Remembering the best of times
It’s not an original line but it probably is the greatest lead sentence ever written and I feel that my life in 2014 fit it well. Old Charlie Dickens wrote it well when he penned, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” So it was for me.
Like many others, I am stuck in the house with the flu. This past year, I had cataracts removed, groin surgery and now I need a hip replacement. That’s the worst part.
The best of times this year were when Boone & Crockett gave me a pair of Swarovski 10x 49 EL binoculars and Henry gave me a rifle serial number BLOCK-001.
We all like to be appreciated, and I thank them both with sincerity. I also appreciated the hunts and fishing jaunts with close friends. Winter is here, and since I am housebound, I am thinking about hunts and fishing trips of past years.
Years ago, we spent many a day in the mountains of McKean County near Smethport. The children, Kathy and Pat, were with us as my wife, Eileen, and I worked Potato Creek and its smaller feeder streams.
We were a little worried as the kids took off on their own, working those tiny brook trout streams hidden in the nearby woods. They would always return to the camp along Coombs Creek Road with a creel full of fish, and we would have one of the best fish fries anyone ever enjoyed.
We often explored the waters in the area during the day. We soon learned these unfished trickles held trout. Brookies were easy to hook on live bait if they didn’t see you or your shadow.
Let them become frightened and you could stare in the water and swear there was nothing present but they were just well-hidden. If I remember correctly, our best brookie was a 13-inch fish caught by the youngest member of the group.
Incidentally, the photo I used with my past article about the passing of Eileen was taken along a small feeder stream of Potato Creek. In it, she is holding a Brook Trout. Those are warm, pleasant memories of probably the best period of my life.
Another trip I remember was to T Lake in Quebec. This lake is in the Kipawa district famous for its walleye. While T Lake held other fish, such as lake trout, we caught mostly pike and large smallmouth bass.
We would motor out around an island and let the slight breeze drift us back through a more shallow side of the island. One after the other, we would catch 10- to 13-inch smallmouths.
We had the island and cottages to ourselves, except for the owner and his wife. What a wonderful place that was.
It was the middle of a warm, sunny day, and we were all just relaxing and allowing the boat to drift where it wanted. I was in the rear of the boat watching the shoreline when Eileen suddenly started reeling in line as fast as she could.
The kids were looking over the side excitedly and pointing at something. Eileen said, “I don’t want that thing in this boat.”
I looked over the side of the boat trying to see what the excitement was about. There I saw what, to this day, was the biggest freshwater fish I had or have ever seen.
Following behind her gob of nightcrawlers on her hood was a huge northern pike. Unfortunately, my wife got her bait in the boat at supersonic speed just before that pike hit. Then that big fish just slowly sunk back to where he came from.
No one wanted to hook that thing except me.
Naturally, much of my remaining time there was spent trying to get a strike from Mister Big. I could see it if we drifted over his hideout but I would start casting various lures and stuff in its direction before looking. It never came at a lure or bait again.
How big was it? I was fishing out of an 18-foot cedar boat and it looked to be half that length.
You and I both know it couldn’t have been that big, but I certainly think it would have been a new record pike.
There were no muskie in that lake so it had to be a northern. That was as close as I will ever come to becoming famous among the anglers.
I close my eyes and wish I was in either place now instead of in the house with John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. There will be other places and other fish and of course groundhog trips yet to come.
But thinking of those trips help while away these snowy days.
I think those old trips were the best of times.
George H. Block writes a Sunday Outdoors column for the Observer-Reporter.