Ponds Past

On a quiet mid-winter afternoon there is nothing more pleasant than to let my mind retrace my steps to some of the ponds of my past. I remember in particular a small pond between Green Lake and Little Green Lake in the Okanogan.

As a young teen it was a place I and my fishing friends went often. The small stream, if you could even call it that, which connected the two lakes could be easily waded, and once across, on the mountain side of the pond rather than the road side, among the reeds and cattails were several small ponds.

I doubt that they were ever fished, except by adventurous boys like me and my friends. And they were never planted with fish. Such fish as there were had found there way in from Green Lake. But because they were unmolested, they grew to respectable size and were relatively easy to catch.

On one summer afternoon Bob S. and I talked my mother into taking us to Green Lake and dropping us off. We waded the tiny stream and began to cast lures into the ponds. Almost from the first cast we were catching fish, nice, colorful 12 inch rainbows. (That's big for boys and ponds.)  Then I cast to the edge of the farside reeds and got a hit from a fish that was obviously larger. After an exciting tussle I landed a bright 16 inch bow.  It was a trophy.

I don't recall now if I returned it to the water or kept it for dinner, probably the latter, as I was not yet into my catch-and-release phase of fishing.

That was the 50s. Thirty years later another friend, Dave D., and I were fishing Meadow Lake in the Cascades in the Santiam Pass area. We had been catching nice, green cutthroat from fallen trees along the shore, and I remembered my pond experience.

There happened to be a similar pond at one end of the lake.  While Dave was busy pulling in the 12 inch cutts, I moseyed up the lake to take a better look at the pond.  It looked good, so I waded out through the shallow reed-filled water to the edge and began casting a fly of some kind toward the deeper water.

Almost instantly I was into a large fish which I landed and released.  It was easily 16 inches. The next cast I had another - a fat brook trout. Not wanting to keep all the fun to myself, I called Dave. He waded out to where I had been casting, and began casting his spoon.

Now, one thing you need to know about Dave is that he is frugal. He loves to fish, but he is not keen on spending money for the finest tackle. On this day he was fishing with a child's Zebco spinning outfit that had served him well. The only downside was that he had gradually cutback the line to the place where it was so  short that when he cast the heavy spoon would fly out to the end of the line with a zing and stop, falling unceremoniously on the water.

This prevented him from reaching distant water but was no problem in this small pool. He cast. On the first or second cast he hooked a brookie equal or larger than the two I had caught. But here is where his frugality proved a fatal flaw.  As the biggest fish of the day raced toward the channel and the lake beyond, Dave reached the end of his line. The rest is history. The fish was gone - along with Dave's only lure.

We both remember that day some twenty years ago.  Dave still fishes with cheap rods and reels, but he went home from that fated trip to buy several of those lucky lures, and I never fish with him now but that he has at least one in reserve.