My First Fishing Trip — “You brought bananas?”
by Lawrence Martin
The Villages, Florida
drlarry437@gmail.com
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I have spent a good deal of my leisure time on the water. Owned a cruising sail boat. Certified in Scuba. Many visits to lakes, rivers, beaches. But never fished. Not once. Had no interest.
Then, shortly after we moved to The Villages, Florida, my brother Bernie came to visit us from Colorado. He is an avid fisherman and couldn’t wait to proselytize. “You need to have the experience,” he said, in a haughty younger-brother-I’ll-teach-you-something mode. “I’ll hire a guide, we’ll go for the morning.”
Bernie made all the arrangements from Colorado, hiring a local guide for a half day fishing trip. His email stated: “We will meet him at 6:30 am at Venetian Marina, Lake Harris.” Turns out this entry point is only 20 minutes from our home in The Villages.
Fishable lakes are abundant in this area — the so-called Harris Chain of Lakes. I looked it up on the internet.: The chain is part of the Oklawaha River Basin and includes Lake Eustis (7,806 acres), Lake Harris (15,087 acres), Little Lake Harris (3,359 acres), Lake Dora (4,475 acres), Lake Beauclair (1,140 acres), Lake Griffin (9,327 acres), Lake Yale (4,013 acres) and Lake Carlton (376 acres).
Lake Harris, the largest of the Harris Chain of Lakes, is close to The Villages, FL (located to the left of Hwy 441 between Lady Lake and Fruitland Park).Every sport has professionals of course, and bass fishing — the trip Bernie planned — is no exception. Our guide Grady owns his own bass fishing boat, a high tech monster capable of 70 mph on the lake, by virtue of a 225 hp motor. Yes, you can catch other fish, but this jewel goes by the brand name “Bass Cat Boat” for a reason. Every inch is designed to catch bass in shallow freshwater lakes.
Bernie had instructed Grady to get live bait, always the best for bass. “I want Larry to catch something.” Grady complied and brought along several dozen live and squirming Florida “shiners,” a bait fish about 4 inches long. Before each casting he impaled one on a fish hook and showed us how to cast the bait away from the boat. A “bob” on the line showed us where the shiner landed. The idea was for the bass to swallow the shiner and hook together; in the process the bob would go under water, at which point I — the fishermen — was supposed to “set the hook”, that is, anchor the hook into the bass, then quickly reel the line while pulling up sharply to bring it out of the water.
Ever curious, I looked up Florida shiners on the internet (afterwards; before the trip, I had no idea about anything). There I learned that catching bass with them is a real skill, with professionals in the sport. I came across mind-numbing detail: where to fish; how to hook the bait; the bait; how a bass eats a wild shiner. It’s not just hook and fish, not by a long shot.
My wife did not go on this trip. “I can’t torture fish,” she said. Well, for starters she wasn’t invited. The plan was for her to entertain my sister-in-law while the two brothers were on the water. Even so, she would not have gone under any circumstance. The whole idea was repugnant to her. Yes, she eats fish, we had that discussion, but no matter. She wanted no part of it. “Do not bring any fish home,” she warned. That was never an issue. The whole exercise was “catch and release.”
I really enjoyed being out on the lake, seeing part of Florida that is simply hidden when you drive buy. Lake Harris has little inlets and narrow rivers the bass boat can enter easily. The morning was cool, and visibility great once the fog lifted. We saw up close several of Florida’s gorgeous water birds: egrets, ibis, heron.
There was only one problem. The bass weren’t biting. There were a couple of nibbles, but the fish got away. Also, the shiners kept dying in the water, which meant they had to be replaced. Dead shiners don’t attract bass. Grady had purchased these shiners that same morning, at a local fish shop. At one point he even wondered if they were somehow a bad lot. Or maybe it was the location. That’s when Bernie opened his small back pack to take out a snack.
“You brought bananas?” Grady exclaimed.
“Yes, I’ve got two. You want one?” Bernie asked, innocently.
“You don’t bring bananas on a bass boat. It’s bad luck.”
“Really?”
“Yep, that explains it.” ‘It’ of course, being lack of biting fish. “Not that I believe the superstition, but no bass fisherman ever brings bananas on board. It’s a no-no.”
“Okay, I’ll get rid of them,” said Bernie, and he promptly ate one. After I and Grady declined Bernie’s offer, he then ate the second one. The peels are biodegradable, so overboard they went. Just then — I’m not making this up — I had a sharp tug on the line.
“Reel it in, reel it in. Lift up, lift up.” There on the end of the line was a…gar. A gar is not a bass. It has a more interesting profile than a bass, with its long snout, but not what we were looking for. Or, to be more precise, not what they were looking for. (You catch a fish that you’re not going to eat — what difference does it make?) Grady removed the hook as Bernie snapped a picture. The gar fell on the deck and before we could throw it back, the fish jumped in without any assistance. There ensued some discussion about fish not being as dumb as people think. To which I heartily agreed.
“Let’s try someplace else,” Grady said, and moved to a new spot. Fine by me. I got to see more of the lake. After a few hours, three locations and no bass, he made a call on his cell phone. Someone told him, “the dam’s just opened.” This was a surprise. “If I’d known that I would have gone there first,’ Grady informed us. “It hasn’t been open in several weeks. Bass always congregate below the open dam.”
We exited the lake proper and did a slow, no-wake excursion up the Palatlakaha River to this small dam. “River” is a misnomer; it’s really a stream about twenty yards wide. We passed old Florida houses on the left bank, saw turtles and more birds. The foliage is lush. Past the residential area I fantasized being on some tributary in South America or Africa.
Conrad’s Heart of Darkness came to mind. But then we came to the concrete pillars of a county road crossing the stream. “CR 48,” painted on the pillars, told where we were. I checked Google Maps on my cell phone. “Hey, we’re near Oakwood Smokehouse and Grill.” The Palatlakaha is amazingly close to commerce, but you’d never know it on the river. You really could imagine being in some remote backwater.
After some fifteen minutes we reached the dam, its gates open and water pouring out. The dam is small, the width of the stream. We anchored at a wire barrier fifty yards downstream; at that point there was a good amount of foam on the water. “There’s bass in there for sure,” Grady said. He set the shiners and helped us cast the lines. “We’ll stay here until all the shiners are gone.”
With Grady’s help I actually caught two bass. Bernie, who paid for this excursion, caught none. But he did take the picture of me with my proud catch. Another first: holding a live fish by the mouth (only after Grady assured me it wouldn’t bite). Then the fish went back in the water.
The remaining shiners went quickly, and we were done. Almost. My brother, who can be sophomoric at times, decided I needed to pass some fisherman ritual. “You better take a leak before we head back,” he said. Since I had to go, this was a no-brainer. I walked to the back of the boat and opened my fly. Half-way through the boat started rocking. I held on to the motor and finished, then turned around and expressed my displeasure. Grady quickly offered, “it was him.” A fisherman’s joke that wasn’t funny.
“Not smart,” I said.
“It’s the rite of passage,” Bernie said.
“It’s stupid. What if I had fallen in?”
“You were holding on.”
And if I had slipped? First-time fisherman falls into bass-infested stream as brother, guide look on. Body not yet recovered.
I let it go. On returning to the open lake Grady turned on the power and at 38 knots we crossed to the marina in less than five minutes. We had spent five hours on the lake and caught two bass.
Grady is a professional bass fisherman and a very good guide; he does this for a living. I enjoyed the experience of doing something new and just being out on the lake. But as a sport, what’s the attraction? It’s time consuming, not cheap, and the fish are often (as here) not very accommodating. Add in a belief in bad-luck bananas plus a rite of passage that could put someone in the water, and you’re not exactly dealing with a rational situation.
But I get it. I really do. It’s a challenge that attracts many people. You could say they get ‘hooked’. Try to explain the fun of golf to a non-golfer, the excitement of birding to non-birder, or the satisfaction of rock climbing to a non-climber. People get attracted to different activities, and it’s foolish to look down on anyone’s passion. At some point, on some level, I accept that in bass fishing there may well be “action and thrill involved!” A large group of people do love it. I just don’t think I’ll ever be one of them.
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