Swamp Things, Pt. 5

I did very nearly catch one of these bruisers. On a night either just before or after I graduated from high school, under a clearing twilit sky, I worked a straight, calf-deep run dotted with piles of brush that had snagged on sunken limbs. As my crawler drifted past one of these brushpiles the line paused and I struck to feel the stolid, unyielding pull of Swamp Thing brown. He ran upstream, taking line from me, but I stopped him near the head of the run and worked him back, steering him carefully away from the brush. I gained maybe five feet of line before he took it back, but again I stopped him, and when I began reeling I brought him even closer. We seesawed like that for a while, though each of the fish's runs were shorter, and I got him a little nearer after each. Eventually I had him within six feet. I began to imagine that photo of him and me in the sports section of the Gazette, and craned to get a look at what Kalamazooans would soon be admiring. I couldn't make the fish out clearly in the murky flow, but every time he shook I saw a bronze flash the size of a volleyball. But even if I couldn't see him, he was tiring, coming in slowly but surely. Finally, I thought, I would best one of the Swamp Things.

Of course, you know what happened.

How it happened is that when I turned to look for a spot to beach my trophy, he got a second wind and took off upstream in a deliberate, unhurried run that made me think he wasn't terribly concerned about being caught. I tried to stop him but barely managed to slow him down. Soon he had pulled the line through one of the small brushpiles in the run where it snagged, then almost immediately went slack. I'd been congratulating myself on playing the fish so well, only to find the fish wasn't the one being played.

You may ask: just how big were these fish? Based on trout I've caught since then, I'd guess they were near and above twenty inches long. Very respectable fish anywhere (and a rare catch for most of us), though usually not unmanageable unless you're using very light tackle or fishing in very tight quarters--which on these occasions I was. Given the size of the stream, I was never going to get a chance to play one of these sharks in open water. I did have control over the tackle I used, but almost always fished light. I first encountered these fish using six 6 lb. test line on a light spincasting rod, though later came to prefer 4 lb. on an ultralight Shakespeare spinning outfit. The light line allowed a smoother drift and was less visible in the usually clear water. The light rods had the sensitivity to pick up the lightest bites (and, frequently, the Swamp Things bit lighter than much smaller fish). A few times I assaulted the Swamp with my 6 foot medium duty spinning rod and 10 lb. test line, but I never hooked one of the Swamp Things with the heavy weaponry. Besides, using it in that small stream felt like trying to do caligraphy with the point of a shovel.

(Concludes Tomorrow)