WEEKEND FEATURE
Remembering the Good Ol’ Days

By ANDY ZAHN

July 12, 2014

All fishermen are liars . . . except you and me — and sometimes I have my doubts about you!

There is a small lake at Fort Lewis, Washington, and it is in the artillery impact range where often they fire 105 mm Howitzers, so the area is off limits five days a week. On Saturdays my Captain, my Sergeant, and myself would go there to catch the beautiful Rainbow Trout living there in large numbers. I would dig a worm, put it on my hook, cast, and in short order reel in a nice fish.

The Captain would ask what I was using for bait and he would say worms are no good. “Use some of my salmon eggs.” I would dig another worm and catch a fish. Each time I caught a fish he moved to my spot, but no matter, I continued to catch fish.

The limit was 15 and when I had enough I left to meet my girlfriend who was in the Air Force and then go to where they had fireplaces and tables and enjoy the elegant feast. When I left the lake the Captain was still using salmon eggs and had not caught a fish.

The Captain was also a game warden on the Fort, and I went with him to a club on the base for hunters and fishermen. Above the bar they had the head of a mounted “Jack-A-Lope,” which is a cross between a jack rabbit and an antelope: very rare!

That girlfriend became my wife, and 56 years, four sons, and 12 grandkids later here we are in Melfa.

CONTINUED FROM FIRST PAGE

As a math teacher I taught either the July or August session of summer school and found it so rewarding that often I taught both sessions. In 20 days of three hours each, having a small number of students who were motivated to learn and having the freedom to do it my way, the average increase in grade level was 3.5 years. Where before all the kids were below grade level they now were all well above grade level.

School was over by noon, and afternoons we went on Barnegat Bay or the ocean and many days had good numbers of flounder (fluke) or other fish. At some point I realized that a bad day on the water was better than a good day in the classroom and I turned to crab potting and fishing rather than summer school. We knew the clammers out on the water and they would save the horseshoe crabs for our eel pots. We had a market for the crabs, the eels, and any fish we caught in the pots. We had a 28-foot boat with a cabin and in a storm a lot of boats tied onto our boat to get in the cabin.

I ran the boat and either my son or my wife pulled pots. Sometimes I went out alone. One day my son was pulling a pot and there was monofilament line over the pot warp. It was a lot of line and I started pulling the other end. I felt a fish fighting! When I got to the end of the line there was a nice 8-pound bluefish which became our dinner. We often had some of our by-catch for table fare. We had a paper bag for trash, and the mono went into the bag as did our soda and my beer cans along with sandwich wrappers, etc.

Those were the good old days. If you had the guts and wanted to work you had every right to catch and sell whatever you could. If you wanted to have a beer that was fine as long as you could safely operate your boat. You could take who you wanted on the boat and didn’t need to call anyone. You didn’t need permits or licenses. The New Jersey Marine Police was Captain Mathis. Now they are STATE TROOPERS.

We used to run in and out of Barnegat Inlet, which was reported as the worst on the East Coast. In the spring we had a Boston Mackerel run. We had mackerel rigs which had about five hooks covered with plastic worms and put a diamond jig on the bottom. Often you caught six fish at a time. My oldest son when young asked, what do those fish eat, and I said plastic worms and diamond jigs.

At times we would catch a squid or a herring and then move to a place near the beach. Using the squid or herring for bait we would catch ling and whiting. One of my friends said after we caught about 100 whiting on the squid, “Just think if we would have caught two squid!” Coming back through the inlet someone would say we just had our EKG for this year. I would smoke fish and had a market and we also smoked eels and pickled some fish. Old timers in Ocean and Monmouth Counties salted mackerel and loved the roe.

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