what goes up

[trout whisperer]

What goes up, eventually, will come down.
Sometime after the earth was created a river started to flow. Long before I was born this wiggling water coursing slowly downhill formed an ox bow not quite an eighth of an acre in size.  The inlet of this majestic hole is eight feet deep gradually becoming twelve feet deep in the middle and when the river leaves the bend it shallows back up to about six feet in depth.

All year round it’s banked with pines and massive birches that must have some mighty tough roots because the trees haven’t been washed or eroded into the river. In the fall it’s a great place to sneak shoot some wood ducks.

River Bottom substrate that I have snagged, foul hooked or bounced jigs around can be anything from spring runoff branches and logs to rocks that four pound test never fails to succumb to. One other thing down there is walleyes.

Now after man evolved he needed electric power so he started stringing poles all over Gods green earth and some very blue water had to be forded. So Between the poles is the black incased wire that had to be strung and I bet it’s by folks who don’t fish? Could be, maybe, might have been, possibly installed by guys who are bobber collectors. 

See this oxbow hole, you can’t canoe up or down too. The river isn’t big enough for that. Most of us who fish the place know where the honey hole is, the sweet spot of walleye lounging, and it comes at a price. You have to slip bobber rig it and let the river drift your set-up into around and under a logistical nightmare.

Then when you get tired of drifting to the underwater fish feast you get to thinking, this time, yeah this time, I’m- NOT- gonna add to the bobber collection swinging over head. Im gonna cast that set up in there like an eagle putt on the eighteenth green. I do it just often enough to tease myself into believing I wont get an overhead electrical connection instead of the underwater current I want to connect with.

Dangling from above like pirates bones swaying outside of the ancient Port Royal warns you every time we fish it. There has to be forty bobbers, pick the size and color you like cause there there. At first I behave, cast, drift, rebait, cast, drift, then the greed of success lures me in, and I cast one out.

I just fired a green and yellow stick bobber with a nice red tail chub minnow and it did a 360 loop de loop so tight to the power line it was actually easy to snap off.  The minnow, we all gave it 9.5, 9.5, 9.6 when it spun free of the hook and took its high wire dive back into the river.

In years to come the historic evidence will perhaps be found in the fossil remains of this river bottom. Two poles mysteriously at the bottom of the river covered in silt totally tangled with so many bobbers, the poles finally collapsed.

[deadeye]

Been there, left my share of boppers on the lines.