the Walnut Diary

It was August 5^th, 1975.  My fishing partner of the day was Dr. Don Mintz, a Queen’s medical student who was at the clinic in Newboro for the summer.  Though by 1975 I no longer needed to rent one of his canoes, having inherited one from my uncle, I still liked to launch my fishing trips from Don Warren’s lawn because he had lots of advice on how to fish Opinicon Lake, and he let me pick frogs in his garden  if I wanted them.

This day we paddled the three miles up to Deadlock Bay.  It turned out to be one of those perfect mid-summer days when the fish simply don’t bite.  We explored the beaver dam, then crossed it and made our way up the winding creek to the foot of Hart Lake.  A shore leave involved a couple of casts into the upper lake after a climb up the trail, but the prospects of a bass for lunch seemed no better up there than down below, so we headed back out to the large mats of floating yellow algae for which the Deadlock is famous.

They weren’t producing that day, though.  We worked down the shoreline with a the gentle breeze, and surely enough, a large bass sheltering beside a flat rock took my artificial worm and surrendered to the net after a vigorous tussle among the weeds and stumps of the bay.  It wasn’t until the fish lay panting in the bottom of my canoe that I realized I had a problem on my hands.  This fish was big.  Trophy big.  Bass contest  big.  How would I preserve the thing for mounting when I was a half hour of hard paddling from the dock?

Like an idiot I paddled up to guide Lennie Pyne, who was trying hard to get fish for his own clients on this slow day.  I realized years later what a breach of etiquette this had been, but Lennie took it all in stride. “Keep it alive as long as you can, and be careful not to break or split the fins,” he suggested.  “Empty your cooler.  It looks as though it will just fit.  Fill it with water and any ice you have, and that should keep it until you get to a weigh-in station.  It’s a very nice fish, not just because of its size, but because it’s well proportioned and in good condition.  You should get it mounted.”

Dr. Mintz had no objection to cutting the expedition short.  We hurriedly paddled back to Warren’s launch and showed Don the fish.  He looked at the magnificent bass, didn’t notice the tail of a large perch protruding from its gullet, and commented, “It looks a little dry.  Maybe we should give it a drink.”  He picked up the nozzle of his garden hose and shoved it down the bass’s throat, then turned on the water.  As the fish’s abdomen distended he eased the water off.  A surprising amount of the torrent stayed in when Don set the fish down on the lawn.  “That’s an old guiding trick.  Judges will catch lead sinkers every time, though I know of one guy who tried to put a chunk of pig iron into a fish once.  There’s not much they can do with water, though, and you have to put the fluids back that the fish has lost since its capture.”

Off we went with our now-heavier bass to Brown’s Store.  Chuck Brown was most accommodating.  The dripping fish went onto a large piece of craft paper and right onto his polished brass scales.  “Five pounds, eight ounces, and 20 ¼” in length.  A fine bass.”  He wrote the weight on a note, signed it, and suggested we take the fish to Westport to Gary Murphy’s Barber Shop, as he was hosting the only local big bass contest this summer.  Chuck didn’t seem to mind the drippings from my fish on his counter.  “It wipes off,”  he grinned.

‘”Fetch” Murphy remembered me from my time as his pre-teen neighbour on Church Street.  The fish weighed five pounds by his scale, but he said it looked pretty dried out and he would accept Chuck’s weight as the official rating.  He suggested I freeze the fish and take it to Dawson Girdwood in Perth if I wanted a nice job done on the mounting, so a couple of weeks later I did just that.

Don and Shelley moved to Vancouver soon after our fishing trip and he set up an ear, nose and throat practice.  A couple of months passed and out of the blue I received a letter from Miss Claire Donnelly informing me that my entry was “the largest mouth bass caught that summer in the Westport area,” and the $25. cheque enclosed was first prize in the contest.

I had won money in a bass derby!

As I recall the letter went on to name Joe Babcock the winner of the smallmouth contest with a six-pound entry.

Along about February Dawson Girdwood called me to pick up the mounted bass.  It cost four times my winnings, but the largemouth still decorates the wall in my study.  There have been many bigger fish since, but my first bass over five pounds was a real milestone.