By-Catch

by George Baldwin

So far, the evening had been relatively uneventful. Steve and I had launched the canoe into the Branford River in hopes of intercepting some striped bass. Steve had seen a large school recently, pinning small baitfish up against the riverbank and massacring them as they desperately launched themselves onto the shore. We paddled slowly downstream toward the bridge, and noticed some large bunker sporadically flipping on the smooth surface. We drifted downstream with the school, sinking large deceivers into the coffee-stained depths and retrieving them back to the small boat without even a follow. We tried fast stripping, slow retrieves, and dead-drifting our flies at every depth…nothing. The school of menhaden melted away like the setting sun had an hour or so before, so we steadily worked the edges of the spartina grass on our way back upstream. I fired off yet another backcast, and had just begun my forward stroke when I suddenly felt the line stop under solid resistance. I instinctively pulled gently on the Loomis 10-weight to try to determine the identity of the obstacle at the end of my line, when Steve shouted “Stop…wait!” For an instant, I wondered if I could have possibly hit my partner. Maybe pierced his ear or snagged his jacket…no…the line was extended out in front of us. I tried to focus my vision out into the inky darkness, and noticed a staccato slapping somewhat similar to the bunker flipping about on the river’s surface earlier in the night, yet something was strangely different. I began hand-lining my peculiar quarry back to the canoe, eagerly awaiting it like the last page of a mystery novel, where everything finally falls into place. I wondered… how could something have grabbed my fly on my backcast, without me noticing it even hitting the wat…wait a minute! My suspicions were confirmed as the bat came into view, struggling against both my line and the river’s current. He must have mistaken my white Lefty’s Deceiver for a large moth. I grabbed the leader and lifted my unexpected catch into the canoe…nope, bad idea. What if it dropped off my line, and we ended up with this terrified little mammal with needle-like teeth clicking in the moonlight (and often associated with rabies) in our tiny craft with us? He was squeaking away, and biting furiously at the yellow and white deceiver, leaving deep scratches in the large plastic doll eyes. Steve paddled against the ebbing tide as I suspended the furious little critter over the water. We headed up current, toward the Montowese Street bridge, which was under construction and well lit. We pulled the canoe up onto the rocks, and brought the rod and the bat up onto the side of the road. The poor little guy was not impaled on my hook, but badly tangled in the leader. This might have seemed fortunate, but the angle at which the wing was bent had me convinced that it was broken. I decided to try and untangle him on the ever-so-slight chance that he’d be able to fly. The bridge had a traffic light to allow one lane through at a time while being repaired, and a car was stopped at the red signal. The driver must have been watching us, about ten feet away, as we apparently tried to free a deeply hooked fish. After working very carefully for a few minutes, I had freed the bat. As I watched him down on the pavement his wing unfolded, and he launched himself desperately into the air. It narrowly missed Steve’s face, took a sharp turn and almost smacked the driver’s side windshield of the waiting car, turned and flew off into the night, not the least bit thankful for my efforts. The driver, an older woman, sat slack jawed and staring into the dark for quite some time after the light turned green. To this day, I wonder if she now believes that we have a local run of flying fish. As for the bat, I’m willing to bet that he gave up moths for mosquitoes.