I spotted them after I noticed Turk’s big green pickup parked behind a custom motor home so big that it looked as though you could land a Lear jet on the roof. The rig had automatic slide-out room extensions on both sides increasing its breadth to something akin to a wilderness lodge on wheels.
As I walked up to the behemoth, I heard a rather heated argument going on inside and was somewhat puzzled until I realized Wild Willie was right in the middle of it. W.W. could start an argument at an Amish quilting bee so I was hoping that the rowdy discourse was over something trivial like Willie’s insistence that being caught in a downpour counted as his monthly bath.
No such luck.
I had just started to knock when Ella Mae slammed open the door, took one look and snatched me inside.
“Nick, ya gotta do something. I think Turk and John-Bob are about to skin-n-kipper Willie. I ain’t seen those two so angry since their copper still blew a hole in our old Winnebago’s privy.”
“Where are they and what’s the trouble?”
“They’re in the library. Sumptin’ about bobber snagging ... whatever the heck that is.
Just turn left at the stairs to the wine cellar.”
“Ah Jeeze, this is going to get ugly. ... Wine cellar?”
The boys had Willie cornered and were waving a piece of line in his mug that had a hook in the middle and a bobber at the end.
“Why in the hell were you using this snagging rig? This cheesy kind of set up is for losers who have the fishing skills of a mud duck on downers. How many kings have you caught this way?” Turk thundered.
“Nutin’ yet, but I snapped my stuff off on six of ’em and been snarled in a bunch of broken lines with da fish still attached. I saw one guy pull a king out that was towin’ three bobbers and a p.o.’d crab.”
“Ya know, ya shouldn’t give me such a hard time. That, ‘What? Me worry?’ chief weenie of Fish and Game sport fishing in Juneau doesn’t give a squat if clueless peeps rip bobber lines even when the regs say that ‘no snagging of any kind is allowed until further notice.’ Must be tough havin’ a job like that when ya can’t read your own rules,” Willie sniggered.
“All we have to do is get the hooks set near the mouth. As far as we’re concerned that zone extends to the anal fin. I guess it depends on your definition of ‘near.’ Besides, I write down every 10th king I catch. That’s more than a lot of the regular mob.”
Turk glared at Wild Willie while John-Bob started making a noose out of 200-pound test line.
I figured that I’d better get W.W. out before the boys shipped his butt to the day care dropout head-whiz in Juneau trussed up like he had just been retrieved from the piercing pond called the Fishing Hole.
Once they got though with him, he was going to resemble one of the fish they take out of there that have so many hooks jammed into their bods that their skin can be hung on antennas to bring in TV stations from Albuquerque.
“Alright, gentlemen, chill out,” I snapped. “Willie would use explosives in the lagoon if he didn’t think it might somehow annoy local authorities and the midnight poachers. But, I must admit that I’m rather surprised that he would sink to the level of bobber snagging. Nevertheless, if the anointed authority in “J” City could care less, why not let it ride?”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Turk growled. “That’s just not bobber snagging. It’s harassing the fish. It tears them up, spooks them and ruins the run for the regular sports fisherman. A lot more fish would hit bait and lures if they weren’t running around dragging bobbers like sonar buoys and sporting enough impaled hooks that they attract love-sick porcupines.”
“What can I say?” John-Bob drawled. Ya’ll have weird ways of doin’ things ’round here. Stretchin’ the rules to allow elbow-to-elbow combat snaggin’. Well, it just ain’t what we came up here for. Can’t figure it. Why don’t they just issue up an emergency order statin’ that ‘No gear is allowed below the hook?’ That’d do it.”
“Probably cuz that Juneau cat can’t write much less read,” Turk rumbled.
“Won’t work,” Ella Mae said. “What bureaucracy would allow a big problem to be solved with only seven words?”
“Damn fine point,” Turk shouted as he dove out the door in pursuit of Willie who had bolted for the Caribou Hills as the guys approached him with hooks the size normally reserved for construction cranes.
Aw, but for the lack of seven simple words, there could be peace in The Hole. As for now, Willie better be wearing body armor when he returns for the silvers.
Nick C. Varney can be reached at NCVarney@gmail.com when he’s not off searching for a fish that doesn’t have more gear stuck in it than his tackle box.
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