As a young man growing up in the North East, I had the opportunity to do a lot of fishing. The lake my parents lived on offered a wide variety of fish to choose from. What I didn’t realize was the shear volume of snapping turtles that also inhabited this body of water.
I was sitting in our backyard on a lazy summer day, catching a few catfish on night crawlers, a favorite of most catfish. Soon, a couple of old timers came outside from the house next door. They meandered over and asked how the fishing was. My reply was “Not too bad,” as I proudly held up a stringer of nice cats. They seemed to be fairly impressed and inquired as to what kind of bait I was using. I told them that I was using night crawlers and they asked if I had ever used Wheatie balls. Well, honestly, I had no idea what they were talking about. One of them asked if I had Wheaties cereal in the house. My reply was a happy and resounding yes. They chimed in together and told me how to mix up a batch of dough balls made from crushed Wheaties. They said to add just enough water to make it stay together. So I went about making up a batch of this new bait, thinking “Wow, I’ll never be out of bait now”. We always seemed to have a big box of Wheaties in the house, hoping to grow up to be just like whatever sports star happened to be on the front of the box this time!
Finally, I had a batch ready to go. They instructed me on how to mold the bait to the hook, and kind of lob it out there, in an attempt to not throw off the bait. I did my best and sure enough, my bait went one way and my line, hook, and sinker another. They looked at each other smiled and shook their heads. Try again they said, so I did, but a little easier this time.
The afternoon just seemed to drag on and on with no bites. One of these gentlemen suddenly stood up and set the hook on what I was sure was a snag; to me it looked like he had hooked the plug to the lake. Whatever he hooked on started peeling out line like there was no tomorrow. To my surprise and delight he pulled in about a fourteen pound carp. What a monster! I was so excited by his fish that I forgot to keep an eye on my own pole,which was still in the water. Fortunately, it was still there. The fish this man just caught was a fine specimen; I wanted to catch a fish like that! They told me when using Wheatie balls that you want to hang on to your pole, never set it down unless you had a foot on it, and how they had lost many fishing poles to these bottom feeders.
Well it wasn’t long before I had a huge strike; I mean it was like trying to stop a determined runaway train. It wasn’t long before both old timers were over there giving me advice on how to play my fish, “Not too fast, keep a bend in your pole, let him run,let him wear himself out before you try to bring him in.” After a good long fight in which I was sure I was going to break my line, I got my fish landed. Mine was about ten or eleven pounds, not quite as big as the one caught earlier, but still nothing to thumb your nose at.
These two gray haired gentlemen went on to tell me about how good these carp feed at night. I couldn’t wait for night fall. Since I had some time to kill until it got dark, I fired up the old computer and read an article that said in England the carp is considered to be a game fish. It went on to also say that it was considered by many to be the hardest fighting freshwater fish in the world. I was blown away; I had access to this legend right here in my back yard. Needless to say, I could not wait for night fall!
