Saturday marks the official opening of the fishing season and marks the re-enactment of a family tradition: worming. A few days before the big event we begin to gather our supplies. Fresh batteries are installed in flashlights; old coffee cans and margarine tubs from under the sink are rinsed and inventoried; a small spade is sanded of its rust with triple-aught steel wool and added to the cache, just in case.
The inauguration of fishing season is an important indicator of the coming of Spring in the northwest corner of Connecticut, which is sprinkled with streams, ponds, rivers and lakes. The twin lakes Washinee and Washinning border Salisbury School, the larger of the two being the deep home of landlocked salmon: the smaller, shallower rowing lake, provides a venue for the school’s crew to practice, skimming along in the shells, fours and eights. Bass and pike snap the surface and “sunnies” feed in rippling circles. Turtles mate in a floating, slow rotating gyro, locked together for an hour or sometimes more in a public display of determination.
But the main fishing spot is Lake Wononscapomuc, or Lakeville lake, as it is commonly called. Each year a small man-made pond off the lake is stocked with rainbow and speckled trout. The day the season opens, children, aged 12 and under, fish in this pond with a five-fish limit. It is usually easy to reach the limit within an hour. Later that evening the sluice that connects the pond and the lake is opened and the remaining trout swim out to the lake. There, along with their cousins, the bass, pickerel and perch, they are given better odds against the anglers.
The night before the opening day, we wait until it is dark to start our quest for worms. If there is a mist of rain, so much the better. With flashlights we scout the grassy meadow below the house searching for our game. With lightning speed we lunge and grab the worm that is half out of its earthy hole. Then the real battle of wills begins. There is a slippery tug of war. You hold tight, as tight as you can, to the moist, slimy worm without tearing it in half or allowing it to slip through your grip. First-timers can never believe how a worm could be so strong, as it resists and tries to retract into the safety of the ground. It seems as though his body is looped in a tight knot to a subterranean anchor as ballast. Two out of three worms win the battle and disappear into the grassy void. But the one that is captured is held high in the torchlight and admired as a trophy before being unceremoniously dropped, “plunk”, into the coffee can. Snippets of grass soften his bed and resignedly he curls up in the tangle of his unfortunate brothers.
My family never ceases to be amazed at my prowess as a wormer. “How can Mom, who screeches in horror at a cockroach or runs the car off the road in terror of a bee, brazenly reach down and grip a slimy earthworm with such relish?” my teen-aged daughter, Stephanie asks. Somehow the feel of worm doesn’t affect me. I think back to hot summer days on the deck of my father’s boat bobbling on the Chesapeake Bay. My sister, Katie, and I would huddle over a paper plate, and, with the skill of surgeons, perform frontal lobotomies on blood-worms. These gory creatures were aptly named as they bled amazing amounts of thick red blood when sliced into hook-sized pieces. They had threatening pincers on their heads, which were quickly dispatched with our plastic serrated knives. Out of harm’s way, we leisurely chopped the rest of the worm into portions that could be threaded over the barbs of our fishing hooks. I don’t recall much about catching any fish, but the memory of those prickly, disgusting blood-worms, which I handled so routinely, is vivid.
Tonight our garden variety earthworms seem tame and pure by comparison. Not only do they till the soil of our vegetable and flower beds, but they lure the wonderful trout to our fry pan. They have no painful pincers, no accusatory eyes to prick our conscience as we nail them to their barbed cross; they seem almost willing as they curl their tails, beguiling the fish to rise like crescent moons in a steel-grey watery reflected sky.
With coffee cans primed we sleep fitfully, anticipating the early call to complete our rite of Spring. At daybreak, forgoing breakfast, we drop a piece of fruit into the tackle box, where it will lie forgotten in the excitement. Piling into the car, the youngest, Chris, cradles his fishing rod like a loaded rifle, as we drive the short three miles to Lakeville Lake. The edge of the children’s pond is crowded with parents drinking coffee from thermos caps and their children checking bait, practice casting into the grass. or untangling fouled reels. Finally the red flag is raised and the children’s pond is open for the season to the eligible fishers.
Chris casts. Whizz. Zing. Plop. It lands well - near the middle of the pond. We stare hard at the surface trying to see a movement of fish beneath our reflection. Seconds after the line hits the water, Chris is reeling it in again, enjoying the snap and clicking sounds as he sets the button on his spinner. Casting and reeling in are almost more fun than the moment of truth when the trout strikes.
Concentrating, Chris steps closer to the water’s edge and cool lake mud eases over the top of his sneaker unnoticed. Then the bobber disappears beneath the surface and the taut line begins pulling to the left. Chris sharply lifts his rod to set the hook and begins the ballet of reeling in the tender mouthed trout without losing the fish. His eyes are wide and his mouth is pursed with effort and concentration. He reels until the bobber and lead sinker are jammed into the eyelet at the top of his rod and the trout is gasping on the soft muddy bank. Chris’ look of sheer triumph lasts only long enough for a snapshot to record the event before he is gingerly removing the hook lodged in the trout’s lip. Within minutes Chris is back on the job and casting.
Sooner than we expect, the limit of five shiny trout lies on the bank at Chris’ feet. Gathering the paraphernalia of the sport, we head back home for a victory banquet of the trout in our hamper. As we sit around the breakfast table like righteous warriors remembering each detail of the battle, we give little thought to the noble night-crawler for the part he played as martyr to the ritual. In fact, for the rest of the Spring and Summer fishing took a back seat to sailing, swimming, and rowing. But next year we would go through the ritual again. Chris still qualified for two more years, but after that his rod was handed on to a younger faculty child and the tackle box was left to gather dust on the workbench. The night-crawlers were free to aerate the soil and perform their own rites of Spring unmolested.
