Bread Cast Upon the Water: Lake Winnepesaukee, NH

Before I began traveling for work, my rod, reel, and vest went into the car in April and stayed there until nearly Thanksgiving. There was always some little place I could duck into for a minute while on errands, and it's easier to fish en route home, arriving a little late, than it is to get home and then leave. As we say in the Navy, it's always smarter to ask forgiveness than to ask permission.

So on a milk run in late July I took a side trip to the little arm of our lake that lies across the middle of town. At that time of year it's low and warm and you can't expect much, maybe a couple of bluegills, just enough to keep body and soul together in a few minutes' bank fishing. I tied on a size 14 Red Quill, really a trout fly, and a good one, but good for bug-eating bluegills too. Normally I would have chucked a size 6 weighed Olive Disco Bugger for a chance at bass, but that day I set my sights lower.

The fly lighted gently on the glass-smooth early evening water, and in due time disappeared in a little blip, which interrupted my daydreams and made me set way to fast. A two-inch bluegill came flying back, a genuine slap-in- the-face fish, but I'd been slapped enough to know, and quickly dropped the rod tip so he fell I the water and didn't get off.

I was amusing myself with his little tugs and shakes when he turned and absolutely peeled off for open water with real power, ripping line from the reel, and I couldn't stop him, so I didn't try. I let him run when he wanted, and took back line when I could. After a tense ten minutes I lipped out a fat largemouth bass, no bluegill anywhere in sight, and my little Red Quill in the corner of his jaw.

Now sooner or later all of us have had a bigger fish hit the smaller fish we're playing. In the salt water that usually means you land the remaining half of the smaller fish, and in fresh water it usually ends with losing both fish. When a bass hits your little bluegill you usually lose the two fish as well as your fly. But this time the little guy must have thrown the hook at just the right moment, and the bass hooked himself. With 5X tippet and a trout rod, I had a handful, and I don't really know why he didn't just break me off altogether.

He was a pig, four and a half pounds by my guess, and there I was alone. No camera, and no witnesses.

Then I remembered Guy and Lan Sam. Patients of mine and refugees from Vietnam in the 1970s, they ran the Chinese restaurant a hundred yards from the water. Maybe they'd have a camera or at least a scale. So I ran across the street and into the kitchen with my bass.

"Ooooh Docka Bowen, nice fish! Nice fish!"

"You guys have a camera?"

"Nooo, daughter have camera. In car, shopping."

"How about a scale?"

"No scale here, Docka Bowen……wait, we have bathroom scale, OK?"

He came in at four pounds, twelve ounces.

"Thanks a lot," I said. "Gotta get him back in the lake now. See ya."

"No, Docka Bowen, he die! He out water too long, he die."

The light finally went on. What was I thinking? Fish, any fish, is mother's milk to the Vietnamese. This was a real treat for them, so I left it there and skipped back out with many thanks following me.

Back at the water I'd only made a couple more casts before I heard a noise behind me. I turned around to see Guy, with a big grocery bag. General Gao's Chicken, my favorite Pork Lo Mein, fried rice. They even remembered I like chopsticks.

"Sheesh, Guy, you didn't have to do that!"

"Docka Bowen, you give me supper, I give you supper."

So there you have it. A Chinese dinner on a size 14 dry fly.