This story, “Long Lost Lake,” appeared in the August 1953 issue of Outdoor Life.
I sat in the stern of the white skiff, watching Dick Searle chuck a bass plug against the shore of Long Lake. I was sorry I’d come. There are some things better left alone and one of them is trying to recapture the past of 20 years ago.
I’d been skeptical when Dick suggested fishing here — for old time’s sake — but I didn’t like to let him down. I tried to talk him out of it, though.
“Look, Dick, you’re playing with ghosts,” I told him. “It isn’t the way you remember it. Long Lake has been fished out for 10 years. Believe me.”
But he wouldn’t listen. “There must be a few bass left,” he said. “Have you tried it lately?”
“Not in years. If you want bass these days you’ve got to go a couple hundred miles.”
Dick sighed. “I suppose so,” he said. ”But, darn it, I’ve looked forward to tossing a plug in Long Lake for years — all the time I’ve been away. I hate to leave without trying it.”
“You’ll be wasting your time.”
“I still want to go,” he said stubbornly. “If we don’t get any fish, we can have a swim.”
I gave up. “All right,” I agreed. “It’s your vacation.”
So we were fishing this hot summer day. I kept thinking about Long Lake the way it had been when Dick and I were high-school kids — a peaceful woodland lake in Western Massachusetts, set in the midst of rolling farm country. We used to hop our bikes and ride the seven miles out from the town where we lived, following a winding dirt road past tobacco fields, orchards, and mowings. Today, new housing developments line the broad highway all the way to the lake. And today there’s a big casino with roller skating where Old Man Dill used to moor the three leaky skiffs which comprised his boat livery.
“They been catchin’ some nice ones,” the attendant told us as he readied a gleaming outboard job for us. “Guy took a six-pounder here last week.”
Dick raised his eyebrows, but I wasn’t buying that guff. I’ve never rented a boat yet where the boys weren’t taking nice ones up to 10 pounds.
We eased along the shore and it was hard to find a place to cast. The cottages had grown up so thick their roofs almost touched. Twenty years ago there were ledges and pad-choked coves here, but today row after row of docks jutted out from shore like piers along New York’s waterfront. And swimmers — you couldn’t sling a plug without hooking a girl in a postage-stamp bathing suit. Dandy — except that we were looking for bass. Dick’s face was growing longer by the minute. At last he shook his head.
“I see what you mean,” he said sadly. “It’s funny how you hang onto a memory through the years and expect things always to stay the same. But I guess you can’t go back. We had some pretty good times here in the old days.”
“That we did, son. Too good to last.”
“Remember the time … ” he said, and his face brightened with the story of the big bass in Bosshart’ s Cove.
“I’ve envied you,” Dick mused. “I was hoping we could get together for an old time fishing trip, sort of a reunion. Crazy, wasn’t it?”
“Look, Dick,” I said, “we can still do it. Next year when you come East, we’ll cook up a trip north — Maine, Canada— “
“Let’s do,” he said. “Meanwhile, I’ve had enough of this.”
We buzzed back to the dock and went swimming, leaving our clothes in a modern bathhouse instead of draping them over a chokecherry bush on the point as we had done in the old days. And that night, Dick took the plane back to his job a continent away, carrying with him the fragments of his dream. I felt sorry for the guy. It’s tough to have your illusions shattered at any age.
A few days later I dropped into Joe’s tackle store to chew the fat and maybe buy a couple of lures I didn’t need. As I came in the door, I saw a large young man in khaki pants and shirt bending Joe’s ear at the back of the store and I wandered over to see what the huddle was about. It was about a bass lying on a piece of brown wrapping paper with a good foot and a half of broad, mottled flank separating his gaping mouth from his whisk-broom tail.
“What’ll he go?” Joe asked as I came up.
“Five and a half pounds on the button,” the big guy said. “He’s almost as big as the one I caught Saturday.”
“Where did that come from?” I blurted, staring at the fish.
The man in khaki turned and eyed me. He hesitated a second, then, ”I got it in Long Lake,” he said.
Well, you don’t call a man a liar to his face — not a man several inches taller than you and quite a lot younger. But my incredulity must have shown in my face, because the big guy said quietly: “There’s some good fish in Long Lake, mister.”
“How many have you caught this year, Larry?” Joe asked.
Larry looked up in frowning concentration. “Forty-eight,” he replied. “Course, some of ‘em I’ve caught two or three times, but I’ve kept three bass over five pounds.”
With the season only three weeks old, that was good enough for me, but I still found it hard to believe.
“You must be a wizard,” I said. “I fished there the other day without a strike.”
“In the daytime?” he asked, and I nodded. “That’s where you made your first mistake. I never go till midnight. What were you using?”
“Every plug in my tackle box.” I named half a dozen.
“I like bugs better,” he said. “These fish are savvy. They’ve seen about every plug Joe here has in stock, but they’ll still fall for a bug. One like this.” He took a battered deer-hair concoction from his wallet. “That’s what I got this one on.”
Joe grinned. “I’ve been telling the boys they don’t have to go a thousand miles to catch bass, but they won’t believe me.”
“People always think the other guy’s pasture’s greener,” Larry said. “A lot of people think Long Lake’s fished out, but I can show ’em different.”
“If this is a sample, you sure can,” I agreed. “I wish I’d seen this fish a few days ago.”
“I know where there’s more,” he said, “if you’re interested.”
“When?” I demanded.
He aughed. “How about Thursday — around quarter to midnight?”
“It’s a date.”
His name was Larry Fowler and he lived in one of the new houses on the road to Long Lake. He worked in an aircraft plant on the 3 to 11 p.m. shift. He considered it a perfect set-up for a fisherman.
“I came here from Wisconsin after the war,” he told me. “I was lucky to land near a good bass lake.”
He was waiting for me Thursday night with his portable boat lashed to the car roof. On the short drive to the lake he expanded the idea.
“You can almost always find good fishing if you look for it,” he said. “Long Lake’s like most resort lakes today — speed boats, swimmers, juke boxes. Bass won’t hang around with that kind of commotion going on. Days, they hide out on the bottom in deep water and a man’s wasting his time fishing for ’em. Nights, though, it’s different. Minnows and bugs play around in the shallows then, and the bass move in to feed.”
Swirling mist wrapped the slumbering lake as we drove up to where the inlet flows under the bridge. Gone were the swimmers and speedboats, and the blaring din of the casino juke box was stilled. A sliver of new moon glistened among the trees. As I stood on the shore, listening to the croaking frogs, the years seemed to roll back to the days when Old Man Dill used to leave a smoky lantern hanging to a post to guide Dick Searle and me back to the dock. I strung up my fly rod and Larry tied a white deer-hair bug to my 7½ foot leader. Then we shoved off under the stars.
“There’s guys sleeping in these cottages that’ll tell you Long Lake’s done,” Larry said over the low hum of the motor. “They moan about the good old days instead of enjoying what they have. I guess that’s a sign of old age,” he added thoughtfully.
I didn’t say anything; it could be, I reflected, that he was right.
A few minutes later he cut the motor and rowed silently toward a shadowy pier. “There’s a pile of brush in the water at the shore end of that dock,” he whispered. “I hooked a pretty good bass there a few nights back. Toss your bug over there and see if he’s home.”
I stood up cautiously, but my knee hit Larry’s flashlight and sent it clattering from the thwart.
“These bass are spooky devils,” Larry warned reprovingly. “Rattle an oar or scrape your feet on the floor boards and they’re gone.”
I cast toward shore, but I was rattled and the bug fell short. After a few more unproductive casts, I grew a bit too impulsive and flung the bug into some bushes along the shore. And that was that.
“Too bad,” Larry said as he backed me ashore to retrieve the bug. “I guess the noise scared him anyway.”
I began to realize there was more to this kind of fishing than met the eye.
“This is a pretty good shore,” Larry said. “We could probably pick up a few fish here, but I’m going to take you to the hot spots tonight — places where I’ve located bass.”
He cut across a curve of the lake and drifted toward a shadowy diving float. This time he picked up his rod and disengaged the bug from the keeper ring. His line swished a few times overhead and the bug settled soundlessly to the water. He left it there for a full minute, then gave it a little twitch and let it lie once more. Then he brought it in with a series of little jerks and cast again.
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As the bug lay silent on the water, a sullen chug echoed out of the darkness and Larry’s rod, silhouetted against the night sky, sprang into a dancing arc. A succession of splashings sounded on the black water as the bass came in, fighting all the way. Larry held it up in the beam of his flashlight.
“Remember me, Junior?” he asked. “Go back and grow some more.” And he returned the two-pound bass to the water.
At the next stop near a sunken log that jutted out into the lake, I tried to redeem myself. The foliage along shore rose up in a black wall before me, but by now my eyes were used to the darkness and I was better able to judge distance. I laid the bug alongside the weathered trunk. A bass rose to meet it. So furious and so startling was his rush that I set the hook with a yank that almost broke his neck. It was a small fish, scarce a pound, but he made up in scrap what he lacked in weight.
“You see, there are fish here,” Larry said, as I lowered my bass into the water. “But you’ve got to work for ’em today.”
We glided along the shadowy shore, taking turns at the target areas Larry had prospected, and during the next couple of hours we caught and released four more bass. I also learned several valuable lessons about fishing in such waters. I learned you’ve got to sneak up on your fish, stalking them as patiently and cautiously as you would a wary old buck. And fish slowly. Sometimes the bass didn’t come till the tenth cast or so.
We’d been working along toward the far end of the lake, and all at once, I noticed a dim light glimmering through the trees. It came from a low, marshy area where I couldn’t recall any cottages. I was trying to think what it could be when, as if in answer to my thoughts, Larry said, “There’s Muskrat Jimmie’s light. It must be 4 o’clock.”
“Muskrat Jimmie?”
Larry chuckled. “Yeah. Don’t tell me you never heard of Muskrat Jimmie?”
“No,” I had to admit, “I never did.” I realized suddenly how far I’d drifted from the scenes of my youth.
“I thought everybody knew him,” Larry said. “Matter of fact, he’s the one that first put me onto this lake. He lives in a shack over there. Makes a living trapping muskrats and fishing and he’s a sort of handy man and caretaker for the cottagers. Let’s run over and say hello. I stop in to chew the fat with him every few nights.”
“You’re sure he’s really up for the day?”
“Four o’clock every morning. You can set your watch by him.”
The boat’s prow grated on the shore and Larry hauled it up among the rushes beside a battered skiff. As our flashlights fingered a path to the shack the door opened and a voice called, “That you, Larry?”
“Yeah. You got company.”
Muskrat Jimmie stepped outside, a stooped, aging figure in shabby trousers and undershirt, puffing on a black stub of a pipe. “I thought you’d be along,” he said. “I’ve got the coffee on. Oh, you got a feller with you.”
Larry introduced us and Jimmie extended a gnarled hand. “Come in and set,” he invited. “How’s the fishin’?”
“Not bad,” I said as we followed him into the cluttered shack. “We’ve taken six bass—”
His shrill whinny cut short my sentence. “They’re in here,” he declared. “Good ones, too, but you got to know how to fool ’em.”
He poured mugs of steaming coffee and set them on a rough wooden table, pushing away an accumulation of dishes, kerosene lamps, and canned goods to make room.
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“Yep,” he went on, “you got to know how to fool ’em. And there’s few fishers left today like the old-timers — Henry Schaefer an’ Ollie Gorton an’ the rest.” My heart leaped at his mention of these old fishermen. I had known them both. Muskrat Jimmie had suddenly become a link with the past.
“You’re right,” I said. “Those men were real anglers.”
“You know ’em?” he demanded in pleased surprise.
“I certainly did. And Old Man Dill who ran the boat livery.”
“Dill!” Jimmie echoed eagerly. It was getting to be Old Home Day. “There was another. Them fellers forgot more ’bout bass than most fishers today will ever know.”
“Why do you suppose that is?”
Jimmie looked at me shrewdly. “Why?” he demanded. “I’ll tell you why. It’s like ever’thing else. Folks today are lazy an’ they’re in too much of a hurry. When I first come here, ‘most 20 years ago, people fetched ice from the icehouse-rowed it ‘crost the lake. Now they have them electric iceboxes an’ motors to shove ’em around. Same with their fishin’. They ain’t willing to work at it like the old-timers. They made a business of it.”
“I guess you’re right,” I admitted.
“Course I’m right,” he said. “Fellers today mix fishin’ with golfin’ an’ playin’ cards an’ I don’t know what-all. They rush out here for an hour or two in broad daylight an’ holler becuz they don’t catch bass. Larry’s different. He’s a fisher. Maybe you are, too.”
“Well,” I said, “I’ve done quite a bit of fishing here and there, but I’ve found out tonight that I’ve still got a lot to learn.”
He poured more coffee and the talk ran on. I listened intently to Jimmie’s reminiscences of the past and of his life here beside the lake, fishing and trapping and taking care of the cottages. I hadn’t realized there was a person like him left in this jet-powered, atomic age.
He made me feel that, underneath the trappings of modern living, life went on much the same. Under cover of the darkness the old Long Lake still remained. Larry Fowler and Muskrat Jimmie had done me a good turn this night.
“We’ve got just about another hour’s fishing,” Larry said, ”before the bass start moving out of the shallows.”
As if to prove his point he cast his bug beside a spatter of pads and hung a nice bass.
“Time for one more,” he said, heading the boat toward a wooded point.
As we drew near, the sky was faintly flushed with gold and lavender banners of the dawn. I remembered that here was where the old icehouse had stood. I could still see its pilings.
“Cast your bug around those pilings,” Larry whispered. “It’s a great hangout for minnows.”
I stood up, taking care not to make a sound, and flung a long cast toward the misty shore. The bug hit one of the pilings, bounced into the air and dropped to the water. I left it there till the concentric rings spreading from its fall had died away. Then I gave a twitch. And the water parted in a blast of spray.
I knew this bass was Mr. Big. I could feel it in the straining lunge the rod, vibrating up into my shoulder. I could sense it in the angry buzz of the reel. And I clung to the cork grip, holding the rod tip high, fighting the rampaging bass away from the pilings.
“That’s a good fish,” Larry said. “I had him on for a few seconds the other night.”
Thrashing, shaking, bulldogging, the fish bored for the depths and then launched in a somersaulting leap which showed his flaring gills and broad, gleaming flanks. He crashed back into the water only to leap again in showers of sunrise-tinted spray. As his strength began to ebb, I worked him in till I could stretch out the long-handled net and scoop him up. Five pounds and nine ounces he weighed on the pocket scales.
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That fish I kept. It was a symbol of the fishing in the new nights.
We putted up to the bridge just as the sun lifted over the wooded hills and the first bathers came down to the shore for a swim. That night I wrote a long letter to Dick Searle.
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