The Old Timers Fishing Club

Posted on 09. Sep, 2008 by in Literature

This past weekend my wife and I had the pleasure of attending the fall outing of our Old Timers Fishing Club. I guess there are several ways you could describe us. The words “motley crew” come to mind. Or, perhaps we could more aptly be called a rag tag bunch of older men and women who love to fish and thoroughly enjoy each other’s company. We’re farmers, and engineers, teachers and factory workers, office workers and shop workers. White collar, blue collar, it makes no difference. When we meet, we’re all equal. And one thing’s for sure… we have fun!

We fished on a chain of seven lakes, with various degrees of angling success to show for our efforts. We fried out, consumed a few libations together, dined out one evening, even sat around a small table at our motel, eating a continental breakfast and sharing story after story, every fish tale the-honest-to-God’s-truth, of course.

Take this one, for example:

Saturday was our first full day to go fishing. We’d planned to meet in the motel lobby around 6:45 am, but at 5:15 I was awakened (at least I think I was awakened; maybe I dreamed it all?) by a strange series of noises seemingly emanating from the hallway.

You see, Friday night, arrival night, when it was Old Timers’ sack time, I thought everybody was permanently sleeping by 11:15. But I was wrong… maybe? I’ll let the reader be the judge because here’s what I heard from the night clerk. Now he may have been exaggerating, or maybe it was only a dream he had but…

According to him (please don’t tell his boss… aka owner’s daughter, girlfriend Veronica), at around 5:15 am, Saturday morning he was blissfully dozing in front of the computer behind the counter. Suddenly he was startled awake by the sound of the front doors rattling. Now he’d locked those doors (he says it was for security reasons, but… maybe he just wanted to sneak a nap) when he thought everybody was sleeping.

So, he got up, stretched, rubbed his eyes, somehow avoided stepping on the two old, grey whiskered, chubby, snoring beagles on the lobby carpet and let in the door-knockers. He says (now this may just be in his dream, mind you) that there were two very happily giggling Old Timers ladies standing there. After giving him huge hugs, putting their index fingers to their lips and loudly whispering, “Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. We don’t want to wake anybody up,” off they went down the hallway.

In the back of their hair… BIG eagle feathers standing straight up. Their purses were clinking and clanking (he said it sounded like a bunch of quarters). And they were loudly singing “Happy Days are Here Again,” and “God Bless America.” When they reached the door to their room, they turned back to him, blew good night kisses to him and retreated to their room for the night.

So, did he dream that? Or did it really happen? I’ll let you decide. But you may want to consult with Old Timers Mary and Sharon before you make your final judgment.

* * *

At any rate, Saturday morning found my fishing partner, Randy, and I at the boat landing, ready to launch. I know the reader will find it absolutely incredible, but… our wives, Whip and Babs, actually decided that there are other things in life that’re more fun than fishing with their hubbies! Unbelievable.

So there the two of us were, Randy and me, devastated that we wouldn’t be able to spend the day untangling our wives’ rat’s nest monofilament lines, baiting their hooks, removing caught fish from their lines and trying to be sure we didn’t drive our boats too fast or too slow to suit our fraus. Fact is, there wouldn’t even be anyone along to tell us to be sure to put on suntan lotion! Sad. Lonely.

Now Randy is a bear of a man, a soon-to-be-retired OTR truck driver. Reddish face, white walrus moustache, blue eyes, a deep gravel voice, a great sense of humor and, above all, a natural born navigator. Randy is a veritable fish-finding machine. In short, except for the blue eyes, he’s everything I’m not.

I’ll give you an example of Randy’s navigational and fish finding skills.

He took one look at our Hotspots Fishing Map and, intuitively knew where we should fish! I looked at the same map. Nothing.

The lakes on our chain, in order, were lakes Lookout, and Duck; Nada, Ziltch, the twin lakes of Noway and Goway, and the last lake of the chain, Sparkling Diamond. None of those names meant a thing to me. One look at the map by Randy, though, and he knew… Sparkling Diamond would be our destination.

Without further delay we launched and headed out for the day. Now Randy, being wise in the ways of the world but especially knowledgable about the wiles of fishermen and fisherwomen, decided that we should leave a false trail to our destination. Foil the fishing spies. Those who knew nothing about fishing, totally unlike my partner. Those who would stop at almost nothing to find out good places to fish. Randy, of course, didn’t inform me of this ploy of his until we actually reached Sparkling Diamond Lake. Guess he figured that if I really knew the truth, I might try to fake my actions and inadvertently let the cat out of the bag. Maybe even catch a fish or two, as unlikely as that may be.

So, 2 1/2 hours later, we arrived at Sparkling Diamond Lake. In the meantime, we pretended to fish at numerous locations. Fact is, we even tied on real lures and made a show of trying to catch something. But, of course, we didn’t catch a fish.

We even cruised around a couple of the lakes twice, zigging and zagging. Pretending we didn’t know what we were doing or where we were going! Would you believe it?

At one point, two musky fishermen caught up to us and actually began casting their lures right across our bow, intending to steal our fake fishing spot, I guess. Randy, being the quiet mannered trucker that he is, politely informed them in the mildest possible trucker language, that they were in our spot. They ignored us and kept right on fishing there, much to Randy’s scarcely concealed delight, he later informed me.

On the way back to the boat launch at the end of our fishing day, those two musky hunters were still there , steaming mad! I swear I could see smoke coming out of their ears as we passed them. Their arms and shoulders looked very tired. They were audibly gnashing their teeth. Randy and I waved and grinned but they wouldn’t return our waves. Barely even glanced our way. RUDE! Ungrateful welps! Ha! Serves’m right.

At another fake fishing spot, and in full view of a couple of eager spies sitting on the porch of a nearby cottage pretending to eat their breakfasts while, in reality, spying on us, Randy complimented me on what I thought was a major fishing mistake on my part! You see, I took a fishing lure, put a bait on it, picked up my fishing pole, tossed the bait overboard, and watched it sink out of sight. But lo and behold, I neglected to tie the lure to the fishing line first!

I was mortified. Red faced. Embarrassed. Until… Randy told me that he often uses what he calls “the phantom knot” technique when he’s pretending to be fishing. That way you’re absolutely sure that you won’t catch anything. I have to admit, I would never have thought of actually doing that on purpose. Randy is my hero. Randy is my mentor.

* * *

And did we catch fish! I mean, we really caught fish on Sparkling Diamond Lake. We caught a walleye (though someone back at the hotel later on asked us, “What’s that thing?” We replied, “It’s a walleye, of course!” To which the curious innocent replied, “Oh, that’s what it is? I’ve never seen one that small before). She, of course, was joking.

We caught rock bass, a couple of bluegills, a pumpkinseed, several perch, some beautiful crappies and even a 17″ smallmouth bass! What a great day we spent on Diamond Lake. Randy took pictures of our catch on his digital camera and he’s even going to post some on the Internet.

Now that worried me. I mean, if a viewer wasn’t really discerning, that viewer might actually think that our fish were much smaller than they appeared in the pictures. And, horrors! They might even think that maybe Randy used his zoom lens to distort reality, something that Randy would never consider. Or that I maybe held the fish closer to the camera lens with me standing farther back. Fact is, that same viewer might even think our 18″ bass was actually smaller than it appeared!

So, being the computer geek that I am (a fact well known among the Old Timers) Randy asked me how to post those pictures, especially pictures of me and my fish, on the Internet. I told him what to do with his digital camera. I said, “Push the REV button. That means that you will be reviewing the pictures. Then scroll to the picture that you want and push the DEL button. That means that picture is DELightful. Then press the OK button. If a message comes up that asks if you really want to DEL that picture, push the OK button.”

I”m glad I told him the right thing to do. Sure wouldn’t want to take a chance on losing pictures of our fish, especially the one of the 19″ bass!

* * *

Back at the boat launch, we decided to release the 20″ bass rather than bring it back to the motel to show it off. I mean, all those people handling and oohing and ahhhhing over one fish might damage it and kill it, so we released it.

Evening came. We all gathered at a member’s home and he treated us to a delicious meal of grilled steak and tons of beans, salads, cakes, pies, pickles, cakes, pies, grilled mushrooms, cakes, pies, fruit salads and cakes and pies. Way too soon, 10 pm rolled around and it suddenly dawned on us. Our fish were still in the cooler! We hadn’t cleaned them yet!

Oh myyyyy. What to do? Well, it just so happens that one of our members, Kyle, is a fish cleaning expert. But it was very dark outside and there were no lights by the fish cleaning bench. Hey, no problem. We’re VETERAN outdoorsmen. Two of the guys, one being Kyle, remembered that they had head lamps in their trucks (never mind the fact that those headlamps had been in the trucks since the end of the deer season last year, sometime in early December). Fortunately the headlamps, though quite dim, still worked.

Kyle, with Randy’s assistance and my expert advice and supervision, began to clean the fish.

Problem was, Kyle is left handed and he only had a right handed filet knife! What to do? I mean, it was quite dark outside despite the dim headlamps. Nevertheless, Kyle began to do the fileting. Now anyone knows that you can’t really filet well if you’re using a right handed filet knife left handed. Soon, after seeing Kyle wipe a torrent of nervous perspiration from his forehead with the back of his wrist, Randy and I began to offer helpful suggestions.

“You should cut closer to the hilt of the knife,” suggested Randy.

“Maybe you should tip the fish over,” I opined. Then I wisely added, “Also, instead of cutting from the head toward the tail, maybe you could cut from the tail to the head?”

Randy whispered (somewhat furtively and secretly, I might add) a couple of other instructions to Kyle, instructions that I… being hard of hearing… couldn’t hear. Shortly thereafter, Kyle whipped confidently through the rest of the fish and soon earned an A- (“Nobody gets an A+,” Randy said) from Randy and me.

We walked back inside the hotel to the lobby, with Kyle carrying a newspaper full of fish offal in one hand and a pile of fish filets (amazingly, about three times as many filets as you usually get from that many fish) in the other.

Suddenly one of the women shrieked, “Get a doctor. OMG, get a nurse. Call Babs. She’s a nurse!” and she pointed at Kyle. But not to worry, though. It was just a false alarm. What she thought was a bit of bloody skin hanging from the tip of Kyle’s nose was actually just a bit of fish filet, deposited there when Kyle wiped the perspiration from his nose with the back of his wrist.

Somehow, though, that was the culmination, the coup de grace as it were, of an outstanding weekend with the Old Timers Fishing Club. Now we need to start planning our next event. Maybe a January excursion to Little Sturgeon would be in order. We’ll be sure not to post the dates, though. We’re afraid that everybody would leave the ice, knowing that we’re coming. I mean, why spoil somebody else’s fun just so us Old Timers can have ours, right!

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