to
Diamond Mill Pond in Millburn, was too
far to ride our bikes from
Stinky used to catch all the fish. I never
got many bites besides the ones from insects. All I ever wanted to do was catch a fish,
then throw it back without getting too much fish slime on me or my
clothes. Stinky was the fisherman among us. He had
learned everything he knew from his Uncle Harry. With what Uncle Harry taught Stinky, he put
a kernel of corn on the hook, cast it in the water and caught a
trout. Or Stinky sliced a bit of liver from a stash
in his mom’s old Tupperware container, put it on the hook, cast it
out, and, wham, another trout. There were times, I swear that Stinky could
put a hook in one of my old G. I. Joe dolls and catch a lunker. Sometimes we used worms. Stinky and I would
both spear the hapless worm on our hooks, cast out and wait. And
wait. And wait. Then Stinky got a strike and pulled in
another trout or bass or perch or whatever it was he said it was.
Back then, I didn’t much know one fish from
another.
Since I never caught any, it didn’t
matter anyhow whether I was catching carp or tarpon or minnows at
Diamond Mill Pond or Branch Brook Park or Clark’s Pond or the
Mudhole in I always figured if I was lucky enough to
catch a fish, at least Stinky would tell me what it was and if it
was legal to keep. Not that I’d keep it, but I figured it was
important to know if what I caught was legal or not before I threw
it back into the water.
A few times Stinky and I would prepare
for our big trip to the distant honeyhole by gathering night
crawlers in my dad’s
We’d meet after it was dark awhile with our
flashlights and Stinky would lead the way through the garden,
darting down and filling his coffee can. “It’s easy, Tonoose,” he’d say, “just look
for the worms outside where the flashlight shines and grab the worm
before he gets back into his hole.” He was getting all the dumb worms, I was
missing all the smart ones. He had his coffee can filled in no time
while I turned mine over and used it as a tom-tom and hummed, “Glow
little glow worm, glimmer . . .” Stinky read in one of his Uncle Harry’s
outdoors magazines that if you put your used coffee grinds in an old
coffee can and mixed in some grass and mud and stuff, then your
worms would last a long time. At first we weren’t going to put any holes
in the plastic coffee can lid. We figured worms live underground, so
why would they need air holes? But then Stinky used his scientific
outdoors-magazine reading mind and thought it best to punch some
holes in the lid so the worms could breathe but not get out. As it turned out, by the time it came the
morning for us to go fishing with our used coffee can worms, they
had all turned into mush or disappeared in the sour smelling can.
So, we had to dump the can and dig the edge
of the garden for some fresh worms to take fishing with us. In all the years since Stinky and I toured
the county looking for the one that got away, I’ve fished the
Lackawaxen River and Lake Wallenpaupak in Pennsylvania, Lake Erie in
Ohio and Musconetcong, the river and the lake, Lake Hopatcong,
Farrington Lake, and Little Swartswood in the Garden State with only
slightly more success than when we were teenagers. I’ve expanded my bag of tricks to include
fake worms, fake fish, lures, spoons, spinners, fake frogs, fake
mice, fake spiders and funny kind of marshmallow baits that the fish
are supposed to find irresistible, with pretty much the same
results. It is only now that I am quickly rowing
toward middle age that my pining for the perfect lure has struck a
chord of sympathy in the ink-stained hearts of my colleagues here at
the newspaper that someone has found the perfect lure that is
guaranteed to help me catch a 14-pound bass from the Second River.
Years and years of research has led my
colleague, who goes by the initials Paul O’Keefe, to share his
recently discovered secret fish-catching recipe from a confidential
source at a national weekly newspaper. After swearing me to secrecy, POK, as we
refer to him in shorthand, fished deeply into the pile of very
important papers neatly filed on his desk and produced proof of the
success of the secret weapon fish-catcher that would change my
fishing experiences forever. I’ve seen the pictures and the story, and I
never thought it could be so obvious or simple. It seems a fellow down in Florida caught a
14-pound bass in Lake Okeechobee using for his bait a Barbie doll
with sets of treble hooks in the stomach and neck.
According to the article in
Weekly World News, fisherman
Bob Morele has used his Barbie lures to catch hundreds of bass. Now all the worms in my neighborhood have
breathed a collective sigh of relief . . . but my daughter has
locked up her Barbie collection, even though she hasn’t used the
dolls in years, she won’t let me take Barbie fishing. It’s as if she actually could think that I
could be that desperate to catch a lunker. What are they teaching
kids today about grown-ups, I can’t figure out. Maybe when she’s snoozing, I’ll trek into
the attic and see what kind of junk might be lying around collecting
dust that should be thrown out. Yep. That's it. Just as soon as everybody's asleep, that's what I'll do. Meanwhile, I'll just catch a nap and dream of Lunker Lake.
First published in The
Independent Press of Bloomfield by Worrall Community Newspapers,
August 8, 1996
Adapted from Rambling Round - Inside and Outside at the Same Time © 1996-2017 by Anthony Buccino |
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