Big Fish In A Little Creek

Big Fish in a Little Creek

Once as a boy, armed with my dabbling rod, I walked down Brasstown Road to a place we call ‘The Falls’. These are a beautiful and quite treacherous set of waterfalls at the lower end of our family land. Just above the falls there was a culvert where the creek crossed the road. The road is about ten feet above the water and a nice pool had formed on the lower side. It was dug out by the periodic torrents from storm runoff. The roadside was nice and flat, a good surface for a boy to lie down on and hide from fish below. I inched forward on my belly until I could see the lower end of the pool. To my amazement, a trout quadruple the size of any I’d ever seen in our stream was rooting around for scuds, tale up so he didn’t see me. I carefully lowered my worm into the water until it rested about six inches upstream of his enormous head. He immediately backed up a few inches, leveled out, then launched at the worm inhaling it. I knew that if I tried to lift this fish up the bank my line and/or pole would snap. I tried not to put any pressure on this fish at all. He had swallowed the hook deep so I didn’t have to worry about him getting off, I just had to be concerned about him breaking off. I inched my way down the bank and took a position at the bottom of the pool. The fish saw me and start darting up, down, and around the pool. He was trapped! He couldn’t jump up to the culvert and he couldn’t get past me. I just had to react quickly enough with the tip of my cane pole to his movements, following him around so he would not break off. It was a conundrum. If I pressured him, he would be gone. So I waded in, continuing to keep my rod tip over his head. The lower end of the pool flattened out and was very wide and shallow, just an inch or two deep. So I worked my way to the top of the hole making the brute react with a jolt to the lower end. He went too far and for just a moment beached himself! This was my opportunity. I dove at this fish. My only hope was to jam my hand through his gill slit. My aim was unflawed and my whole hand slid right through. I stood up with this behemoth jerking back and forth. He was nearly as big as my arm (which was pretty small at nine…but still). I took him and several smaller trout back to the house later that day for supper.

It was nearly impossible to convince Papaw and Granny that I hadn’t sneaked all the way down to Mr. Luhan’s trout pond on lower Brasstown (I did sneak down there on subsequent occasions but not this time!). All I can figure is one of the big trout from our pond a mile or so up the creek somehow made it through the overflow and out to the creek during high water. Catching this fish was surely a highlight of my first decade on the planet!