It was the first really perfect day of Spring and the day before my friend Jeff’s birthday. When we got out of school that afternoon we decided to do a bit of fishing near the old steel bridge on the Jap day trail.
The sun felt warm as we mounted our bikes to head over to Jeff’s house. A cool wind hit my face, bringing with it the scent of soil and trees that left an earthy taste in my mouth.
We dropped our bikes and hunted up some worms under some big logs near the woodshed.
We found a dozen or so pretty lazy-looking, mid-sized worms to put in a paper cup to see if we could drown them in the creek.
The trail at the end of Gilbert Road was a quagmire of mud and rivulets of moving water that caused us to ditch our bikes and feel the squish of mud under our sneaks.
When we got down to the old bridge we scooted along the shore trying to avoid the small brush poking out over the water’s edge.
I found a good spot in the sun that had two step stones with water swirling by my feet to stand on.
Jeff was just 20 yards away on an outcrop of spongy grass.
We set our hooks and tried our luck at that location for the next hour.
I landed three fish: two small Brookies and one nice nine-inch Brookie with great color.
Jeff, who had not even gotten a bite, yelled to me to throw him a fish. I wondered why he wanted me to do that.
I mean, if he wanted to see it all he needed to do was take a 10-second walk down the creek and take a peek. When I looked up at him, he could see that I was ready to ask him why.
Before I had the chance to ask the question, he shouted, “Because if I catch it I can say I caught one.”
I reached down, scooped up my fish and gave it a good soft underhand pitch.
As Jeff tried to catch it with two hands it bounced into his chest and bounded off one knee before getting re-scooped.
“Whahoo, caught one!” he shouted.
We finally gave up on fishing and did a bit of two-man scouting up the creek to the huge culvert under Route 28.
We hopped the rocks and then bombed rocks into the water to see if we could get each other wet.
The sounds of the highway traffic above us echoed off the moss-covered rocks and the wall of ready-to-bud trees.
We climbed a few of the bigger rocks to see if the road was visible from up above.
When the sun snuck behind the mountains, it started to get chilly. We picked our way back to where we started and to the only fish that I could say was ever caught by two boys.
The drawing of the fish I made in my sketch book had no tail, so I would remember there was a tale.
Mitch Lee, Adirondack native & storyteller, lives at Inlet. ltmitch3rdny@aol.com