Lighter Side
The truth is, fish have very little sex life. If you have ever tried to make love under water, you will know why. --- Ed Zern


July 27th, 1998
Best By Test
By Ed Zern, excerpt from HOW TO CATCH FISHERMEN
Probaby out of print, check your used-booker sellers!


Sitting around in the Antrim Lodge bar one evening Jack Rowles and I were appalled at the number of strange fishermen milling about, and we decided to draw up a written examination for Beaverkill anglers. Our idea was that after grading the papers it would then be possible to sort out the realy serious fishermen from the canasta players and the guys who were simply on the lam from their wives and were going around disguised in waders. By the time Frank started closing up for the night we had several dozen pertinent questions, of which I recall only a relatively uncomplicated one. It was a field problem, and it went like this:

You are standing, rod in hand, at the head of Cairn's Pool on the Route 17 side, when simultaneously (A) a case of bonded bourbon whisky bounces off a passing truck and lands undamaged in the middle of the highway, where the next passing motorist is sure to see it and pick it up, (B) at the lower end of the pool a beautiful and shapely blonde who has been swimming starts shrieking that she has lost her bathing suit and urges you to hurry down and restore here circulation by any means you choose, as she is getting chilly, (C) across the river a barefoot boy gets his foot caught in a switch on the Delaware, New York and Ontario Western tracks and hollers for you to cross over and pry him loose before the Binghamton Express, which is due in three minutes, comes around the bend and (D) a brown trout of at least four pounds begins to feed greedily on large mayflies within easy casting distance, and is obviously a cinch for a #10 Light Cahill. In one sentence, state what you would do.

I don't intend to tip our mitt on this because some day we might want to use it in another examination. But it might help to bear in mind that four-pound trout in the Beaverkill are a lot harder to come by than bourbon, blondes or barefoot boys.

~ Ed Zern

Copyright © 1951 by Ed Zern


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