Chapter 4 Puddingstone We moved to San Bernardino Road in Covina. Dad remodeled a Spanish style home and built a swimming pool; it was a neighborhood first, and a place where dozens of friends and family members came on birthdays and holidays to gather. We came home from Lake Arrowhead after Labor Day. My mind was more on fishing than on school. Pudding Stone Reservoir is in San Dimas, California, about 20 miles from the house. In those days, it was an hour and a half bike ride on quiet, rural roads. Bluegill thrived and Largemouth Bass fed on a prolific strain of Shad that spawned in the creek feeding the lake. In 1952, the shallow water near the banks of Puddingstone was mostly slippery mud havens for burrowing crayfish and Carp. Carp were the easiest fish in the lake to catch, so I fished mostly for them. There were others on the bank doing the same. Most were using kernels of corn, or dough balls. I wasn’t fond of slimy Carp once I caught them, but it was fun and my neighbors on the bank, who I had gotten to know, had developed a taste for their flesh. It was Saturday after Labor Day, my last day to fish before school started. The landscape had changed. The Army Corps of Engineers drained the reservoir in anticipation of a wetter than normal winter. The ramp ended thirty-feet from water, exposing a strip of thick mud below picnic tables and fire pits on the grass where I usually fished. There shoreline was void of the usual boats and anglers. I left my bike in the grass, baited my hook, and stared out past the mud at the water. I couldn’t cast that far. I poked it with a stick; the muck looked firm enough to walk on; I gingerly stepped forward. It was a thick, sticky mud; the kind you could squeeze water from and mold into slippery clay. Three steps down I slipped, and then slid the last twenty-five feet on the steep slope, stopping my slide by digging my heels in the slippery goo at the water’s edge. Digging for a shoe lost to the suction of the sludge I found myself stuck in the mud when I turned and tried to make my way back up the slope. I found the shoe crawling on all fours, dragging my fishing pole toward the grass. Head down resting on my forearm, bone weary, and close to tears, I heard a horn bugle above me. Ken and his wife Sandy had been fishing on the far side of the lake. There were no roads past the makeshift launching ramp. Ken’s cancerous old Jeep Willy pickup was army salvage. A four-wheel drive could navigate the grassy slopes below the ranch fences boarding the lake and above the mud. Ken was passing by on the path where I dropped my bike catching sight of me. He was laughing at the kid wallowing in the mud when he got out and reached for a coil of rope in the bed of the truck. “Catch.” As I looked up, he stepped to the edge of the mud and tossed the rope. Ken dragged me up the slope, introduced himself, and then his wife. Ken and Sandy arrived at daylight and were heading home to a family BBQ, but he offered to take me to a place where I could clean up. It was a spot to fish from a rocky shore with no mud. Covered with slime, I was not fit company to join them in the cab. We put my bike in the bed of the truck. Ken told me to sit on the tailgate and hang on. We backed down the bumpy trail to a ridge of rocks above the lake a mile from the boat ramp. Sandy brought out a thermos of thick, black, lukewarm coffee; it was a first for me. I grimaced at the bitter liquid, but sipped on it not wanting to be impolite. Ken joined me on the tailgate with a basket containing chicken sandwiches, and sugar for the coffee. September is one of the hottest months of the year. The sun was warming the day. My shorts and shirt were a crust of drying mud; my shoes and socks the same. Sandy handed me a blanket and pointed to a rock outcropping. “There’s a beach on the other side of the rocks. Strip and clean up. When you finish wrap the blanket around you and we’ll take you home.” “We live in Baldwin Park and go right by your house. We can put your bike in the back and drop you off.” Ken knew where I lived because I told him. I looked a little bewildered at the suggestion. “It’s early, my clothes will dry. I want to go fishing.” “Suit yourself, but we have family waiting for us.” I thanked them when Ken lifted my bike from the bed of the truck. Ken and Sandy left while I was trudging toward the rock outcropping. Behind the rocks was a sandy beach at the head of a sheltered cove. It was going to be blistering hot day. I stripped to my undershorts, took a swim to wash off the mud and then rinsed my clothes and shoes. I had the cove and most of the lake to myself, but I didn’t catch fish that day. I was exhausted after the struggle in the mud following a twenty-mile bike-ride. I propped my pole in the fork of a stick and fell asleep on the grass next to my clothes drying in the sun. My skin was as brown as the mud was black from spending the summer living in swimming in trunks at the lake, but still, I woke a few hours later tingling from the sun’s rays. I was going to be late to the Barbecue I promised Mom I would not miss. I had to remember to cover up when I got home or Mother would douse me with vinegar. Summer was over; fall was intermittent rain. The weather cleared for a week in November. I hadn’t been to Puddingstone for two months and was itching to go fishing. I woke at four-am on a Saturday and dressed for the weather in long pants and a sweatshirt with a hood. Mom and Dad were asleep when I crept into their room. I knew better than to wake Dad. I shook Mom’s arm waking her from deep sleep. “It’s five-am; what do you want?” “I’m going fishing.” “Alright, but don’t wake the house.” Mother turned over. I went to the kitchen, made a sandwich and packed a lunch. I had learned the best time to ask when I expected a no was when my parents were both asleep. Mom would have a foggy memory of my waking her; I left a note on the kitchen counter just in case. The sun peeked over the horizon between intermittent black clouds; it looked like more rain. Water was boiling over the spillway at the dam. Record rainfall doubled the size of the lake. It was encroaching onto fenced and gated pastures covering the gravel road. There was no way to get to my fishing spots. The creek feeding the lake was a few miles away. There would be access across the grass from the road above. It meant backtracking five-miles. I arrived at the point of land where the inlet met the lake, clouds filled the sky; the drizzle had soaked through my clothes, and a chill had settled in my bones. I recognized Ken’s cankerous old Jeep parked at the edge of the water where the creek met the lake. The grizzled old man and his wife were sitting under a makeshift tent warming their hands by a fire; he waved. The drizzle turned steady. Sandy stepped out into the rain and called out / inviting me to join them. When I sat down, Sandy pulled a blanket out of a knapsack and draped it around my shoulders. The couple fished for Bass, not Carp. Ken told me they fished grassy areas and rock outcroppings on the other side once a week, avoiding mud banks where the Carp anglers set up their day camps. A fish caught and put on a stringer is one less for another angler to catch. Fishermen keep secretes when it comes to special spots and proven techniques they use in a lake with limited resources. Ken and sandy were in the same box I was. The lake was too high for them to cross below the fenced fields to their favorite spots. Ken turned to me. “What brings you out on a cold rainy day?” “I wanted to go fishing; it wasn’t raining when I left home.” “You live in Covina, that’s a long bike ride in this weather.” “I told you, I want to go fishing.” “OK, so fish.” I was baiting my hook when the bell attached to Ken’s pole signaled a bite. The pole was quivering a bit; Ken was not in a hurry. “You better set the hook or it will spit out the bait.” “I’m not fishing for Carp, Pat. I want him to swallow the hook.” I was ready to ask another question when the bell chimed and the tip of the pole rushed headlong toward the water. Ken grabbed the pole, set the hook, and in a few minutes dragged a six-pound Bass onto shore. I was mesmerized, people caught a few on the mud banks fishing with worms, but it was the largest Bass I had seen caught in Puddingstone. Ken dug the hook out of the fish, then walked to the water’s edge where he gutted it and took the head off before he put it in an ice chest next to four other nice Bass. Ken put the head in the plastic bag with the others, which I though strange. I looked at the sticky cheese ball dangling from the end of my line. No one I knew ever caught a Bass on Cheese Balls and I didn’t have worms. “Ken, what’s your secret?” Ken smiled. “Promise you won’t tell.” “Yes, I promise.” “These.” Ken took the cover off the bucket next to him, reached in, and retrieved a large crayfish. “I catch them in a trap I set when I’m fishing and keep them in a water trough out in back of my house where I feed them. They don’t get a lot to eat in the wild. When they feed they grow, to grow they molt, that means they shed their outer shell and for a time the new shell is soft. Bass will grab them, but spit the big ones out when the shells are hard. I feed them the fish heads; they molt in the tank three or four times a year. Big Bass love soft shells crawdads. The bigger crayfish the bigger the Bass. I hook them by the tail. Sometimes a Bass will grab a pincer and shake it before trying to eat it. That’s what this one did, which is why it took so long to hook him.” Ken handed me a sliding sinker, a swivel, a # 6 hook, and then showed me how to rig for Bass fishing from the bank with crayfish. Using a sliding sinker with an open spool, hook a crayfish in the tail. It will move about the bottom looking for a hole. Ken showed me how to leave a few feet of slack line, and when the line came tight, lift the pole dislodging the crayfish starting it moving to attract Bass prowling for prey. Sandy bottoms work best. Crayfish will burrow in the mud and out of sight if left alone. Ken reached in his bucket and pulled out a five-inch crayfish. Soft shell crawdads are fragile. He showed me how to hook it and gently loft it into the lake so as not kill or damage it. He set my pole in a fork he stuck in the sand next to his and clipped a bell to a guide. The clouds parted; the sun warming the day, but the fish quit biting. I was getting fidgety and moved to check my bait. Ken motioned me to sit back down. He had noticed a slight, but erratic movement of my line. A few minutes later, the bell was tingling and my line was moving. “Pick up your pole, but don’t set the hook, He’s toying with the bait.” Bass don’t toy with smaller bait, they gulp, which must have happened in the next instant because the line came tight and was peeling off the reel. It was my first big Bass, six, maybe seven pounds. Ken wanted to clean the fish; I said no, I wanted to show it off when I got home. Ken rummaged through his truck and then handed me a wire fish stringer with snap loops. “Hook it through the lip and put it in the water to keep it fresh, I don’t believe in spoiling good fish.” It was the last bite we had that day. The sun was dropping behind the hills; Ken and his wife were breaking camp. “You want a ride; we go right by your house.” My clothes were still damp from the morning rain and it was growing colder. I would be home in thirty minutes instead of two hours. It was a different world back then. By the time I was ten, I took a bus, rode my bike, or hitchhiked by myself when I wanted to go somewhere. Riding with Ken and his wife made sense. We put the Bass in a bucket of water, and my bike in the back of the truck. Forty minutes later we pulled into the driveway in front of my home. The car was gone. Mom and Dad had taken the other kids to Sears to shop for Christmas clothes. Sears was in Los Angeles, thirty miles away. Mom had been planning the trip all week Ken helped me unloaded my bike and the bucket with the Bass. He reached back into the bed of the pickup and lifted out a tub with a half dozen crayfish. “Keep them in water and change it once a week. It doesn’t take much to keep them alive. They will eat any kind of meat or fish scraps.” I thanked Ken and his wife. “We go by the front of your house between five and five-thirty Saturday mornings. Ask your folks and give them my phone number. If you’re out there when we come by you can ride with us.” I stuck the paper in my pocket, parked my bike behind the house and returned to retrieve the Bass and crayfish. As I passed the gate to the swimming pool the Bass flopped in the bucket; it was still alive. I was a kid. I opened the gate and walked to the edge of the pool. Nobody except the very rich heated swimming pools in those days, you waited until spring when the water warmed to swim and you quit when the water got too cold. There were few chemicals in the water, but it was late fall and the water was cool, algae was not a big issue. The pool was twelve feet deep to accommodate divers using the ten-meter platform and three meter springboard. I thought about it for a minute and then dumped the Bass into the pool. It lay on its side for a moment; I grabbed it and righted it. Its tail started moving side to side. I let it go; it circled the pool settling above the drain in the deep end. I know Bass need to eat, so I emptied the bucket of crayfish into the pool. When they got home, Mom chewed me out for running off that morning, reminding me that she told me about the trip to Sears. I told her I forgot, and that she gave me permission to go fishing. Dad stepped in with my note in hand. “Next time, ask when we’re awake.” It saved Dad the price of new clothes for me. Mothers kept track; good clothes didn’t go to the salvation army. I was bigger than my brother; smaller than my cousin. I would be getting Marty’s hand-me-downs instead of a new suit for Christmas Mass. I took Mom and Dad out to show them my captive hovering above the drain in the deep end of the pool. Mom shook her head, turned back to the house after telling Dad to deal with it. He did, or didn’t, depending on how you want to look at it. He quit putting chemicals in the pool that winter. It was dark at 5-am and I was never late. Dad installed a light by the curb. On Saturday mornings when the weather was good, I was waiting for Ken and Sandy. I quit fishing for Carp, but I made a trip to Pudding Stone as often as I could to collect crayfish and fish for Bass. The feed and farm in town sold aquatic plants for farm ponds. Dad took an interest, one day a patch of Lilly pads growing from a pot in the shallow end appeared. I began adding Bluegill and Bullfrog now and then. I don’t know how many fish and crawdads called the family pool home because a film of algae turned the blue water a dirty green. My birthday is April 15. It was on a Wednesday, and a school day. Dad woke me at 3 am and told me to get dressed were going to Apple Valley, I forget why. I would have stayed up all night to go fishing, but I fell asleep in the car a few minutes later. Dad woke me at five. My surprise birthday present was an introduction to saltwater game fishing. We had breakfast and then boarded a boat at the dock next to the Pavilion in Balboa, California. Green Mackerel, Bonito, and Barracuda were the mainstay for the sport angler in the Catalina Channel, with an assortment of different kinds of Bass and Sheepshead thrown in. There were a few bill-fish far out in the channel, but the targeted prize was Yellowtail and log Barracuda that schooled around Catalina Island. I was fascinated with the bait tank. Some of the Anchovies, Sardines, and Mackerel we stopped to collect from a trawler at the entrance to the harbor were as big as many of the fish I had caught. Dad wanted me to catch fish that day. It was hit and miss at the island so we did not go to Catalina. We fished the kelp beds near shore. There were thirty to forty passengers, on what they call a cattle boat in the charter industry, crowding each other for a place at the rail. Dad was not a fisherman; he rented poles with reels impossible for an inexperienced kid to cast without a backlash. Little did it matter, I was catching Mackerel and spotted Bass soaking dead and dying bait under the boat. The big fish were out of my reach when the skipper found a school of Barracuda mixed with Bonito. I couldn’t cast live bait or the six-inch silver spoons, called spoofers, without a backlash in the reel, but I was trying, tangling my line with other passengers. One of them got angry when he lost a big fish on my account. Dad put mine in the rack and took me to the bow with a rented pole in hand. It took a few practice throws, but he got the knack and soon his spoofer was reaching the boiling school of fish. He landed one or two shakers and then hooked a big Barracuda. He handed me the pole; I thought I died and went to heaven. Since then I traveled the world fishing many oceans, rivers, lakes, and seas. Today, in my twilight years, I can no longer live where I cannot smell salt air. The deckhands bagged our fish. The boat returned to the dock at five. I slept on the ride home. Dad woke me when we got there. He took me to the gate by the pool. Grandpa cleaned the pond, reclaiming the swimming pool while we were gone. I wasn’t mad at Dad. I knew it would happen eventually. Easter was the beginning of the season in Southern California. It fell on April 5, 1953. Looking back, Dad waited longer than I would have, but my birthday and my first salt-water-fishing trip would make it much more palatable. The warming days of spring meant barbecue, family, and friends. I was disappointed for an hour or two, but I didn’t mind. School would be out in six weeks. Trout, Bluegill, and Bull Frogs would be biting at Lake Arrowhead.
Posted on: Tue, 06 Aug 2013 09:14:12 +0000
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