Southeastern Virginia has an area known as the Great Dismal Swamp. Adjacent to the swamp is a series of canals that connect to a body of brackish water known as Back Bay. A series of narrow channels feed into the bay and are fed by tidal waters, and a favorite fishing spot is called North Bay Shore. A single central canal bordered our campground. Along that canal were numerous little dead-end channels extending about 50 yards off the central canal and wide enough to float down the middle and fish both sides; perfect for fishing for mammoth largemouth bass and citation bluegill and crappie.
My best friend in the world, Bob Hood, and I were ready to fish. We had a 16-foot flat-bottom Jon boat, a trolling motor with a fully charged battery, our fishing tackle, and a huge cooler full of ice-cold Little Kings Crème Ale; all the necessities for a successful fishing trip.
The fishing at Back Bay was some of the best I’d ever experienced. The water in the canal was pitch black, and it was impossible to see anything swimming around in it unless whatever it was swam very close to the surface. By the time we had fished three little inlets off the central canal, we had a stringer full of big bluegill, crappie, and a couple of nice bass.
The next inlet looked fishier than the rest, and we knew “the big one” had to be near the far end. And he was. We parked near the end and began to fish three sides from our vantage point. I used shiners [minnows for the non-fisherperson reading this] and had a bobber on the line. As a sportsman, I fished with an ultra-light rig and four-pound test line. A line that light is different from what you ordinarily use to snag a big fish, though with enough finesse and a sturdy dip net, you could hook a big bass and get him into the boat. I did… and we didn’t.
I cast a shiner into the corner just under the overhanging branches of a large tree near the edge. Bob praised my cast with, “Ooo nice shot, dawg, you hit ‘im right on the head!”
We always said things like that when a cast was perfectly executed and worthy of a big fish. I baited another hook with a glob of night crawlers and cast out on the other side for more bluegill. Halfway through baiting the hook, the bobber was ripped from the surface, and I grabbed for the ultralight to set the hook. There’s a fine line between setting the hook and breaking such a lightweight line, but the hook set and the sharp angle of the ultralight rig told me this was a big one… maybe the big one. And it was.
I finessed that fish for several minutes, and it crisscrossed that inlet from side to side several times. The drag was light, so whenever he was close to the boat, he stripped line from the reel effortlessly. I’d crank him in, and then he’d strip off my progress and head to the other side of the inlet. I honestly wasn’t sure which of us played the other. This continued for several minutes before I tired him enough to bring him up closer to the boat. Bob saw him first and said, “Holy excrement!” [Not what he really said, but you can guess]. I saw him too, and it was a big bass; the biggest bass I’d ever caught…well, almost caught.
You could’ve put two fists side-by-side into his gaping mouth. He was somewhere between 10 and 85 pounds. Obviously, freshwater bass don’t grow to 85 pounds, but this sucker was huge, plus this is a fish story.
I shouted final instructions. “Bob, get the net!”
Bob thrashed around for a bit and replied, “What net?”
We had forgotten the net, remembered the beer, the other necessity, but had forgotten the net.
“Copulate!” [Not what I really said in the heat of the moment, but you can guess]. “Reach down there and lip him!”
“Lip him” is a technique where you insert your thumb into the mouth at the lower lip of a freshwater fish and place your fingers under his chin to pick him up. Not sure Bob wanted to lip anything that big, so he reached for the line instead to drag him closer to slip his fingers into the gills. That’s when we both realized the fish wasn’t tuckered out; he was catching his breath… and he was pissed.
Bob was left with a handful of 4lb monofilament line in his hand, and the fish, the rest of the line, and the bobber were gone. “Well, I’ll be the male spawn of a female dog.” [Not what he said, but you can guess].
A few minutes later, after we finished admonishing each other for forgetting the net, the bobber resurfaced on the far side of the inlet. I was confident the fish had gone into the underwater brush and stripped the bobber off. Having lost the biggest fish of my life, I figured I could at least recover some of my gear. We cruised over to retrieve the bobber, and as I reached for it, the thing took off, still attached to the fish. This happened a couple more times, and we swapped sides of the inlet chasing that fish before it managed to strip the float off.
The bass was gone, and all we had left was a fish story to tell, and as big as that thing was, we needed no embellishment. As the adrenaline seeped away, it was Bob’s turn to recycle some Little King Crème Ale. Peeing off the bow of a flat-bottom boat isn’t as easy as it seems, and getting out of the boat at North Bay shore isn’t a good idea, given the snakes that lurk in the weeds along those inlet banks.
I drove us closer to the edge, and Bob did his deed. That’s when he saw him. The biggest moccasin I’d ever seen lay in the grass about five feet from the edge. He was coiled up and sound asleep in the sun, minding his own snake business. I’m unsure what I was thinking, and likely wasn’t, but stupid showed up and encouraged me to wake that snake up and remind him how much I disliked snakes. And I did. Rudely.
With one of the oars [for use when the battery dies and, as it turned out, to fight off pissed-off water moccasins], I raised it over my head to dish out a little payback to a direct descendant from the Garden of Eden. Maybe I was motivated by losing the biggest bass of my life. Maybe it was my general dislike of snakes. Maybe it was just stupid in the driver’s seat. It turns out it was all three, but stupid was behind the wheel, and I proceeded to whack that snake across the back with the oar like I was splitting wood with an axe.
That snake came off the ground, uncoiling like he had been spring-loaded, and struck at the oar. He was dazed and disoriented momentarily but soon zeroed in on his aggressor. When he started for the water’s edge, I dropped the oar and cranked the trolling motor to high speed to execute a hasty retreat. The only problem was that we’d been fishing all morning and the better part of the afternoon. Little Kings were gone… the battery was on the low side of a full charge… make that very low. On the other hand, the snake was on the high side of being motivated. We were just high.
Bob screamed at me. “Kick that thing, dawg!” And I did… with what was left of the juice in the battery, I kicked it.
We headed lazily back into the inlet with an enraged water moccasin now in the water and in hot pursuit. In our rush to administer retribution to the snake, the boat’s bow pointed into the inlet’s dead end, which meant we had to make a sweeping turn to head back to the main channel. The snake took advantage of our turn and cut us off with a better angle of attack. He was headed right for the boat.
I hunkered down against an imaginary headwind, blazing along at a slow walk. Bob was blowing sparks from his cigarette, and the snake was gaining on us. Payback coming back to us was going to be a little messy. When Bob and I realized we wouldn’t outrun him, we took a defensive posture, choosing fight over flight, and stood up in the boat, back to back, each holding an oar, ready to keep him in the water and out of the vessel. A snake that large will indeed board a boat without permission, especially the low sides of a Jon boat.
The snake came right up to the side of the boat, and I will never forget those eyes. They were translucent blue. Unbeknownst to me, water moccasins have a sheath covering their eyes when swimming. I’d never seen that before, and I’ll never forget how ominously blue they were at that moment. He did not come into the boat; instead, he went underneath. We were still determining where the boarding would take place. Bob and I stood back-to-back wielding our oars, rocking the boat unsteadily as we whirled our heads from side to side, and waited for him to appear. He never did.
A couple of seconds later, we saw the snake slowly heading back to the edge of the inlet. I’d never heard a snake say anything, but I swear this one laughed and called us assholes. Maybe the snake was satisfied to have scared the crap out of us. Perhaps he just took pity on stupid.
Regardless of his decision, we breathed out for the first time in several minutes. Bob never missed a beat and immediately brought it to my attention that whacking that snake was the stupidest thing I’d ever done. It was.
To this day, I don’t know which event in that inlet was the most significant. I learned that no matter your motivation, you should not whack a giant sleeping water moccasin with an oar. Another lesson that’s come in handy on many subsequent fishing trips is remembering the damn net. I’m not much of a beer drinker anymore, but I still like to fish. It’s funny how the memories of the showdown at North Bay Shore… remind me always to take a net and, oh yes…let sleeping moccasins lie.
Gary G. Wise
Writer of Things
gdogwise@gmail.com
Web: Learning By Living
