Chain Pickerel- A Retrospective
An undersized chain pickerel deigned to strike my fly rod popper this morning. It was the first one I’d caught in at least ten years. What a flood of memories that little fish brought on!
In Florida chain pickerel get zero respect. In eastern Massachusetts, where my formative years occurred, my perception was that chain pickerel were an extremely desirable game fish. They’re so bad ass looking! The Bay State boasted the all-tackle world record chain pickerel back then, right at nine pounds if my untrustworthy memory serves. Heck, as a youngster I sight fished for chain pickerel. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as sight fishing!
Carrying a fishing rod and a bucket of minnows I would ride my bike to various local ponds. One favorite was in Stoneham. I would walk through the woods around the margin of the pond, fishing rod in hand, looking for a pickerel. When one was spotted I would cast a minnow out beyond it and reel it past the unsuspecting fish. The fish would strike like lightning. Suddenly the minnow would be held sideways between the toothy, duck-billed-like jaws.
As I watched, the fish, without the benefit of hands, would turn the minnow to swallow it head-first. At this point I would set the hook and the battle, such as it was, would be on. It was only small pickerel I could catch this way. I never saw big ones lurking in the shallows.
But I get ahead of myself. Because it was all my father’s fault. He loved fishing for big chain pickerel. When I was a little kid, maybe four years old, he wanted to get a photograph of me holding a stringer of chain pickerel he’d caught, fish he was bringing to his mother. He wanted me to hold a string loaded with big, live fish with big, razor-sharp teeth. I was afraid of them! I didn’t want to do it!
Dad didn’t care that I didn’t want to do it. He made me hold them. He didn’t get a smile, but he did get the photo. It ran in the Boston Globe, in the sports pages.
One of my classmates in the sixth grade (Miss Nickelson, the year JFK was shot) was a kid by the name of Nick Georgopolis. Nick’s dad liked to fish too. He somehow learned that I had a minnow trap, and suddenly I became welcomed on their fishing trips. It must have been my wonderful manners and behavior…
One day they invited me on a trip to the upper pond at Breakhart Reservation. Of course I had a bucket of minnows, salt marsh killifish usually called “chubs” around the greater Boston area. I was geared up for small fish. I was still a youngster, and like most youngsters I wanted action. My #10 Eagle Claw hook held a small chub, suspended under a small red-and-white bobber by flimsy eight-pound nylon monofilament.
Mr. Georgopolis was geared up for larger quarry- a #1 snelled hook under a larger red-and-white bobber, with a beefy four-inch long chub on his hook. He probably had heavier line, too. So, the scene is now set.
At some point my bobber went down. Expecting a bluegill, or a yellow perch, or maybe a calico bass, I set the hook.
The fish at on the hook was none of the puny things I was expecting. It was a REAL fish. I had it on for perhaps 30 seconds when suddenly my line went slack. I reeled in my line. My #10 Eagle Claw hook was gone.
A few minutes later Mr. Georgopolis’s bobber went down. What a magic moment that is, when the bobber, floating serenely on the pond’s surface, suddenly zooms down into its depths! Contact with a denizen of the deep!
Mr. Georgopolis responded as one might expect. He set the hook, and again, a battle was joined.
Nick’s dad had a landing net, and when the pickerel (of course- you were expecting something else?) was helpless in the water beneath the rock ledge we were fishing from, he scooped up the hapless fish and brought it into our element.
What excitement! It was a big fish, at least four pounds!
As Mr. Georgopolis was unhooking his prize, he looked up and said, “Hey John, come look at this.” I went over to see what he wanted to show me, and there, inside the tooth-filled mouth of the beast, was my #10 Eagle Claw hook. The fish’s teeth had cut through my line.
Dad would take the little sunfish and yellow perch I caught and use them for bait. Oh yes, he wanted the big pickerel. One evening we were fishing from shore by the boat ramp at Lake Quannapowitt in Wakefield.
Dad used two rods. One was a custom-built spin rod with a Mitchell 301 (he was left-handed). The other was a tubular steel bait casting rod, with a bait casting reel loaded with Dacron line. I had a spinning rod, and maybe by this point I had gotten a Mitchell too.
The bobber on Dad’s spinning rod went down. It was a monster pickerel, “Jaws” of the pickerel world. For some reason Dad elected to bring it up the boat ramp, probably to beach it on the gentle slope at the end, rather than try to drag it up the bank. Unlike Nick’s dad, we did not have a landing net.
Unfortunately, the distance down the boat ramp was much longer than the distance to the bank. The fish broke Dad’s line, above the bobber, before he got it to the edge of the water. Strike one!
The bobber moved between the concrete abutments, heading back for the lake. Dad ran over to his bait casting rod, reeled it in like a man possessed, and cast it out at the bobber, hoping to catch the broken line with it.
He was successful. The fish quickly broke that line too. Strike two!
He yelled at me to hook the broken lines with mine. I tried, and I was successful as well. The fish easily broke my line. Strike three! You are out!
The fish swam down the boat ramp with all three of our lines, out into the lake, and made good its escape. Looking back on it, I suppose we were not destined to catch that fish. I would like to know how big it was, though.
Years passed. I got a girl friend. Her name was Susan. Susan was not a fisherman, but she joined me one lovely evening on Wedge Pond, in Dad’s little cartopper aluminum rowboat. She brought a paperback copy of To Kill a Mockingbird so she would have something to do while I fished.
My rigging was simple, a snelled hook on each of two lines, with a chub hooked through the lips, one rod off the left side, one off the right. One of the lines had a small Colorado spinner to which the smelled hook was attached. I slowly rowed around the pond dragging the minnows behind. The bails on the reels were open, a quarter on each line preventing it from feeding out until a fish struck, which pulled the line out from under the coin.
One of the lines suddenly started feeding out. I picked up the other rod and handed it to Susan, interrupting her reading. “Will you please reel this in? I have a bite.”
My bite turned out a weed, not terribly exciting. But as Susan reeled in the other line a big pickerel attacked the minnow and managed to get itself hooked in the process. She had never fought a fish of any size before. Suddenly that eight-foot boat was a happening place!
The first fish Susan ever caught was a two-foot long chain pickerel. Since I ended up marrying her, I still hear about that fish from time to time.
One last story, tragic for the fish involved. I was in the little cartop aluminum boat again, by myself this time, on the Ipswich River. A small chain pickerel, about the size of this morning’s fish, struck. I hooked it and just derricked it to the boat, reaching down with my right hand to pick it up when it got close enough to do that.
The fish chose that moment to jump out of the water, inhaling my ring finger completely into its tooth-filled mouth at the same time. Entirely coincidental, I’m sure.
If the fish’s mouth had been any smaller it could not have gotten my finger inside. It was a very tight fit. And in that moment I discovered that all those needle-sharp teeth in that mouth are pointed towards the throat of the fish, designed to prevent captured prey from escaping. I couldn’t get out! My finger was prisoner in the mouth of a live and wiggling pickerel!
It took me a good forty minutes to extricate my now-completely shredded finger out of that fish’s mouth. Needless to say by then the fish was beginning to show signs of rigor mortis. Tragic for the fish, and not a lot of fun for me, although quite a memorable catch.
So I owe a debt of gratitude to that little pickerel I caught this morn for the waves of nostalgia it unleashed. Again, a small fish, but quite a memorable catch. Thank you so much, little pickerel. May you live long, and prosper.
John Kumiski
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