For those who follow my weekly Video Fishing Forecast on YouTube, you may know that I took a vacation during the last full week of June. These vacations have become a tradition in my family, my mom, my brothers and their spouses, along with my brother Jon’s kids, and of course, my wife, daughter and me… we all rent a big house on a giant lake in Upstate New York and live like we did when we were kids, albeit with a few more people adding to the memories.
I tend to wake up way before everyone else on these vacations, so naturally I grab a rod and head for the lake. But on one of those early mornings, I heard the voice of my 6-year old nephew Jack quietly narrating whatever he was doing down in the massive living room. I stood on the balcony overlooking the room and whistled quietly in that typical “yoo-hoo” melody. It took him a full three minutes to figure out where it was coming from. But he finally spotted me and was visibly excited that someone else was finally awake! So, on this day, I’d have a fishing buddy.
Down to the lake we went and the fishing was dismal. I walked to the end of the long dock and looked over the edge. Thousands of 1- to 2-inch baitfish were stemming an unexpected current in the shadow of the dock and ladder. I have no idea what these baitfish were, but they were surprisingly aggressive and seemed to be utilizing the dock to funnel anything edible to where they were waiting. And, I’m telling you, these little fish would eat anything! I saw small bits of leaf float by and, one after another, these little fish would rush up, eat it, spit it out and then another would take a shot at it!
We sat and watched for a while before I got an idea. I motioned for Jack to follow me and we made our way to the shoreline where we began flipping over rocks, looking for anything that these tiny fish might actually be able to eat. Jack found a worm and was very excited to try and feed it to these fish. We came to the end of the dock, dropped it in and watched it wriggle out of sight, it was too big. Back on shore, we found some tiny ants, these would seem to be perfect, but also hard to capture! After some effort, we both had two and, upon dropping them into the water, these little fish were practically killing each other to get to them first! The hits reminded me of tiny little stripers smashing nearly microscopic topwater plugs. Every time one would take an ant, Jack would laugh and stare into the water, trying follow the one that ate it.
After a few ant runs, we grew tired of walking the dock over and over and set our sights on trying some alternate choices. We found that they would eat and spit tiny sections of a stick, but that was only fun for a minute. Then Jack picked his nose and found a perfect little hardened booger, as soon as it hit the water, one of the fish ate it and spit it out and a split second later, another ate it and swallowed it. This, of course, had Jack laughing like crazy, the very idea that a fish might eat a booger and actually like it, had him talking about the event for hours afterwards.
Later that night, after the kids had gone to bed, my brother told me that Jack had asked, “What did Uncle Dave look like when he was younger?” Jonny told him that I looked mostly the same (the right answer) but with no beard. Jack contemplated that for a second and then replied, “I think I’m going to ask him to cover his beard with the ‘not hairy side’ of his hands tomorrow so I can see that.”
He never did ask me to cover my beard, but something tells me he may never forget feeding his booger to a fish with Uncle Dave. And I hope that’s true, because I think that’s what uncles are supposed to do.
