I hadn’t planned on patrolling fishing activity that warm spring afternoon, but as I drove past the outlet of a local lake, I couldn’t resist.
A large cement culvert directs water from the lake into a small holding pond before it spills over a dam, then into a beautiful stream. The spot was a longtime favorite among local and transient anglers alike because the easy access to a healthy population of hungry bass is difficult for the die-hard culvert dunker to pass up.
But the woman awkwardly attempting to cast a conglomeration of what looked to be several lures tied in tandem appeared to be anything but die-hard.
I parked my warden truck a short distance up the road, then walked back toward the culvert, watching the woman as she struggled to untangle her line. When I stepped over the guardrail, I spied a black net concealing a large fish tucked into the bushes several feet away from her, and immediately became suspicious.
My suspicion only increased when she saw me, and immediately became very nervous.
“Hi. Game warden. How’s the fishing?” I said with a friendly smile.
I thought for sure I had stumbled across a gold mine of potential violations, but had no idea how I would address them given my initial observations.
For starters, the woman wasn’t dressed in traditional culvert-dunker garb. Instead of shorts, dirty sneakers, a camo shirt and maybe a baseball cap, she looked more like a model for a modern streetwear ad.
She wore designer jeans, loosely tied high-top Nike sneakers and a baggy, plain white T-shirt with a large silver chain hanging loosely from her neck. Held tightly in place with plenty of hair product, her red dyed, choppy hairstyle was striking.
Her appearance stopped me briefly. I wasn’t used to seeing someone like her swatting away blackflies along the shoreline of a Maine pond.
But everyone has to start somewhere, and I figured an educational approach to any possible violations was likely my best response.
I asked the woman for her fishing license, fully expecting to be told she didn’t have one or was unaware she needed one. She happily handed me a brand-new resident fishing license, which she had purchased that very morning.
I handed her license back, and couldn’t help but be baffled by her choice of lure, or lures, as it turned out. At the end of her fishing line hung a large spoon, with a bucktail spinner somehow attached, and a neon pink rubber worm solidly secured to the spinner’s treble hook, completing the rig.
She candidly disclosed that she had very little idea what she was doing, but had recently become interested in fishing. She had decided to give it her first try that day.
It took everything I had to not comment on her lures, but she seemed very proud of them. When I asked her how the fishing was, she broke eye contact with me, then looked at the ground nervously.
“I caught one, but I don’t know what it is, or if it’s legal. I think it’s maybe a bass,” she said.
I had been waiting to get my hands on that fish flopping in the net that was tucked into the bushes.
As I walked toward it, I hoped nothing was illegal about it, and that I wouldn’t soon have to address something that would surely dampen the woman’s spirits.
As I knelt down, I could see the fish was much larger than I had initially thought. It nearly filled the net. To my surprise and relief, not only was the fish clearly a legal landlocked salmon, at around 4 pounds, it was the largest salmon I had ever seen come from the pond.
I lifted it from the net, and smiled as I informed the new angler of her astonishing accomplishment.
“Most people fish for years around here and never catch a salmon this big,” I said to her.
Then I pointed at her lure setup and asked, “You caught this fish on that?”
“Yep!” she replied.
I congratulated the woman on her catch, brought her up to speed on the applicable fishing regulations and thanked her for her cooperation.
I went back and forth on whether to address the elephant in the room — an entire lure collection dangling from the end of her fishing line — but decided against it.
Afterall, I had never caught a salmon that big, so who was I to judge? I remember thinking as I drove away that I should probably be less judgmental of others moving forward.
Lesson learned.
