THE SNAG with Mark Thornburg: Inaugural Launch
I am excited to announce a new column titled, the Snag, by Mark Thornburg. Recently, Mark has discovered the joys of fishing and has jumped into this new hobby with both feet. As one might expect, there are plenty of learning experiences and challenges that come along with the pursuit of a new interest. In the Snag, Mark will pen his adventures, mishaps, and his philosophical musings about his new found passion. I’m sure you’ll enjoy Mark’s column, and you’ll be laughing aloud as you read his writing. God knows, we need some humor in these uncertain times.
As an aside, some of the language Mark uses in his articles might be considered bush-talk, as in, the kind of language you’d expect to hear from a group of males around a campfire late at night. You’ve been warned.
In all seriousness, I hope you enjoy Mark’s stories. I know that I’ve enjoyed reading them and I’m looking forward to subsequent articles.
- Rob McConnell
Inaugural Launch
By Mark Thornburg
I am an utter newcomer to the sport of fishing, spin fishing to be specific. I am a neophyte. A tyro. A greenhorn. A babe lost in the woods. I have been fishing for roughly seven months in the seasonal waters of Western Pennsylvania. This is a boast that would be quite impressive for a ten-year-old. However, for a 31-year-old, this means that I have just learned which end of the rod the fish are caught.
Much to my satisfaction, but much to the dissatisfactions of my landlord and bookies, who expect me to pay them money on time, I have become quite obsessed with this newfound hobby. It turns out that you can’t just buy a rod, line, some hooks, lures or bait, and expect to go fishing. God no. After doing about seven minutes of research online, you now know you have to buy a wide variety of roughly ten-thousand pieces of equipment, all of which range from less than one dollar to the cost of a Picasso painting. I’ve seen fishing rods priced to the point that I could use them as a down payment on a home. These rods are certainly not for me. I figure, by the time I’m about seven-hundred-years-old, I’ll be a competent enough fisherman to really invest in a good rod and reel. For now, I’ll just have to content myself with going over budget by thirty dollars every time I visit a sporting goods store and want to buy three dollars and fifty cents worth of nightcrawlers.
As much as I am here to complain about the impecunious state the hobby of angling has left me in, my intention in writing these missives is to give anglers, who know what they’re doing, a good laugh, and teach other rookies what not to do. My hope is that fishermen of all walks of life can find the humor in these situations. So, I humbly beseech you, dear reader, that you will regard my words and actions with the same mindset that you would critiquing a friend playing in a community theater production, knowing that my enthusiasm far outweighs my talent and experience.
Heretofore having established my profound lack of fishing wisdom, I wish to share with you a story that only a complete novice armed with a few rods and a kayak could have accomplished. Another outdoor activity I have expensively dovetailed into my fishing avocation is kayaking. I have been kayaking about four times in my life prior to 2019, so of course, I decided getting a kayak as an early Christmas gift would be the next logical step in my piscine catching endeavors. Impulsive as my desire for a kayak may have been, I have never been more confident that this will be another lifelong passion. My ‘yak happened to be a Black Friday sale, so with my gift being at the end of November, I have only had one miraculous and unseasonably warm day in January to launch the Nematode, the christened name of my beloved kayak. The Nematode has a hull of ten-feet-four-inches and is a color that can only be described as rotting key lime. She can capably float on the water, and is equipped with a couple of integrated rod mounts behind the cockpit.
The inaugural launch took place on the Green Lick Reservoir, a 101-acre impoundment in Mt. Pleasant, Fayette County, in the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Biologist reports showed strong signs of walleye, and that was my goal.
Loaded with some jigs, a crankbait or two, and a cooler half-filled with ice, I launched into the reservoir. Right from the start, I knew I had found my zen. It was a warm, overcast, windswept, beautiful day in Western, PA. Rugged hills and weather-beaten farms surrounded the lake. A few horses trod lazily about the sodden declivities surrounding the impoundment, munching clover, probably just as confused, yet pleased as I was to have such a balmy day in the heart of winter. My spirit was truly buoyant. I had only managed to tangle my rods and lines half a dozen times, and I had managed to catch a nice cold weather bass! The bass wasn’t about to set a county record, but it sure felt good to land him. After exploring the shoreline for a couple of hours, I decided it was time to get down to brass tacks and let a few lines trawl behind the kayak. I paddled toward the deep water in the middle of the reservoir in search of my target, walleye. As I swung the bow of the Nematode westward, the wind picked up. Choppy water started lapping the sides of my kayak. I made sure my PFD was tight and plowed my paddle strokes harder into the lake as I strove against the newfound gale, determined to cover as much water as I could on my mission for walleye.
I made a good hundred yards or so when I glanced behind me to check my trawling rods, and sure enough, my medium-strength Lew’s rod, armed with a lipless crankbait, was doubled over! I immediately laid the rod I had in my hand across my lap, along with my paddle, and managed to grab the Lew’s from the rod holder behind me, narrowly avoiding a hernia. The reel was letting line off a mile a minute, the high-pitched whine from the drag a constant reminder I had a beast on my hook that could escape at any second. I adjusted the drag dial to make sure my eight-pound test wouldn’t snap. What was on that hook? A massive catfish? The mother of all walleyes? God forbid, a tiger muskie? I tried to reign in my imagination as I relied on the paltry six months of fishing experience and all zero days of kayak-fishing to take over. Grunting and wheezing as only a fat man in a kayak can, I managed to jam the rod that had been draped across my lap into the now vacant rod holder behind me, giving myself a severe muscle cramp in the process. After sloppily and painfully shifting about, I was able to finally knuckle down on landing the fish. With my heart rate contained to the low hundreds, I swung the rod violently skyward to make sure the hook was firmly set. For about five minutes I battled the underwater mammoth, reeling down and alternately swinging the rod up, keeping my line tight, and somehow managing to keep my rod and paddle in hand as I marched across the topwater, bearing down on my prey.
Then something horrible happened. The wind died down for a pause. And the line stopped coming off my rod. After scratching my head in a simian-like gesture of confusion for a few seconds, I clumsily grabbed the paddle and stroked forward a few nautical yards. The line went slack, much like my jaw, as I realized how much of an indescribable simpleton I was. The situation was thus: I had snagged my lure some sixty feet back and the strong wind pushing my kayak across the water had beguiled me into thinking I had caught the biggest fish in the reservoir. I sheepishly set the rod down, and dejectedly paddled toward the position of my “monster-fish”. I tightened my line along the way until I reached the location of my submerged lure. My line was tight, my rod was bent, and only my kayak moved. I had been viciously and determinedly battling an obvious snag, or what my buddy, Van, calls a “tree-pounder”.
I furtively glanced around and noticed a father and daughter fishing off a pier forty yards away. I prayed that a sympathetic deity had stricken them blind for the last ten minutes, or that they had been occupied with other things rather than witnessing my savage and tragic battle with nothing. I briefly considered throwing my rod into the reservoir, pulling the scupper plugs in the kayak to scuttle the vessel, swimming to shore, crawling in my Jeep and silently driving away, probably back to Alaska, never to admit to anyone what happened or that I had ever fished a day in my life. But the monetary value I had sunk into this damnable hobby was just barely enough to outweigh the incredible embarrassment I felt at that moment. Of course I ended up snapping the line and losing a nice lipless crankbait.
The important thing though, is that I had caught a bass earlier in the day, and that it was a 70-degree day in mid-January in Western Pennsylvania. It was a rare and beautiful day to launch and christen the Nematode. It was wonderful. I would say that it was such a magical time that I wouldn't have changed a thing, but that's bullshit. I would have much rather caught my limit in record-sized walleye, but I suppose I'll settle for what I came away with. It was just another treasured day experiencing the joys of a beginner angler, certainly the beginner kayak-fisherman, and learning valuable, if not dreadfully embarrassing lessons.
Parting thought:
Don’t leave your Ziplock bag of bloody chicken liver catfish-bait open in the backseat of your car. You will not get a second date.