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There are signs of the spring in the air.
Though it's only late-February, reports from
around the state indicate that the first tentative
movement of bass, bream and sac-au-lait into
the shallows has been noted, particularly in
restricted impoundments where water runs clear.
Unfortunately, the Atchafalaya River Basin, my
area, remains high and muddy.
Still, robins are prancing around my backyard,
a great sign that spring is nearing in south
Louisiana. None too soon. Over the last three
months, I refurbished two rods. One, a little
Montague I wrote about previously. The other
was one I have had for some time, an unknown
rod, probably a better-grade Monty or H-I, that
had more sets in it than my handwriting. I spent
several evenings straightening it over a heatgun.
It's not perfect, but it's a darned-sight straighter
than it was. I wrapped on new guides and found it
is a real cannon with a seven-weight line. Only
one tip, but the rod was a freebie so I'm not
complaining.
Spring. Ah, the lovely sound of it. A dearly departed
friend of mine once wrote, "Oh my, the winter, no
matter how mild, has been much too long." I am
longing for water. Last weekend, I drove the truck
down the Atchafalaya Basin Protection Levee to Lake
Fausse Point. On the northern border of the lake at
the levee, large rocks were piled to slow erosion.
I sat on one of these for an hour or so. The lake
is high and the color of chocolate milk. Under a
good fifteen mile per hour wind, small whitecaps
raced from Bird Island Chute to the channel that
empties the lake, eventually, into Bayou Teche and
finally to the Gulf of Mexico. Good catfishing water,
but I haven't fished cats in years, don't have any
tackle heavy enough any longer either, spin or
baitcast.
But the lake was there, churning, powerful. There
are places in this world where power is oh, so
evident. One of those places is Poverty Point, in
northeast Louisiana. A massive earthworks more
than 3,500 years old, the central point of the
site is a mound ninety-six feet high, shaped like
a bird with outstretched wings. To reach the summit
visitors walk up the tail of the bird, a ramp, to
its shoulders just below where the head once was.
The head was demolished a century ago by farmers.
At the top of the mound, built by Poverty Point
Period peoples who mysteriously abandoned the site
almost overnight, power swirls and blazes like a
storm. It is almost overwhelming. The state's
largest site within the following local archaeological
time period, Tchefuncte, is but a stone's throw from
Poverty Point, but oddly, not a single Poverty Point
artifact - and there are millions of them, often
lying on the surface - has ever been found on the
Tchefuncte site. It's as if the Tchefuncte people
were wary of it, avoided it. A Caddo prehistoric
burial found a few hundred miles away revealed human
remains buried with Poverty Point artifacts. The
individual in that grave was someone of note,
probably a medicine man judging by the things
buried with him, and the Poverty Point artifact
in his possession probably gave him high esteem
among his people.
Lake Fausse Point is such a place, just a couple
miles from my home. It was once part of a giant
network of lakes running more than seventy miles,
but the levee intersected and has nearly destroyed
it. The historical photograph from 1893 shows what
this wonderful world of water looked like then,
and the following shows it today.
Yet there is still power here, and I see it
broiling in whitecaps and great brown swells
of water across the surface. In a few weeks,
perhaps a month, I know it will calm, and clear,
turning that marvelous green-black color that
denotes good fishing. For a month or two after
that, I'll haunt it at every given opportunity,
not only for fishing, but for recharging of my
soul from it's power after a long winter. When
that time is over, the lake will recede, become
horridly shallow, thin, emasculated by the levee
to but a shadow of its former self. Sometimes
I feel like this old lake and I are aging toward
a certain mortality together. Like we are approaching
death arm-in-arm.
But that's too heavy to consider with spring
right around the corner. I'll probe its depths
in search of bluegill and bass, and perhaps
find erudition as well. I'll skim its surface
in the boat, looking for a nice cove or point
of cypress trees to cast Clousers, and perhaps
note an eye in the sky from a thunderbird peeking
out from a storm cloud. This is my home, has been
for eight thousand years before I was even born.
Spring. Like the rest of you, I am awaiting it
with eager bliss. ~ Roger
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