The inlet runs beneath the road, the outlet of a much bigger lake. You can only tell which way the water flows by noting the slight bend in the underwater weeds. It’s not a long paddle in, maybe a mile, but it always seems longer than that when you are excited, as I always am whenever I go fishing anywhere. This long inlet, lily pads on either side, the occasional duck or merganser or loon eyeing me as I glide by, makes it hard to resist stopping for a few quick casts. The lily pads look so good, so inviting. Occasionally I get a strike, a smaller bass engulfing my popper at pad-edge, but more often than not, I get nothing, and the wind blows me back the way I’ve come, and I quickly strip in, take hold of my paddle, and move on, frustrated I wasted fishing time, real fishing time.
This lake, as with many Adirondack lakes, is in a wilderness area that allows no motors. In its recent history, largemouth bass somehow found their way into the watershed, driving out the native trout to the chagrin of purist Adirondack trout anglers. But this means when you find them, often back in the thickest of the weeds and lily pads, in the shallowest water, many fat, feisty bass will come to hand. Often on this particular lake I am alone, other canoeists or anglers just specks against the far shore, silent paddlers moving through—the screeching bald eagles or the occasional war airplane buzzing low from some nearby base the only things that disrupt the calm.
As I move smoothly, swiftly through the inlet, staying in the center of the channel so as not to have to catch lily pads with my paddle blades, I plan where I’m headed, which bay, which weed-line. I have fished this lake for three summers now, and each season has been completely different. That first summer I found fish in one near bay. They were prolific and large, up to five pounds. Every single time I came until the pads started to brown and fade away and the cold chill of fall came on, I knew where to find them. The next two summers that same bay only gave up a few fish. The lily pads came in differently. It felt like a new lake altogether. Each summer it takes me several trips to find them with consistency, to explore more of the lake, to often paddle farther, much farther, but it is always worth it.
I often happen upon them when I have given up fishing and decide to explore. Recently, noticing several beaver dams far back in behind a thick, lily-pad infested shoreline, I poked my way through, working to get to the place where the water opened up again and the two beaver dens rose up out of the still water. But I never made it all the way back to the open water.
Suddenly, I was spooking fish with every stroke. One would rush off and spook another, who in turn spooked another, and so on. I stopped and waited. Let things settle down. It seemed more as if I were in a field than on the water, the green of the pads shimmering all around me in the hot sun. Then a gulp came in the thinnest of crevices between lily pads. Then another. And another.
I looked through my flies. I would need something weedless, something that would land quietly on the pads, something I could drag across them, letting it slip into those subtle, in-between places where they lay in wait. I found it, a simple, up-hook, “keel fly” no more than a few wraps of hackle, some flash and a few rubber legs, 4-5 flat wings extending the length of the fly. It was light but would disturb the surface just enough. And on my first cast, just as the fly slid off its first lily pad, a bass pounced, exploding up out of the lily pads, knocking the fly into the air, missing it, before retreating back beneath the tangle of green.
They were here, the lily pads alive beneath me, swimming through just barely a foot of water, looking for food, dragon flies, small snakes, anything that moved. Just sitting there and listening and watching was almost enough. The eruptions would startle me, coming right alongside the canoe sometimes, a large white mouth opening, inhaling. I was back in against the tangle of wild blueberries along the shore, back out of the wind, so the stable flies could easily find their way into the boat, chew at my ankles, the deerfly could start in with their infuriating orbital assaults. But none of that mattered. I cast out keeping my line high, not letting it smack down too hard. These fish were aggressive, but skittish given the shallowness of the water, and then I’d start sliding my fly across the lily pads. It barely touched water. It felt as if I were fishing on land at times. The places where strikes would come were obvious, given that so little water showed. But sometimes they’d come right through the lily pads, following just the shadow and sound of my fly from below.
I had many strikes but only landed a few fish. The ones I did hook would often get impossibly tangled in the thick, tough stalks of the lily pads, and I’d finally grab the fly line with my hands and pull it in to sometimes find a fish enmeshed in weeds and lily pad stalks unable to move at the end of my line, or, more often than not, just my fly where it had come loose and impaled in the vegetation….
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