The stream near my home runs through a couple of golf courses, public parks and a nature center. It borders public land and roadways and it forms the boundary of many people's backyards. There are a few very private places in its 5 or 6 mile length which are kept that way by overgrown undergrowth and other natural obstacles.

There is one pool I particularly like for the variety of fish it holds, its stillness and its isolation. I can fly fish there backhanded and crosshanded with a short rod standing in shorts on the clear sandy bottom with sunfish nibbling my toes.

I was there one day with a lure that I had seen kids using somewhere else a few days earlier. The lure intrigued me because it made such an unholy row and because of the violent topwater strikes that it induced from largemouth bass all over the water they were fishing. You're going to laugh if you've never seen one in action. It was 2 inches long and had propellers on it. One on the front, one on the rear with a hook trailing. I bought one and took it to the pool to try, chugging it along the weedline. On the 2nd cast, it sent a shockwave to the stomach of a basking pickerel which launched itself from shallow water towards the plug.

If you have ever seen a car accident and have been unable to affect the outcome, that is about the closest I can come to describing what it looked like as the fairly large pickerel created a moving submarine-like hump and wake in the water as it closed in on the lure. It seemed to take the fish 10 minutes to reach its prey but, in reality, it was a sprint of a second or 2. The meeting was unstoppable and the impact was immense and violent.

I let the little alligator go afterwards and marvelled at the tooth marks in my plug.

All the best,
Dan Milner