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There is a small pond in a subdivision
development area perhaps two miles from where
I live.
It was, in years past, a crawfish pond, but when
the main road for the subdivision was constructed,
they borrowed quite a bit of dirt from the edges
around it, and it is about two acres today. There
are some deeper holes, but on average it's about
four feet.
Nobody else fishes it, probably suspecting that since
it's so new and recently disturbed there's not much
chance of more than a few small bluegill. I stumbled
on it about two months ago, and found I could regularly
pick up small bass, about ten inches, and a few bluegill
with no trouble. Sometimes people come and work their
hunting dogs in it, but I have never seen a length of
monofilament, a battered bobber or any other sign that
it's being fished other than by me.
I talked with the developer of the subdivision, and he
told me that plans for a future phase of construction
call for enlarging the pond to a forty-acre lake.
Estate-style homes will be built around it and sold for
a good penny. It's a few years away yet, but after that
I won't be able to fish there anymore. So I spend a good
bit of time working it.
Having been raised in a small wooden boat fishing
lakes from the moment I could sit up straight and
hold a fishing rod in my hands, ponds are new
experiences to me, and difficult ones. I am
slowly learning that while they share many characteristics,
ponds are not mini-lakes. This particular water has
a patch of willows in the center of it, but there are
no trees whatsoever around its bank. There is brush
along the water's edge, and the little bass and bluegill
love to hide in there and assault a Spook anytime
it gets within four feet of their lair. Knowing the
age of the pond, the fact that once crawfish were
harvested out of it, I suspected there might be
bigger fish in it, but even running a wooly bugger
or Clouser deep produced on a few feeble bluegill
nibbles.
But I go there regularly, because it's far enough
from any highways that I can only dimly hear the
cars passing; it's easy casting with no trees
around, though the line at my feet does tend to snag
on stubble a lot. The developer keeps the area mowed
fairly often. It's one of those places I've dedicated
myself to becoming intimate with, this one more than
any other, because I know it's demise is sure. When
it's dug out, there will be a large mortality factor
in the fish population, but the developer said it will
be stocked again. I haven't kept fish out of it,
releasing all the little bass, even the occasional
one that makes the fourteen-inch minimum.
There's something of a sadness though, when I work
that pond. It's a pretty place, and I think I'd
like to have a house of my own near it, but with
no neighbors crowding me and throwing their own
lines into my secret little spot. The bass are so
under fished, they hit nearly anything I throw at
them. Sometimes, when the wind is up and my five-weight
is giving me too much trouble casting, I return to
spinning tackle and pull the little bass out with
spinner baits. Each eight- or ten-inch one will
probably not grow much more, after the pond is redug
and enlarged to a lake for estate homes and well-to-do
residents, but they'll be replaced by Florida-strain
largemouth. I don't dislike the Florida bass, they're
pretty and they get big. But native bass hold much more
appeal for me. My ancestors go back eight thousand years
on this land, for I am half Native American. My mother
is French-Acadian, and my Cajun ancestors have several
centuries of deep roots here as well. Perhaps that's
why I like the indigenous bass more than the Florida
variety. They seem to belong more to that little pond
tucked away in a partially developed segment of a
subdivision's sudden sprawling growth. They remind me,
in a way, of myself.
Casting tiny sinking fly, I let it run down where
I suspected there was a deeper hole in the north
end of the pond. The wind was threatening to kick
up again, that plague that fishermen will remember
the early part of 2003 for. I let it sink, made a
jerking retrieve, sink again, and repeated
the process.
A dull thud transmitted through the line to my hand
and I snapped back the rod tip. The thud immediately
transformed into a dead weight, and I was sure I had
hooked bottom. It was so firm, in fact, that I actually
had time to walk about thirty feet down the bank,
counter to the direction my line was angled, to
attempt a de-snagging tug, when the snag suddenly
shot out toward the middle of the pond.
It took nearly fifteen minutes before I caught a
glimpse of what was swirling around down there,
stripping off line, then letting me nudge it
slowly toward the bank, only to catapult away
again and leave my spool spinning out even more
line than before. But at last, when I coaxed it
close enough to the shallows near the edge of
the pond, a flash of green-white both reassured and
terrified me: Not a catfish, not a choupique, this
was a largemouth bass.
He made two or three more half-hearted runs, but
he was tired. The bank of the pond drops about
a foot and a half to the water edge, and when I
managed to coast him up to the lapping surface, I
had to step out and into the mud to wrap my thumb
under the jaw of a four-pound largemouth. I
was caked in wet mud to my right knee, but stood
there amazed and delighted. I never would have
believed there were fish that size in that little,
young pond.
The way I grew up, in a slightly-better-than-poor
Indian household, with a father who could catch
fish in a pothole on the street, fishing was meant
for escape, for sport, for relaxation, for father-son
bonding, and fish were meant for the table. In my
later years, appalled by the fishing pressure in
the basin and the lakes of my parish, I have begun
practicing catch and release almost exclusively. I
only keep bluegill for the table now. But I thought
about the certain demise of the pond when the roaring
diesel excavators move in, and the likely death of
this native largemouth, as beautiful a creature as
I've ever seen come from home waters. When the hydraulics
pull the buckets down into the mud to begin creating a
pristine lake for homeowners who'll have finely
manicured lawns leading out to its banks and who'll
either fish it or ignore it in favor of the golf
course to be built in another part of subdivision,
the habitat of this fish will be destroyed and surely
him along with it.
It's a quandary I have never faced before. It's said
the people of Easter Island once lived in a
dense woodland. Little by little, they used
up an extremely finite resource, until at some point,
some inhabitant of the island, fully knowing what he
was doing, cut down the very last tree standing. I
wonder what went through his mind when the axe made
its first blow to the last tree in his entire world.
Or maybe he'll somehow escape the chaos of enlarging
the pond into a small lake, compete for food with
Florida largemouth, perhaps having a few of the
stocked fingerlings for a snack along the way. Maybe
he'll escape the hydraulic buckets, survive the muddying
of the water until the sediment settled, and forage
for insects and baitfish, managing to survive until
the ecosystem restored itself.
What would you do? Take advantage of the resource
which, more likely than not, will end in tragedy
and waste? Or play the unlikely odds that the fish
might survive, to be caught another day by some
other lucky angler.
I won't tell you what I did, released it or took
it to the table. It's a question maybe we all should
think about, and that's the point of this story. A
little pond out somewhere, unnoticed except by
one angler, who can have a dramatic impact on it
in his own way, but not so harsh as the fate
which looms on the horizon. Perhaps you've never
kept fish for cooking, or perhaps you're a
convert to catch and release like me. If your
favorite lake or stream were facing almost certain
loss of its population of game fish in the near
future, would that justify the taking of fish? Or
would you stick to your principles?
No, I won't tell you what I did with that fish,
because somebody on one side of the fence or
another is going to be upset. But I believe the
question is worth thinking about on a windy or
rainy day when the fishing is impossible. Maybe
it'll give the one who ponders it a greater
understanding, one way or the other, of this sport,
the resource and the thing it is within us that
makes us so enamored by it. Or why, in the last
moments of dusk when all eternity seems to fall
in on itself around that little pond and the man
standing on its bank, it seems to matter so much. ~ Roger
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