The boat slid silently through the dark water beneath a canopy of barely lit cypress trees. My paddle made not a sound but for an occasional drip. “This is the life”, I thought as the limbs passed right over my head.
Looking to my left I see my longtime friend Ted paddling nearby. The smile on his face was all I needed to know about how he felt to be on the water so early on a cool spring morning. A slight fog hung just a few inches above the water. And the water was like glass, barely licking at the huge trunks of the old growth cypress. All in all, a perfect morning to chase a few bass and maybe put hands on one of those big girls getting ready to spawn.
We weren’t more than a couple of hundred yards from the launch when a large splash caused both of us to jerk our heads in the same direction. We looked at each other for a moment, each knowing that the other was listening for more clues as to what was happening. Then we heard the gurgle that made us both turn our boats in the direction of the noise and paddle hard.
Suddenly the morning was no longer quiet as we raced past cypress trees with trunks the size of small cars. The birds and other creatures were moving and reacting to the same noises we were. There were now sounds of a struggle as water splashed and an old man could now clearly be heard cursing.
We rounded a tree and finally the calamity came into view. An older man with white hair and a long beard was standing in waist deep water next to an old wooden pirogue. He was cursing as he grabbed at an old metal tackle box baring floating about three feet away from him. His old wooden paddle had floated quite a distance away and was almost where Ted and I came out of the trees. I picked it up as I paddled past it.
He finally noticed us coming his way and stopped his cursing and smiled in embarrassment. “Did you see that?” he sort of chuckled as he spoke. “No sir”, Ted responded respectfully. “We heard it though. What happened?” Ted and I looked at each other wondering if we should join in the old man’s laughter.
“Biggest catfish I ever seen” the old man said with wide eyes. Ted and I looked at each other again. “There he goes right there” he said, pointing at an old orange float about twenty feet or so away. As Ted and I looked in that direction, the old float bobbed under the water, only to surface again a few feet away. Ted’s smile said it all. We looked at the old man. “Well? You gonna help me back in this dag’gum boat or what?” the old man said, still with a giant smile on his face.
Ted and I paddled over and held the old pirogue still while the old man rolled back into it like he was young again. Soaking wet and much heavier than before, the old pirogue barely kept him afloat. He got on his knees and took the paddle I had picked up for him and like an old pro he headed to the float but as he closed in it dived under again and left a little wake as it sped off away from the old man.
I smiled a bit as Ted and I followed him along the tree line. It was almost comical as we watched. Every time he closed in on it, it would dive under the water and swim away like it had a mind of its own which in a way I suppose it did. We watched as the old man paddled toward more trees away from where we were headed. He waved and laughed as he followed the old float into the shadows. We waved back and laughed with each other.
We had not caught a single fish that morning, in fact we had not made the first cast, but we already had the fish story of a lifetime. We tapped paddles and headed back to where we thought the big bass were hiding, hoping we would have half the luck of the old man today.