Fishing connections

Shootin’ n Snaggin’ with the Frugal Fisherman

A month ago I was lucky enough to spend a three day weekend paddling the Kentucky River with four close friends. We embarked at Lock 7 just below Highbridge Friday morning and made our way downriver some 9 miles to Shawnee Run, where we rowed to its back shoal and assembled camp on a semi-flat bluff 20 feet above the babbling creek below.

There we rummaged for calcite, worked flint, fluorspar and various fossils, skipped smooth stones over riffles and in general stared wondrously into the cool Shawnee, hoping to see a caddis fly rise or discover a long forgotten Pliocene sea snail frozen in time. On shore we cooked Amish sausage, farm eggs from Garrard County and three fish caught by Jackson: a drum, a spotted and a largemouth bass. We made fire and laughed and marveled at the preceding week’s flood and its high water mark some 30 feet above us.

Shawnee Run was our own version of nirvana. Or should I say Narnia, for it felt as though we had stepped through the back of a wardrobe that opened to a land of talking buzzards with wings spread and gawking eyes and singing red headed skinks bobbing to nature’s drum.

It wasn’t until returning home late Sunday night, crashing hard, and then awakening renewed Monday morning that I learned of James Harrod’s stay on Shawnee Run, named by Harrod himself after encountering Shawnee Indians inhabiting the creek and its tributaries. He and a band of almost 40 men founded the first permanent settlement in Kentucky on June 16, 1774. In his honor that settlement was named Harrod’s Town, known today as Harrodsburg, Kentucky, located approximately 10 miles downriver from our campsite on the Shawnee.

Part of what sustained Harrod and his men on their travel down the Monongahela and Ohio Rivers to the mouth of the Kentucky River, and their eventual crossing of the Salt River into what is today Mercer County, was the abundant and numerous species of wildlife and fish in and around the Kentucky River. I know of no true record of this, but knowing a thing or two about spending time in the wild, I’m sure of it. Maybe Harrod enjoyed a pan fried white perch, or drum as it’s commonly known in these parts, just as we did. If he was so lucky he’d know there are few things better than fresh fish in the wild.

In reading about Harrod, I grew curious. How did he and his band of mountain men view fishing? What was their ‘fishing ethos’? Did they fish for food, for pleasure, or for some combination of both? Having much to do after blowing off a three day weekend, I dismissed the question. I figured I’d discover my answer one day while fishing, which I did, though just not at the end of my own fishing line as I had envisioned, but in the action of watching someone else fish.

Before we made our way down to Shawnee Run, before we polished off the bottles of peaty Laphroaig and neuron altering psilocybin, I watched Jackson fish on the leading edge of Minter’s Bar, formed by the run off from the fertile river bend leading to Highbridge. At Minter’s, I didn’t make my way towards my own fishing pole like I normally do. No, I sat there on the roots of a large American Sycamore, smoked a cigar, sipped scotch and quietly listened to nature while watching Jackson’s every move.

It was in this “action of watching” that I discovered something all together new. Having grown up fishing the large open waters of Clarksville Lake in southern Virginia, I was accustomed to casting an artificial lure countless times into various forms of cover: tree stumps, rock ledges, boat docks and the occasional bridge pylon. My goal was simple enough. Catch as many large or smallmouth bass as I could, and hopefully a bass large enough to warrant a picture or story.

That all changed this prophetic afternoon. In the calm zen of a lone fisherman, in the silent flight of a grey heron, in the calming and ceaseless gibber of a creek and the graceful dive of a hungry belted kingfisher, I experienced an epiphany. Fishing is an art, a way to connect.

Couple the above with the cleaning of a drum and two bass, the sizzle of corn meal in hot grease and the savory flavor of a meal earned rather than purchased, and I knew then and there fishing was far more than the process of catching fish. I was no longer outside nature looking in. I was part of a primordial course laid out by fisherman before me, a course bound to purpose rather than sport.

I haven’t made my way back down to the Kentucky River since my discovery. But I did go fishing with a couple friends at a 3 acre farm pond last week. Much to their surprise, I showed up with a bucket, a dozen night crawlers and a book. I sat on the bucket under a bur oak tree at the dam’s edge. I baited my circle hook, squeezed a ¼ ounce lead weight to the line and cast both out to the center of the pond. I reeled in the slack. I opened my book and began reading.

We fished for about three hours. They weaved and angled every inch of the pond’s shoreline, catching a few bass along the way. Me … I sat there in the breeze, marveled at two crows, read a bit and had the best day of fishing I’ve ever experienced. I didn’t catch a thing.