Call it faith, or call it resignation, or call it what you must do to make a little girl happy.
For months my daughter Hannah, 9, has asked me to take her fishing. But winter is a bad time to break in a child on that particular vice.
With springlike weather caressing central Arkansas for the week, we finally had our chance, but where to go? Bass and crappie fishing has been very good at Lake Nimrod, and bass fishing has been great at Lake Brewer. Lake Overcup was tempting, too, but I didn't want to make a child endure too long a drive, either.
As I mulled the choices, an obvious candidate rang in my head like a church bell. The Little Maumelle River at Two Rivers Park, of course. It's about 40 minutes from the house, and after a string of sunny days, I figured the largemouth bass would be cruising the banks in the middle of the day.
When we arrived at the private ramp off River Valley Road, the parking lot was almost full of trucks and boat trailers. Obviously a lot of other folks had the same idea.
A couple of elderly gentlemen grappled with a 15-horsepower Evinrude that held tight to all the junk in the back of their pickup. They grunted as they hoisted and lowered it onto the transom of a well-traveled Waco flatbottom.
"The fish quit bitin'," one of the gentlemen said as I began preparing my War Eagle.
"They start biting when I get on the water," I retorted.
"Well, then, we need to follow you!" he said.
Meanwhile at the ramp, Tim Miller of Conway stowed his gear after a night of yo-yo fishing with his 3-year old grandson. In his cooler was a chunky largemouth bass that looked to be about 4 pounds.
Before I backed the boat down the ramp, I handed Hannah the bow rope and told her to pull the boat onto the shore when it cleared the trailer. To my surprise and dismay, she followed the boat right into the water. She was almost knee deep when I gathered my wits and told her to get back on dry ground.
Fortunately I had a spare pair of socks in the truck, and Miller gave us a roll of paper towels to dry her feet and wick out her boots.
We motored up the creek to a spot where I've caught fish before, and I began casting a Luck-Strike Rick Clunn 2.5 square-bill crankbait in green minnow color. The rig consists of a 1994 vintage Quantum 1311MG baitcasting reel and a Falcon fiberglass cranking rod. It's ancient, but with that reel's slow retrieve, it's a murderous crankbait rig.
After a few casts, Hannah asked, "Which one do I use?"
Hannah has never cast a rod before, and I only brought baitcasting rigs. I envisioned tangles and backlashes as big as bald eagles nests. That's no way to break in a child on fishing. It would ruin her.
"I tell you what," I said. "I'll hook them, and I'll hand you the rod so you can fight them and land them."
That was not what she wanted to hear. Her lip pooched out as she sat down and turned her back to me. The countdown began. I estimated we had 30 minutes tops before she would demand to leave.
About 30 minutes later, Hannah spoke, but not as I expected.
"Will you teach me to cast?" she asked.
I selected my most forgiving rig, a 1996 vintage Quantum Iron baitcaster mated to a medium-heavy action Browning Aggressor I-Mag graphite rod. It's got a funky angled handle that looks weird, but it's the easiest rod to control.
Quantum sent me the reel when I wrote an article about left-handed retrieve baitcasters for a defunct magazine called Southern Outdoors. One of my sources for that piece was a young up-and-comer named Kevin VanDam.
"Hold the spool with your thumb and push this little button on the side," I said.
"Rear back and lift your thumb when it gets right about here," I added, indicating the 10 o'clock position with the rod tip. "It's kind of like throwing a Frisbee. You know how you kind of pop your wrist when you're ready to let it go?"
Hannah nodded enthusiastically.
"Make real short casts at first until you get the feel of it and then gradually cast longer. You'll have it down before we leave here today, I'll bet."
Hannah did exactly as I said, and she made a surprising number of casts without backlashing.
That first backlash was epic, though. Bald eagle nest doesn't begin to describe it. It was more like a blue heron rookery.
"Let me show you a little trick when this happens," I said, torquing down the drag. "Put your thumb on the spool and just reel it back in. You can feel the coils straighten out underneath your thumb. Then, push the button and pull out the line. Nineteen times out of 20, it'll come right out."
Amazingly, this one did just that, even with braided line.
She started out with a Zoom Baby Brush Hawg, but she soon demanded another bait. She selected one of my favorites -- another oldie -- an Eiland Fish Tail. It's a soft plastic worm body with a tiny bream body on the end. It was a big deal on the Red River back in its heyday.
The pooched lip was gone, and Hannah chattered nonstop about which trees and stumps were best for fishing as her casts gained distance and accuracy.
At about 3 p.m., bass started noticing my crankbait. I caught a chunky 2-pounder off the submerged end of a forked branch jutting off the bank. The strike felt like a mush weight on the bait, but the fish fought well.
Next up was a 14-inch Kentucky bass that attacked the bait when it struck the side of a tree on the edge of the creek channel.
Farther upstream we found a cluster of stumps off the channel that formed a little cove. It just looked fishy, so I tied the boat to a stump and cast to the next stump downstream. A beautiful 4-pound largemouth crushed the crankbait.
Handling a 35mm camera for the first time, Hannah shot a perfectly lit and focused photo to comply with the "no fish-no photo" rule that several friends enforce.
I cast again over two stumps and laid the line in the narrow gap between them. Another largemouth hit the crankbait when it wiggled through the gap. One more completed a five-bass tournament limit.
"You catch more fish in the front of the boat," Hannah said accusingly. "I want to fish in the front of the boat."
Some things even a doting daddy can't abide.
"It's getting late," I said. "I'm kind of in the mood for a candy bar. How about you?"
She forgot all about that "front of the boat" nonsense, at least for now.
Sports on 02/14/2016