Anticipation swelled as I drove a familiar 40-minute route that I hadn’t traveled in too long. It was Day 1 of Christmas break from college, and I had just enough time free to walk the banks of Brooker Creek and catch some bass.
The creek, which wound through a park, was a go-to destination for the first few years after I got my driver’s license. There were plenty of spots in the park to make for a solid day trip, and it was just right distance from home to be manageable but feel like an adventure.
College had me living eight hours from home and without a similar fishing getaway, so I was beyond eager to hit some of my favorite areas of creek and figure out the bass.
I can picture the spot clearly, despite four decades having passed. The creek alternated between being creek-like and pond-like, and this was one of the pond-like areas — although it narrowed not far to my right and went beneath a footbridge. Handy to a parking area for picnic tables across the bridge and a good catching spot, it was a common place for me to begin a day.
I toted a single baitcasting outfit, along with a six-tray tackle box that contained every lure I owned at the time. I don’t recall the starting lure, but I’m guessing it was either a surface plug or a Texas-rigged plastic worm.
The Bass’ Taunt
My first cast should have been toward the bridge, just out from a weedlne that paralleled that bank. I was envisioning that cast when a substantial-seeming bass made a taunting splash near the bank across from me.
The ruckus was probably beyond my casting range, so the best plan might have walk across the bridge to a better casting vantage and make a good presentation. Instead, I reached back for a little extra and gave it everything I had. In haste, I failed to notice a pesky palmetto that was right where my lure went on the exaggerated reach back.
When I let loose my ambitious cast, the reel blew up into what remains the biggest backlash I’ve ever created (or seen, for that matter). I stared bewildered for a moment and then sat down and started picking. For the better part of an hour the picking continued with little to no progress.
With no knife in my tackle box and maybe not enough line beneath the knots anyway, all I could do was drive home with my reunion fishing trip over before it ever began .
Fishing on Foot 