Bobber fishing—from worm fetching to picking just the right cove on the lake and the perfect conditions—needs all the help from science it can get.
This was in Radford, Virginia, a long long time ago, early in the morning when it was still dark outside.
My grandfather and I were the only ones up, and I was up only because he had explained to me the night before that I would be. I was 9, and very anxious to please my grandfather. He did things with me that my father did not, like throw a baseball. And let me hit a baseball. I loved doing these things and wanted my grandfather to do them more with me, and so I wanted to do what he wanted, too.
I did know we were going fishing, but there were to be many steps that I would be nervous and uncertain about before we got there. The first was offering me a cup of coffee. Was this a joke with a little boy even younger than his years, or another part of the things he was teaching me on this summer’s visit to the mountains? I took the tiniest bitter taste of the coffee and handed it back toward him, hoping he would take it, which he did.
And while Claytor Lake was a car drive away, when we went outside, we did not get into the car—the 1950 Ford Custom that he had hand-painted, with brush strokes fully visible. Instead, armed with flashlights and several jars, we walked across the street and then down it to the vacant lot that sat below street level and had an odd, dark-soiled pocky look to it. Of all the places I played when I went outside at my grandfather’s house, this was not one of them, because there was nothing to do there.
My grandfather shined his flashlight onto the ground.
“See that?” he said.
I saw black dirt, and hesitated to identify it.
“See those little tiny clumps of soil?”
I did.
“And see that little hole?”
I did.
He opened one of the jars and then reached into his pocket, from which he took what I Googled just now to learn is called a bulb syringe. It was light blue, and he handed it to me.
“Stick it in here,” he said, offering the opened jar toward me, “and squeeze it.”
I did this, and the syringe filled with some of the yellowish liquid in the jar. The squirting of what he told me was mustard water down into the hole—and then more holes—soon resulted in a startling bit of science: that worms, and even big fat nightcrawlers, do not like mustard water, and come up out of their holes as quickly as they can to get away from it.
We soon had two dozen big worms in one of the other jars—this one also containing black dirt—and we were ready to go back to the car and head to the lake. I remained excitedly jittery over the next steps once we arrived, involving loading the tackle into the boat, untying the boat, starting the motor and helping guide the boat out onto the lake toward the perfect spot to fish.
Which brings us to one of my favorite jokes: the comedian Stephen Wright’s view that “there’s a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.”
No, we were not on the shore, and yes, we caught fish most of the times we were out on Claytor Lake, but while I’d head out anytime with a grandson to run the magic of making worms come right up out of the ground, I’d not have the confidence my grandfather did to sit in the cold darkness on a boat squinting to see your bobber sit still and stark upon the surface for a period of time guaranteed to keenly test the patience of a 9-year-old.
Not to mention ol’ Papa’s.
Just, you know, my scientific view, based on those years of childhood research and data gathering.
The story above appears in our November / December 2020 issue.
