However fortunate or unfortunate, I’ve returned to work,
and so my fishing time will be dramatically reduced. This
weekend I’ve had to fill my time with other things, but
it seems that I never stop thinking about fishing. I often
replay in my mind those times that catching was fairly
good and this weekend I remembered better days.
Until last year, we had a membership with a nearby
camping resort that has five small lakes, some are
stocked regularly, but all hold fish of various
types and sizes. One of the upper lakes holds mostly
small bass and those might measure six or eight inches
at best. There are also some big catfish in there after
repeated annual stocking. Another upper lake had been
reclaimed from a dreaded natural state that promoted
diverse wildlife populations, but tended to displease
the folks that see rotted trees and muskrat dens as
nature’s form of pollution. They emptied the lake,
cleared the bottom, and deepened it using dump trucks
and bulldozers (one of which disappeared in the bottom
after a flooding, rainy season). They let it fill back up
(after they retrieved the flooded dozer) and then put a
fish cleaning station next to it so the stocker bass and
catfish could be harvested the next season. The good part
of this somewhat tragic story is that a friend and I would
take his canoe to this lake before they defaced it and
spend hours paddling across it imagining how early
explorers in this part of Missouri might have felt.
The mid-level lakes on the property hold crappie,
stocked catfish and bass, carp, sunfish and bluegills.
The main lake, the largest and lowest lake, holds all
the same fish as the others because flooding of the
upper lakes always pours into the main lake, eventually.
My dad once told me about watching huge carp wash over
the road near the dam above the main lake while he worked
the security gate. He said one of them was so large it
became wedged under a small pick-up truck and three of
the men watching the event lifted the front end of the
truck to allow the carp to continue his forced migration.
The main lake was by far my favorite lake to fish,
most times. I’ve only been a serious fisherman for
less than ten years. I never had much success fishing
before then and believed that fishing was throwing the
line in and sitting on a chair waiting for something
to happen. Then my brother introduced me to crappie
fishing, I bought an ultra-light spinning rig and
after the first couple of fish, I was hooked forever
and it’s only getting worse and better, somehow.
This main lake is not more than about twenty feet deep
at its deepest point. Two-thirds of the shoreline nearest
the campground side is fairly clear of debris and is not
allowed to become overgrown and there are some prime
fly-casting spots that will net some really good fish.
The remaining one-third of the shoreline is across the
lake from the campground and slopes steeply into the
water. Large, mature hardwood trees cover the hillside
all the way down to the water’s edge. Their branches
lean out over the water at a height of at least five
feet allowing anyone to cruise along the shore and
cast under the limbs without many tangles. It’s the
best place to relax in the shade because, from the
southeastern end of the lake, the shore gradually
curves from west to north with the hill and trees
blocking the sun during the hottest portion of the
day. This is where I became hooked on fishing. I
caught two large channel catfish along this shore,
fishing worms from my canoe. I’d throw them toward
shore, let them sink and then slowly pull them deeper
until a fish would grab them.
Later, I would realize the thrill of huge bluegill on
light tackle, when I saw a gill holding just under
the surface on a hot July day. I was paddling in my
canoe at the northwest corner of the lake and the
afternoon sun illuminated the water creating a cool,
greenish glow. At the proper angle to the sunlight I
could look into the water and see the bluegills just
hanging motionless about four feet deep. The largest,
about six feet away, was nearest to the canoe and I
cast a cricket right over his head. He waited a few
seconds and then turned toward the cricket, building
speed like a train, slowly at first and then, with a
flash-smash-splash, the cricket disappeared. My light
rod folded over and I could see the old bull charge
for the darkness darting against the tightness of the
line, first to the right and then left, rising and then
turning back to the deep, fighting like mad to get away
from me and my hook. I finally raised him out of the
water and he was huge. That great orange belly and dark
green-black form waved at the end of my line, his dark
eye turned toward me in fear. I held him up boastfully
and admired his beauty, then lowered him back into the
water, reached down and released him from the hook and
watched him disappear into the darkness below. Man,
what a rush!
Now that I knew where the fish were, and how to catch
them more often, I wanted to get more from fishing than
just fish. A friend and co-worker mentioned his desire
to try fly-fishing. He had a couple of old bamboo or
cane rods his father and grandfather had left him, but
he never has gotten around to using them, even to this
day. After listening and discussing with him I began
reading and learning about fly-fishing. This sport
seemed to be a way I could get the most from fishing.
I bought a beginner fly-fishing kit containing a rod,
line, leader, and flies and began applying all I had read.
I had no desire to take casting lessons, not because
of bullheadedness, but more out of “cheap-skatedness.”
I didn’t have much trouble casting and was able to pick
up a few small gills from the shore of the main lake
on my first trip. As spring passed into summer and my
casting improved I knew I would continue fly-fishing.
This meant I would need more flies than I could bring
myself to pay for, so I began to tie flies as well. On
a whim, I tied a woolly worm using blue wool for the
body, a brown hackle and black thread. I think this was
only the second or third fly I had ever tied. I had no
bobbin and was using sewing thread borrowed from my
wife. I submitted a story about this to Readers Casts
called, When I started… if you’d like to read about it.
My beginner’s luck was really working for me on this
fly when I accidentally created a rib over the body
with the thread. It really looked like a caterpillar,
but I wondered about the blue color. That is, I did
wonder about it, until I pulled the first monster gill
from the main lake. It was literally like catching fish
in a barrel. I kept catching and releasing great big gills,
one after the other, some maybe two or three times on that
one fly. I was astounded at how it all worked out! The fly
had been assaulted so badly over nearly two hours of fishing
that it all but disintegrated. The thread-rib went first,
pulling off the hook end creating something of a skinny
tail. Then the wool began to unravel and caused the fly
to become elongated, it almost took on the likeness of a
damselfly. Then the hackle came loose and broke off leaving
only a fragment of stem and fibers hanging near the head.
And the last fish the fly would see kept that treasured
fly, a fitting end to such a beaten and battered soldier,
it “died with its boots on.”
The fish that day averaged about eight to twelve inches.
Most of them, I discovered later, were actually green
sunfish. These quickly became my favorite fish, and
their location became my favorite spot. The green
sunfish has a bigger mouth than a bluegill and it was
easier for me to retrieve my flies from them. They
also have greater body mass; they were thicker and
when I finally kept a stringer of a dozen for a family
gathering there at the lake, they provided enough meat
that I could fillet them.
The following winter dragged by so slowly I could barely
stand it, and finally, I couldn’t. I went out on a cold,
but sunny day in January to see if there was room between
the shore and the ice to drop a fly to what I believed
would be starving bluegills. I was promptly “run off” by
the security guard because the park was officially closed
during that time of year. That would be the beginning of
the end to our membership. The year before last, near the
end of the summer season, my wife and sons went out for
a two-week, before-school vacation but the swimming pool
had closed early. Temperatures in the 100’s were just too
unbearable and my wife and sons had to abandon their outing.
Following the confrontational response from the manager,
we decided to sell our membership and my beloved sunfish
were now off limits. I have family members who still
continue as members and, as a guest, I could once again
fish there, but I hesitate to intrude on them just so I
can catch a few good fish.
These to me seem like the “good old days.” I haven’t
enjoyed such an abundance of fish since then and am
still looking for the “mother-load,” that “Brigadoon”
of bluegill fishing. I have my eye on a certain pond
and there are the county lakes that I’m still evaluating.
But, given the clean richness of that secluded and
under-populated environment the resort offered, the
magnificence of those gills and sunfish will probably
remain unmatched, at least around this part of the State.
Most farm ponds have been so blatantly abused, their
owners already have posted signs against outsiders.
Unfortunately, these ponds are all too often becoming
a memory of better days, due to the onslaught of housing
and commercial developers.
Occasionally, I’m able to drive through small farming
communities outside the greater Kansas City area and am
awestruck at the beauty this part of Missouri once offered
to many people at nearly every turn. And then, awe turns
to sadness as I’m reminded that nothing is sacred when I
see yet another sign advertising, “A better community
coming soon!” greedily beckoning to those who are fed
up with the formerly “better community” in which they
currently reside. These are the folks who want to “get
away from it all,” but they have to get rid of all
that there is so they can eventually bring it “all”
with them, and once again wish they could “get away
from it all,” all over again.
My desire is to live on a hilltop with dense woods and
a large pool of water, a long unrevealing driveway and
a very sturdy fence with a sign that offers much distress
for those who violate its intent. In the pond would be
the best and biggest sunfish I could find. Their size
and number only rivaled by the predatory fish necessary
to ensure their successful existence. Only the wish of
a recently fishless fool, but it lends itself well to my
daydreaming. An imagined place, absent of busy, intrusive
people, noise, pollution, crime, meanness and greed, a place
where only a friend can be found. My fear is that a place
like that has been outlived. That no place like that will
ever again exist, if it ever really did.
In the absence of that place of my fantasy, I get out
on the water I have, playing this game with fish, hoping
for a bull of a bluegill to smash my fly and bend down
my rod, giving me another time that, when I’m all too
busy to fish, I can look back on that day in my mind,
and reflect. ~ Tim (written 10/16/06)
About Tim Lunceford:
Tim spent nine years in the U.S. Air Force, with three
years working on the F-117 A, Stealth Fighter, and is a
veteran of Desert Storm. He lives and fishes near Kansas
City, Missouri and has been fly-fishing and fly tying two
years now. He’s been married 23 years and is the father
of four kids - three of whom have Fragile-X syndrome, a
genetic disorder that causes mental retardation and autism.
He now works as a Heat and Frost Insulator for Local Union
#27 in K.C. Tim teaches Sr. Youth Sunday school and when
there’s time, enjoys web design, graphics and digital image
manipulation, watercolor painting, playing guitar, and writes
contemporary Christian songs - none of which have been
recorded,…yet.
Originally published January 15, 2007 on Fly Anglers Online by Tim.