A FISH FOR CAMERON
My mission was simple: Get Cameron a fish. Cameron is my nine year old nephew. While talking to my sister-in-law in preparation for a July 4th visit to her family in Stockton, Missouri I of course asked how the fishing had been. She informed me that she and the kids had been to the lake several times recently and everyone had caught fish except the youngest, Cameron. In his words, “I’ve never caught a fish in my WHOLE life!” Stockton Lake and the rivers that feed it contain good numbers of panfish; crappie, large and small mouth bass, white bass, catfish, and gargantuan carp and suckers. A chance to bond with the in-laws never sounded so good. I don’t know the area that well, but I felt confident that I could find at least a few willing bluegills someplace, so I told Cameron that he and I would go out one evening while I was there and we wouldn’t come back until we’d caught him a fish. A rash promise I know, and potentially self-jinxing, but sometimes you’ve just got to go for it.
Before we left, I went out to the garage and knocked the dust and cobwebs off of our spinning gear, and made sure to put some hooks and a couple bobbers in my chest pack along with my streamer fly box. I also threw in an extra fly rod, just in case things went better than I expected. Cameron isn’t really known for his patience, so I figured I better start him out with the basic night crawler and bobber setup and see where things went from there, but no sense in not being prepared.
Before we left town, we had to drop Toby (our black lab/dachshund mix) off at his grandparents’ house, and had to drop by my mom’s place to pick up some homemade chocolates she wanted to send down for the kids. So we didn’t get gone as early as I would have normally liked and didn’t get to Stockton until well after lunch. We were greeted at the door by several choruses of “Hi Auntie M! Hi Uncle Tim!” and one “can we go fishing now?!” Cameron was primed and ready to roll, but it was pretty hot so I convinced him to give us a little time to settle in and let the sun get down a little bit. He grudgingly agreed.
That afternoon, a few clouds moved in and the temperature came down a bit. By 5 o’clock, it was actually quite nice out, so Cameron and I grabbed our rods, my chest pack, and his box of worms, told the rest of the family not to hold dinner for us and took off to a spot I had found on the river below the lake earlier in the day. It was in the tail water below the dam, a ways below the gates and generator outflows, but close enough that the outflow from the power generators kept the water temperature a bit cooler than usual. My hope was that this would mean more actively feeding fish.
I got one of my spinning rods out and set it up with a bait hook and bobber for Cameron, then set my 6wt up with a #6 black Slumpbuster with a tungsten cone head. I figured I’d start Cameron on shallow drifts while I dredged the bottom seeing which one hooked up first. We were at a spot where a sand bar dropped rather sharply into a deep pool. I told Cameron to cast up into the shallow area on the bar and let his bobber drift out into the deeper water, and that I would go down a few yards and work the deeper part of the pool. I saw shad working in the shallow water but it was still too warm and bright for anything to be chasing them, but I hoped as his worm drifted into the deeper water it might find something waiting there.
It took a little while for him to get the hang of casting and being patient while the bobber and worm drifted down with the current, but he soon had the hang of it and was casting pretty well. I moved down a few yards and began drifting the Slumpbuster through the deep part of the pool. I stayed close enough to help when hooks needed baited, lines needed untangling and so on, but far enough away for him to feel he was handling it on his own. On about my fourth cast, I looked over and saw a bent rod and no bobber. Fish on! I reeled up and went back over to help if I was needed, but Cameron had it under control and soon had his first fish ever, about a 6 inch bass. We took the obligatory picture, and then I showed him how to unhook the fish and return it to the water. With a rebaited hook and a grin a mile wide, Cameron returned to the task at hand and I went back to my spot. About five minutes later it was Uncle Tim’s turn as my line stopped dead in its swing and started back upstream. After several minutes and a few nice jumps, Cameron snapped a picture of me holding a pretty little smallmouth.
After that, we were both into fish, Cameron found a school of plump, very
eager bluegills and I continued to pick up smallmouth bass, white bass, and
the occasional channel cat on my Slumpbuster. We fished until almost dark,
when Cameron ran out of worms and both our bellies reminded us we hadn’t
had supper yet. As we packed up to head home I asked Cameron if he wanted
to stop by his mom’s work and tell her how we did. “No,” he
said, “we can wait till she gets home.” But as we got into town
he decided maybe we should stop by and show her the pictures, a big grin spreading
across his face again.
I had hoped maybe to get the fly rod in his hands that night, but he was having so much fun and finally catching fish that I thought I’d better leave well enough alone. However, the next day Marguerite and I were taking advantage of the big back yard to get in a little casting practice. I noticed Cameron watching from the doorway. He came out and asked us why we were whipping the rods back and forth like that (he had been too intent on his own fishing to notice what I was doing the night before), so I explained it to him and asked if he wanted to try. I handed him Marguerite’s 5wt and showed him the basics. We’ll have to work a little on the finer points once we get back to the water, but he was doing surprisingly well for never having seen a fly rod before and only catching his first fish ever just the night before.
Hmm, maybe next time that extra fly rod will get some use after all.
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