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The
depravity of fishing the ponds by Bozeman’s shopping mall pales next to an
indignity I forced upon myself on the lower Yellowstone at a community so
aptly named Intake, Montana. The travesty commenced one spring in the
early Nineties when I beheld a photo in a regional Fish and Wildlife tabloid
of a gentleman in a Harley Davidson baseball cap hoisting a gargantuan
shark-like fish with a proboscis longer than its head. In the crook of his
arm nestled a deep-sea fishing rod and reel with a spark plug and a giant
treble hook dangling from the line. Enthralled, I read on.
I discovered
that it was a paddlefish and the motorcycle aficionado was using a spark
plug and a treble hook because the behemoths only feed by filtering plankton
through their gills; thus, to catch one on fishing tackle, one must snag
it. As instructed by the article, I proceeded to the Department of Fish,
Wildlife and Parks to buy my paddle fish snagging license and tag. In the
accompanying instruction pamphlet, I gleaned that a fossil of one of these
fish had been excavated from within the ribs of duckbilled dinosaur.
That weekend, I
was supposed to meet my friends Ed and Jenny Dorn and Dobro Dick at The Wild
Horse Pavilion, a whore house in Miles City, Montana. From there, we were
to launch forth into the phantasm of The Miles City Bucking Horse Sale, but
with my new deep-sea fishing rig gleaming in the back of my pickup, I only
stopped long enough in Miles City to silently mouth, “Nope, they’re not
here,” then sped on to the irrigation dam at Intake.
Arriving at such a place, one
might at first think that one had come upon a grotesque backwoods religious
ritual. For approximately two hundred feet stretched a line of men, women
and children dressed in costumes ranging from rompers to leisure suits to
bikinis, all holding the requisite deep sea fishing rig, spark plug, and
treble hook, awaiting their turn at the head of the line to snag a paddle
fish then proceed to the back of the line, passing their rod over the heads
of those who would follow them.
Without wasting
a second, I secured my place among their ranks and awaited my turn. On the
bank not far behind us sat families with blankets and picnic baskets, and
between those waiting and casting and those picnicking raced children and
dogs. Occasionally I would hear a screech or a whoop as a spark plug beaned
a child or a treble hook snagged a dog. The paddlefish were so plentiful,
backed up where they could continue no further because of the irrigation
dam, it was no time at all before I was at the front of the line snagging my
own then working my way over the heads of fellow anglers to the back.
As I
battled the anachronism, I could tell that it was large, but it tuckered
quickly, and I dragged it to shore next to an adolescent girl, sunburned in
her pink terry cloth short shorts and a tee shirt that said Daddy’s Little
Girl. Her daddy, a huge darkly tanned fellow in an AC/DC tee-shirt with the
sleeves torn off, was weighing her fish, still hooked to her line.
“Twenty-five pounds,” he bellowed.
“Mine’s
twenty-five pounds. How big is yours?” said the girl.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Daddy,” said the girl,
“Come here and weigh this guy’s fish.”
As I pulled it
quivering up on the rocks, the man said, “Hell, it’s just a dink, sixteen
pounds at the most. I ain’t even gonna weigh it.”
“Yours is just a dink,” said
the girl.
“And look,” said Daddy,
“it’s been caught before. See that hole there where somebody took their tag
out? I guess they must of upgraded. You’d best keep that there dink ‘cause
it ain’t gonna live much longer nohow.”
“I was planning on it,” I
said.
“You’d best,” said Daddy,
“and you’d best gut it out quick ‘cause they don’t last long in this heat.
That there’s the guttin’ shack.” He pointed to a building that was hardly
more than a booth in a nearby clump of cottonwoods.
Standing in the
gutting shack, nursing an ice-cold Bubble-Up and inspecting my catch where
it lay gleaming on a slab by the cleaning sink before me, I began to have
reservations. This creature wasn’t grotesque, it was cartoon-like. For
want of a better word, it was cute with its beady little eyes, its long flat
nose and its blimp-like body. It somehow reminded me of the Hudson my
parents owned when I was a toddler. Its ancestors had swum with the
dinosaurs and I had dragged it into my world to be labeled a dink and lugged
to the gutting shack.
I looked out the
window, which was more of a big rectangular hole in the wall with its cover
propped open on a stick. Just outside was a large dumpster filled with the
heads and guts of paddlefish. An Asiatic fellow was furtively going through
the guts, sorting out the strips of caviar and slipping them into a large
red cooler beside him. I don’t think such a practice had yet been banned,
but, by his discrete behavior, I assumed that it was discouraged.
My heart sank as I gazed
upon all of those severed heads with their beady little eyes and comic
bills, so I quickly plopped my own contribution on top of the pile, gutted
the body, slabbed it into steaks, carved off the strong smelling meat on the
periphery of each one, tossed the refined product into my cooler on some ice
among my remaining Bubble-Ups and toted it to my pickup. As I loaded it in
the back, Daddy’s Little Girl approached me.
“Got your
dink in there?”
“What’s left of it,” I said.
“ Djew cut the stink-meat off it?”
she said, tugging at her shorts where they had sunk into her crotch.
“Yes I did.” I said.
“Lemme see.” She reached in
and started to lift the lid of the cooler.
“Sorry, but I have to go now,” I
said, swinging up the tailgate.
“Daddy,” yelled the girl toward a
camper across the parking lot. “This guy didn’t cut the stink meat off his
dink.”
“He what?” yelled Daddy, hefting
his bulk from the back of the camper.
I didn’t hear what else he said because, by the time he was
across the parking lot, I was on my way back to Bozeman. |