I’m fresh off a week’s vacation, staying on Great Sacandaga Lake in upstate New York. This lake is massive and reads more like upper Narragansett Bay than an inland lake. Every year, my family gets together for a week in the summer, my mom, my two brothers and their families and my wife, daughter and I. These are always memorable and they have a way of bringing me back to feeling more like a teenager than a dude in his mid-40s. I often find myself diving for tennis balls thrown by one of my brothers in the shallows of a lake, in a game that seemingly hasn’t ended since it began when our years were measured in single digits – to this day we still call it ‘amazing catches’. But with two young nephews aged 3 and 6 and my daughter at 10, we’re bringing the next generation into the game.
This year, my brother asked me to make sure I brought a fishing rod because his boys were showing an interest in taking up the sport. Of course I leapt at that chance (and I was bringing a rod either way!) After surveying the lake and wading the shallows along our shoreline, I was surprised and discouraged to see that there were ZERO sunfish or perch around the area. My hope of putting them on some easy fish seemed to be deeply in doubt. I woke early the next morning and waded along flipping a jig and a Ned to see what I might find, but I only hooked into one – TINY – smallmouth bass that jumped off almost immediately.
Feeling determined, I fished during the day and found nothing. As jet skis and power boats ripped in and out of the cove, I began to realize that I’d seen this before. After dinner, with the sun sinking behind the mountains to the west, I targeted these long lines of rocks created when landowners cleared their beaches during low water years. It was like a different lake. At first, it was just swirls, but they were happening on nearly every cast. Popping a Whopper Plopper along these sunken jetties. But as it grew darker, the swirls turned to vicious strikes and I was hooking up at a surprising rate with smallies ranging from 2 to 4 pounds!
The next day my brother really wanted me to take the kids fishing and told him that it was going to be a lost cause during the day. His boys had a very strict bedtime – even on vacation – it’s not my style, but they’re not my kids and I knew it was going to be a tough needle to thread, before bed. So after dinner, I rounded up the troops and led them down to the water.
I had found a spot on one of the closest ‘jetties’ that held a ton of fish and, when I paddle-boarded over it I saw a huge boulder perched at the end of the line of rocks. I pointed to the last few exposed rocks and told the boys we needed to get there, maybe a 60-foot wade through 1 to 12 inches of water. I took the lead and trudged out there, only to turn and see that both of them weren’t even halfway there, battling the wind chop that would have been comparable to a raucous 2-foot chop if extrapolated to compare to my height.
With some help, we all arrived at the tip of the point and I began demonstrating the technique for using a Whopper Plopper, which I knew they would love. Jack, the younger of the two, was more interested in flipping over rocks and exploring the brush, and I get that, I was the same way at that age. Attie, though, was all about it and after three or four casts of watching me he said he was ready to try it.
I looked to the west and saw the sun was still in full view above the mountains and I silently wished for a miracle. Watching this little man work the bait did my heart proud, and his technique was surprisingly solid for having done it exactly zero times before. Ten and then 20 casts passed without a sniff while I tried to use telekinesis to speed up the rotation of the earth. Then I heard the call from their mother to come in and get ready for bed. After getting them safely to shore, I waded back out and watched the sun, as soon as it disappeared, I cast out into the same water that had been devoid of life and hooked up to decent smallie right away. In the next 40 minutes I had four more, one of them over 4 pounds. Missed it by that much.
