Pigs and Bulls
“Alright, it’ s six o’clock, time for a beer”, my buddy said. We’d been out on the water since four, caught a few largemouth and some really nice bluegills. My friend let Drake lick them all after my stern caution about bad karma if we bypassed him. Thus good fishing continued.
I threw the anchor out, reached into the cooler, took out a couple ice cold ones, took two ice cold pint glasses with the Golden Drake logo etched into them out of their ziplock bags, and immediately they frosted over. “Might as well be civilized about this”, I said, pouring two glasses full. What an amazing sight to a guy with a parched throat.
We sat on the comortable seats on the Golden Drake “flats” boat, drinking great cold brew, and Drake laid down under our legs for a nap. We had been using our typical plastic worms and tubes with circle hooks, 9′ light action rods with six pound test - you know the rigs the experts say “won’t work”. The sun was high, so the fish were here and there, and deep, and I was anticipating the evening change of the sun angle and a migration of hungry fish from the deep edge of the drop off up on to the flats to feed. It was easy to sit there sipping a great beer and talking to a good friend about fishing, business, and life. This is of equal importance and equally rewarding as fishing itself.
My friend, business associate, and guest of Drake and I for the evening was Bruce Clevenger, our sales rep for Heritage and Native kayaks and a host of wonderful accessories, plus Bruce is the top notch Kayak instructor. He owns Quietworld Sports in Jackson, Michigan, www.quietworldsports.com . That’s not a shameless plug, I am confident telling the watersports world about Bruce and his organization. If you’re into watersports, you’d simply be better off knowing him.
We finished our beers (for that moment in time), and resumed fishing, which had improved, as the sun was lowering in the horizon. As far as numbers and sizes, I’d guess we were at about 10 largemouth bass, most of which were in the 14″ range. The bluegills were in the 8″ range, caught on small ultralights and twister tails, or hand tied jigs. Bruce caught one “pig” largemouth about 16″, but super fat, and a couple of blugills in the 9″ range we simply call “bulls”. This was good fishin’.
“I brought some stuff to eat”, Bruce said, and proceeded to lay out one of the coolest spreads of boat chow I had seen in a while. “You can bartend”, he said. Fair enough. Cheddar cheese, fresh salami, hummus, guacamole, crackers, carrots… and ice cold top-notch brew in a chilled glass. Yea.
After solving some more of the world’s problems over dinner, we went back at it. The sun was just above the trees, and now it was time to get up on the flats. The fish were there, and hungry. We caught fish after fish…right time, right place, right stuff. The circle hooks did their job. A total of over 30 largemouth, 10 rock bass, and time after time, every single fish was hooked harmlessly in the corner of the mouth. “I’m sold”, Bruce said. “Those hooks are amazing”.
We dropped Bruce off about dark, navigated through the narrow canal and out onto the lake. I flipped the running lights on. Anticipating a run across the lake, Drake did his usual…run to the front, run to the back, sit down right next to (half on top of) Craig. I put an arm around him and cruised home across the lake.
