Monthly Serial

 

Serial Part Four

It isn't always the guy with the best reputation who puts a musky man onto the fish; sometimes inspiration comes from the oddest places. Aunt Flo worked hard at using people to get what she wanted and had built her own hierarchy of people off of whom she preferred to sponge. If Gomer and Goober offered her a trip out fishing, she would go along, unless she got an offer from Johnny Lawrence, in which case she would stiff Gomer and Goober. If she was going with Johnny Lawrence and she got an offer from Bart Pilcher, then Johnny would be stiffed for the better offer from Bart. Only an offer to fish with legendary fishermen like Tom Westwood would be good enough for her to stiff Bart Pilcher. Gomer and Goober, being ignorant and silly, would rank below anybody in Aunt Flo's hierarchy.

The guy who catches a really big fish can be a newcomer or an occasional fisherman, like Hal "The Wallet" Goulash. In fact, it just so happened that Gomer and Goober broke their longest slump by following the advice of Hal Goulash.

The musky men use a channel on the VHF radio for keeping each other company. But, being competitive, they didn't always include the lesser-known characters in their transmissions. It was easy to not answer a call from one whom they did not want to talk to by pretending the radio was off or out of order. This was usually what happened to Hal Goulash, and only a doofus like Goober would answer his calls. But Hal was the slump-buster as he hauled in the muskies at Schwartz Creek.

He called out one night to any member of the Straits Musky Club to tell of his fat fish, caught among the clouds of baitfish at Schwartz Creek. He said he had a 34-inch, 18-pound musky, which must have looked more like a beer barrel than a fish. Goober and Gomer headed down there for some of that action.

Draculitch and Loonch owed one to Hal Goulash. When they ran down to Schwartz Creek, they caught three suspended muskies trolling downstream after being in contact with Hal on the VHF. Downstream trolling is a bottom-contact method supposedly valid only in the mud-bottomed East Strait. Downstreaming in the rock-bottom West Strait is a non-starter. Downstreaming for suspended fish is doubly wrong.

So Goober and Gomer used a loser method on the advice of a knucklehead and broke their slump.

Later, as you learn of the sayings of Musky Bill, you will hear about Old Groaner and Girthra. Now, it's time to learn about some of the other subspecies of muskies. There is Growthra; there are the Boomers (Girthra wannabes) cruising the Lake depths; there are the Styrofoam muskies; and, most interesting of all, there are the war muskies.

First, a little background. Musky fishing is all about size and danger, and the most sought musky is the giant she-musky of myth named Girthra. She exceeds 60 inches and 75 pounds and is as old as the hills. On the quest for Girthra, all kinds of muskies will be caught, and some of them are definitely the worse for wear.

Old Groaner was a legendary fighter that had survived having a sizable divot carved out of his side, blindness in one eye, multiple lamprey bites, as well as the ordinary trials of male musky life. In 1998 Goober caught a male named Growthra, and a month later he caught the same fish again. Growthra appeared to be an ordinary male except that under his chin grew a bony protuberance as big as a man's thumb. This growth jutting from below his jaw was red and raw and hard.

Let's examine the phenomenon of the war musky. The musky community is organized to protect Girthra, and one of its defense mechanisms is to send out the war muskies. Sometimes when an angler catches a small musky, that fish comes in like he doesn't even know that he's been hooked; he's easily unhooked and released with no fuss. This is a type of war musky known as the Styrofoam musky, and his mission is to put the angler off musky fishing by trying to convince him that it's really quite boring and not at all dangerous or exciting.

If the angler persists in trying to catch Girthra, then a different legion of the war muskies are sent in. These war muskies come in two varieties: the kamikaze and the ninja. Usually, the kamikazes are the smaller war muskies, and they are expendable. These fish want to get in your boat; throw the hook into one of your limbs; thrash and flop all over; slime your electronics; bleed everywhere; cause you an injury with hook, leader, tooth, or tail; or sink your boat and send you to sleep with the lawyers and zebra mussels at the bottom. Even a perfect release of a kamikaze war musky will result in some spot of blood appearing on your hand or arm where he got you and you didn't realize it. Simply put, the kamikaze war musky exists to inflict a hooking or worse injury on you.

So, Girthra's soldiers can come in as Styrofoam muskies to convince you the sport is no fun, Growthra, or other deformed muskies to scare you into worrying about catching something more than just a fish, kamikaze war muskies to bring the fight to you, and, if you still persist in trying to hunt down Girthra, the ninja war musky.

A little aside is needed about courage as it relates to musky fishing. People think that courage is rare in men, but the opposite is true. Most men are brave because they are embarrassed or ashamed to be otherwise. When a group of boys are together, they routinely dare each other to risk something, and the reason they do that thing is because the other boys are doing it. Courage is a social value. In the Civil War, the green troops who first went into battle had to "see the elephant" together to find out whether they would fight or flee. If everybody ran, there was no shame in running, but if one's mates stood and fought, it was incumbent on one to fight as well.

Musky fishing requires courage when the fish is landed, unhooked, and released. Ned Niawanda understands this fact and is a coward who makes sure he is always in a position where someone else will handle the fish when it is caught. This is usually done by freeloading on someone else's boat. To make up for this cowardice, Niawanda talks a big game, going on endlessly about his exploits. When the story is related to others, Ned takes on a heroic role that would make the uninformed believe that Niawanda is an old hand like Musky Bill.

Those who were in the actual boat at the time of the purported act of courage know that Niawanda was, in fact, prattling on in a nervous drivel, similar to a sportscaster, to cover his inadequacies. One tries to understand Niawanda's mind but can't fathom it. He is either thinking that the guy handling the fish believes Ned is the great heritor of Musky Bill or can't really notice that he is worthless and cowardly. Most people who fish with Ned Niawanda count on him for nothing more than holding a light in the dark.

But enough about courage; let's return to the adversary, the war musky.

The tactical doctrine of the Girthra defense forces is unknown, but it seems that the kamikazes that grow beyond the low forties in length become ninja war muskies. This is a rarer group than the kamikazes, and it is legendary. These are the fish that send boats adrift, pitch anglers overboard, leap into small boats with teeth flashing, reverse gaffs back at the fisherman, and perform other feats too prodigious to describe. Let's examine a recent classic encounter with a ninja.

Goober and Aunt Flo were out on a Friday night in August when the weeds were high, the water warm, and the muskies not biting. Then Aunt Flo got a big strike. One of the problems with fishing the straits in the summer is that the high weeds require very short lines. An angler might have only 50 feet of line out, sometimes even less. The boatman must make the musky pull against the boat because the current causes the boat to fall back on the fish immediately when upstream progress is stopped. This is a delicate maneuver because even a large musky can't pull a boat. On the other hand, too much slack line as the musky rushes the boat and the current drops the boat downstream would cause an increased risk of a lost fish. The combination of these two factors-short lines and falling back with the current-means the fish often isn't very tired when it comes to boatside.

Aunt Flo had hooked a very green musky, and it was a ninja. The first thing a ninja does is ram your boat. This generally does no harm, but it does demonstrate the courage of the ninja, and it is unnerving. This ramming can take place anywhere from five to 150 times. As one gets this fish near the boat and reaches for his front end to either gaff or Bogagrip the devil, he will either attempt to bite you, shake the hook into you, or take off on a mad, head- shaking dash toward another ramming run.

Aunt Flo's musky went around on these circular ramming runs about 15 times. He was never calm enough at boatside to be handled. A ninja has extra musky slime, as well, and the best outcome for the angler is a water release because the ninja wants to get that slime all up and down your boat. The other problem with the ninja's attempt to drag out the fight is the effect that it has of putting your battery on heavy discharge. If the boat has an inadequate electrical system, you could end up with a dead battery and a musky boat that is dead in the water.

That is what the ninja did to Melvin Loonch and Aunt Flo. The ninja never got in the boat, but he put two anglers out of commission, drifting toward the cascades at the straits, and therefore unable to hunt Girthra for the time being.

As you can imagine, the musky defense forces are formidable and relentless. It takes courage, stamina, and blood on the part of the musky hunter to continue the pursuit.

Musky fishing represents a journey up the line to more difficult and time-consuming fishing. It is also a type of fishing that requires greater patience than the pursuit of smaller species. For these and other reasons, musky men tend to be older fishermen.

For the first few years that Goober and Gomer and Groovy fished for muskies together, they fished in Gomer's boat. This boat is 27 feet long and has a flying bridge over a hard top. The flying bridge is a great platform from which to photograph muskies and the men who catch them. Still photos are great; moving pictures are better.

Ian Draculitch and Bob Traynor both obtained video cameras. Draculitch uses his to take the odd musky movie, while Traynor shares his with his brother, Donnie. That means that whenever it is needed on Mr.88, Donnie's got it. Groovy Traynor's wife noticed something when reviewing the films of musky madness. Her discovery brought to mind the saying, "There is no hair club for musky men."

Since the fish are caught while trolling, they are almost always brought in from the back of the boat. This means that the filmmaker shoots from behind the angler, and bald spots show up in every frame. Groovy's wife suggested a special filter be added to the camera that would cover these shiny spots.

Musky men go bald in all sorts of ways. Gomer is the man with the amazing advancing forehead. Groovy has the Friar Tuck look just about completed. Goober was the first to succumb to baldness when he decided to forgo the swoophead look for the tennis ball effect of hair one-thirty-second of an inch long. By the way, Goober raves about having taken the maintenance of hair completely out of his life, allowing more time for fishing.

It isn't just the three Gs who have this hair-loss problem. Bart Pilcher's blond locks are disappearing like frog hair. Ike Borodino is the amazing colossal forehead.

As Christine Lavin writes, "You're not losing hair, you're gaining face." When Goober joined the fishing team, he had not seen Gomer for many years. Goober's first comment to Gomer was, "The last time I saw you, you had hair." Gomer's retort was, "Screw you."

It must be noted that these musky men have no problem growing hair in their ears or out of their nostrils. Their problem with hair-growing seems to exist only on their scalps. Some of the anglers in the Straits Musky Club have luxurious eyebrows that seem to have been growing unchecked for several decades.

Serial Part Five

Chapter Four

Let’s Not Make a List

Saying Number 4

Fat Guys to Opposite Sides

                                             

            If one has read any books or articles about the sea and ships, one knows the importance of weight distribution. Too much weight on one side of the boat can make it unstable. This instability can be caused by water in the bilge, ice in the rigging, or imprudent distribution of people.

            Mr. 88 was anchored near a shore party one time when Ian Draculitch agreed to give the “kids” a little boat ride. It isn’t normal for Gomer to be generous. While of a naturally pleasant disposition, he works hard to be tough and mercenary, believing survival requires this. Instead of three or four kids taking him up on his offer for a ride, he ended up with 17 people, including adults and teens. Against his better judgment, he lifted anchor and moved into the Upper Lake at the straits. Shortly thereafter, some kids got a little bored, then one yelled, “Hey, look at this,” as he peered over the side of the boat.

            With that, everyone ran for one side of the boat.

 Now, Mr. 88 is a 27-foot boat, and it weighs 4 tons or more. It is normally very stable. But even this large boat needs balance. When all the kids crowded to one side, the stability of Mr. 88 was threatened, and Gomer needed to get control of the situation by off-loading some passengers. Gomer returned to the shore party and hustled all his passengers ashore, regretting, once again, any show of humanity.

            One of the problems with these aged musky men is weight. A lot of these guys are lardbombers, tubs, loads. Cy calls them “bombiedoloes.” Maybe it is all the sitting, waiting for muskies to bite. Maybe it is all the time taken eating snacks. Something makes these guys broad in the beam, and that can cause Musky Bill to get upset over the way they move around in the boat.

            Gomer and Goober spent three full days together in the St. Larry, fishing hard. At dinner on the last day, Gomer said, “I don’t know how you do it. You don’t eat any more than me.”

            “Less, actually,” said Goober.

            “But, how come you’re so much bigger than me?” Gomer is sometimes bewildered by the variety of life. Goober goes about 220 and is stout through and through. Groovy goes from 270 to 300 and is apple shaped. Gomer, on the other hand, would probably weigh 160 if he had a brick in each of his back pockets.

             With a reasonable number of people in Mr. 88, the shifting of people doesn’t matter too much because the boat is well centered. The only time weight matters a lot is when Groovy stays in the back and drags down the speed at any given rpm. In Booster, a 25-foot boat without a hardtop, the weight distribution matters a lot. When it is just Goober and Groovy in the boat and Groovy is in a snit, which is about half the time, he won’t come forward to sit in the cockpit when they are on the move to a new run. If big old Groovy stays way in the back, Goober can’t see over the end of the boat. Groovy thinks he is Davy Crockett and was put on Earth to guide poor hopeless Goober in his bumbling fishing career. He therefore resists reasonable orders from the captain of the ship, Goober, expecting please and thank you instead of, “Bob, get your fat butt up here so I can drive!”

When Gomer drives Booster, an intricate ballet takes place as Goober and Groovy must keep on opposite sides of the boat, with only Goober cooperating in the movement. When Groovy is in one of his frequent huffs, he won’t leave the back of the boat, and Goober can’t sit in the co-pilot’s seat because that causes listing to that side. Gomer says, “I don’t mind. I’d rather be on the high side.“ Goober says it was Musky Bill who said, “Fat guys to opposite sides.“ Incidentally, there is no truth to the rumor that Sumo wrestlers have taken up the quest for Girthra after vacationing at the cascades at the straits. Nor is it so that Iggy is a Sumo wrestler.

            Crab boats in the Bering Sea experience problems when ice builds up above the deck of the boat. The inherent danger of a top-heavy boat in those waters is obvious. If the bilge contains some water and the rigging is iced up, the boat may not spring back after a roll.

            Gary Schreck is like ice in the rigging. Since he goes about 450 pounds, the boat tips with him when he moves from side to side. In Mr. 88, with its two inline six-cylinder engines, Gary Schreck can drop the speed by two or three miles per hour when he doesn’t move to the front while the pilot is trying to get the boat up on plane. When on plane, a boat is traveling most efficiently because the smallest possible surface area is pushing water.

            In Booster, Schreck causes two problems. As with Mr.88, he can hang out in the back and cause the boat to struggle getting up on plane. Gary also likes to hang his sizable butt over the same side that Goober is driving from. If Gary is hanging out behind Goober on the same side and the trolling run has them broached (sideways to the waves), it can become very uncomfortable for the boat owner. This is why Musky Bill says, “Fat guys to opposite sides.”

            All of this wouldn’t be a problem if Schreck wasn’t Pantherville’s slowest individual. He always manages to find a few things to delay him, which gets the captain’s teeth on edge.

            Why not have Schreck drive and experience the problem firsthand? Goober tried that once when there were 6-foot waves. Gary waited until Goober was tending the starboard rod, then made a sharp turn broached to the wave. As Booster came down into the trough of an extra-large rogue wave, Goober found himself parallel to the water’s surface and on the verge of being pitched overboard. It turns out that the best way to get cooperation from Schreck is to reference the List of Forty Sayings of Musky Bill, most of which Gary thinks he made up.

Chapter Five

‘Cause My Stuff Is Best

Saying Number 5

I’m a Happy Man

(Happy is the man who reads aloud the List of Forty;

 happy is the man who hears the sayings of Musky Bill)

            One day, Stock Boy had some time to spend with Ian Draculitch while he did some small repairs to his boat. Gomer and Goober didn’t know everything about musky fishing, but they were the archivists of the sayings of Musky Bill. While Gomer worked and Stock Boy helped, he asked about the saying, “I am a happy man.”

            “Anybody who dedicates his time and energy to musky fishing should be a happy man,” Gomer had a gleam in his eye and a half-smile as he spoke and turned away. Stock Boy waited for him to say more.

After a while, Gomer went on.

            “I’ll tell you about that, but you have to understand a little about Goober and Groovy. They go back a long way and have been aggravating each other for decades. It seems as if Loonch is the only one who can get away with telling Traynor where to get off.”

Gomer was adding power steering fluid to his starboard engine as Stock Boy held up the engine cover. Gomer went on.

“On the other hand, Groovy is a talking machine. He says the same things over and over as if you were deaf or dim-witted the first few times he’s said it. The other thing about Groovy is that he has to one-up you. No matter what you’ve got, he always has the best of that type of thing, or he has a very close friend, who you are too screwed-up to know, who has the best and lets Groovy borrow it or play with it.”

Gomer stood and screwed the cap down on the bottle of power steering fluid, and Stock Boy let the engine cover down as Gomer continued.

             “Remember that during this time when he is one-upping you he is usually riding in your car or boat. Groovy Traynor doesn’t own a house, has a crummy old car, has a boat that never gets wet, has no kids, generally has no job, has done no good works or any other kind of works, for that matter, and basically is a man in his forties with no resume at all.”

Stock Boy laughed and shook his head. Gomer continued.

“A guy doesn’t need to brag about his stuff because Groovy will jump all over it, comparing it to his or someone’s that’s better than yours. Well, since Goober and I have heard this stuff for years and years, we tend to ignore his blather, which has the unfortunate effect of encouraging him to repeat it.”

“So, what do you do to shut him up?” Stock Boy asked.

“We don’t,” Gomer explained. “We treat the wind coming out of his mouth like the wind blowing through the boat’s riggings—as background noise.”

Stock boy shook his head and smiled as Gomer continued.

            “One spring day, Traynor came aboard for some walleye or bass fishing, as musky season had not yet begun. We set off for the run up to the Upper Lake as a slight drizzle began. On this day, Bob Traynor’s wife had recently purchased a new raincoat for him, and he started in with, ‘I’m a happy man because I’m dry.’ Then he’d tell us about some detail of the construction of the coat and say he was a happy man because the seams were waxed and triple stitched.”

Gomer looked up before he went on.

“A little later he was a happy man because of the warranty on the coat. Then he was a happy man because of the way he didn’t get too hot in his coat.”

“Jesus, didn’t anyone ever tell him to just shut up?” Stock Boy asked.

“No. There was no shutting him up,” Gomer explained. “On and on he went until finally Goober had a meltdown and started asking Bob if he was a happy man every few seconds and saying he wished he could be a happy man. When Goober got to pounding Traynor with the happy-man stuff, Groovy got a bewildered look as if he didn’t have any idea why Goober went over the edge that way.”

“So he was clueless about how annoying he was?” Stock Boy asked.

“Totally,” Gomer concluded.

            Ever after, the phrase “I’m a happy man” became part of the lore of Musky Bill. Late one season, Goober did it to Gomer again. They were securing the boat and gathering their gear one evening about eleven o’clock. Stock Boy put a few things down for loading into Goober’s car and headed over to his own vehicle. There, on the ground, was the bib overall part of a two-piece GoreTex foulweather suit.

This was a $250 outfit, of which all had heard many times what a happy man Groovy was since his wife had remembered him on his birthday. Apparently, he’d set stuff down to load into his car and had driven off, forgetting about half of his raingear.

            “Hey Goobs, why don’t you take that? You’ll see him first.” Gomer said. Goober turned the bibs over in his hands, studying their obvious quality.

            “You know, Gom, I could use these up on the St. Larry.” Goober began to get a strange gleam in his eyes as they headed home.

            Later Goober told Stock Boy and Gomer that he had called up Groovy and the conversation had gone like this:

            “Hello?” Groovy answered.

            “I’m a happy man!”

            “That’s great, why?” Groovy asked, apparently clueless to the impending joke.

            “Because I’m going to the cold northern reaches of the St. Larry in November to search for Girthra, and God dropped some great Gorky Park bibs in front of my truck last night,” Goober explained.

“And it’s really great, ‘cause while I’ve got a good raincoat, I don’t have a good set of authentic GoreTex rain bibs and slicker, and you know the weather might be rainy when we go to the St. Larry.”

            “No shit, where’d you find them?” Groovy interrupted. Ignoring this question, Goober went on.

            “Yessir, I thought you’d want to know, I’m a

 happy man!”

            “You want me to meet you someplace so I can

 get ‘em?” Groovy asked. Goober continued to ignore him.

            “I hear those fish up on the Larry are pinhead musky. That’s why they claim a world record. Well, I knew you’d want to hear why I’m a happy man.”

            Goober hung up before Groovy could reply.

            Of course, he eventually gave the bibs back to

 Groovy.

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