As many of you know, my wife and I sold the old family farmhouse and are moving up the hill overlooking the pond where we camped for many summers.
I was digging through things out in the barn when I came across an old tackle box. As I opened it, numerous thoughts flashed through my mind. This old box was filled with lures and memories from my past.
One of the lures was a series of flashing spoons on a thin, four-foot length of cable. It was called a Christmas tree rig. The rig had six or eight silver spoons which varied in size from the largest in the front to the smallest in the rear. The cable end was fastened to my fishing line.
On the back end, a length of monofilament with a hook and nightwalker completed the rig. As it was trolled behind the boat, the spoons flashed, looking like a school of bait fish. The trout were attracted to the bait.
Anyway, in 1969 I took a job teaching Junior High English and Social Studies in the little Adirondack town of Wells. During the interview for the job, the principal asked me if I liked to fish. It seemed that he needed someone to go with him on Blue Mountain Lake. He kept a boat there and liked fishing for the rainbow trout. Of course I like to fish and took the job.
One day he asked me to join him for a day of fishing. We went north on Route 30 and ended up at a pristine mountain lake. Seeing that I had brought along a spinning rod, he handed me a different rod. It was shorter and stiffer and would be better for trolling.
Well, with the Christmas tree rig on my line, I lowered the shiny lure into the water. Frank did the same on his side of the boat and we started off, heading around the lake.
Time passed rather slowly as I watched the tip of my pole, hoping for a strike. Nine o’clock became ten and by eleven still nothing happened. But then the tip of my rod jumped back. I had a hit.
Slowly I reeled the line in towards the boat. A silver-sided fish soon came up to the surface which Frank easily netted. It was a fat, 16-inch rainbow trout.
Soon my lure was back in the water and we rounded one of the many islands in the lake. The hours passed without a hit.
By four o’clock in the afternoon, Frank announced that we would head for home as soon as he caught a fish. Well, that didn’t happen. We had missed lunch and supper didn’t look much better.
Finally he called it quits and headed for shore. For some strange reason he never invited me to fish with him again. I guess he didn’t like being beaten at his own game.
It wasn’t that the lake didn’t hold a lot of fish. A couple of years after I left Wells, I returned for Old Home Days. I wanted to visit some of my old friends. As I got to the hot dog stand, I ran into an old hunting buddy named Chris. He knew of my experience that day on Blue Mountain Lake.
“Let’s go over to my house for a beer,” Chris suggested. “I have to show you something.” We went into his garage and stopped next to his freezer. “Hold out your arms,” he said.
He opened the freezer and started laying lake trout across my outstretched arms. They were huge. It got to the point that they were too heavy to hold.
“These all came from Blue Mountain Lake this season. All you have to do is know how to catch them.”
I think the limit was three a day and he caught them all in just a few trips.
We made arrangements to fish for lakers someday soon, but as Robert Burns said in his poem ‘To A Mouse’: “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”
I never fished on Blue Mountain Lake again.