The Pamunkey to Get the Monkey Off my Back

There were two fishing tournaments on the James River so my dad and I decided we would fish the Pamunkey to stay out of so much boat traffic. There happened to be a tournament on the Pamunkey river too. But we only saw a few boats toward the end of our day.

          The Pamunkey river is a lot thinner and smaller than the James but it is beautiful and closer to my parents’ house. We put the boat in and ran up river. We found a creek full of lily pads and started fishing pretty quickly.

          Everywhere you looked seemed like it could hold a fish. But with the tide high they could have stayed back in the lily pads and not at the edges where we could get a lure.

          We had no bites early on. At this point I had not caught a bass on the river this calendar year and I started to think even switching rivers was not enough to break my bad luck.

          My bad luck definitely was not over. One cast I heard a snap and thought to myself this doesn’t feel right. I thought I was reeling in a stick. It was the top of my rod. It had broken for no explicable reason at all.

          Bad luck on the rivers continued. We had not fished the Pamunkey often so we only knew a few places we had caught fish before. So, this was more of an exploration mission than anything else.

          Every place in the river looked good. We found a beautiful creek that ran way back. We fished it from the back that was mostly lily pads, to the front near the main river where there was much more wood. There didn’t seem to be fish on any of them.

          We moved on to another creek and ran towards the back of it. There were a few other boats in there that were clearly fishing in the tournament. But we made our way around them and started to fish.

          There were more lily pads that we fished around with no luck. Then we made our way to a very deep bank that had several down trees on it and a lot of shade.

          I threw a spinner bait into the shade. And started reeling and then felt a fish hit it like a hammer. I set the hook and the fish didn’t move. There was movement on the end of the rod to indicate that it was definitely a fish and not a log. But since I hadn’t caught a fish on the river I forgot how strong they are.

           I said to my dad “Get the net” thinking I had a ten pound bass on the end of the line. My dad responded “you don’t need the net”. The fish started to move and it started to feel like less of a giant. Then it made a move to try to swim under the boat and felt like it must have been 15 pounds. So I said to my dad with a little more intensity “Get the net!”.

          Right after I said that the fish relented and I won the fight. I pulled about a one and a half pound bass in the boat. While it wasn’t the ten pound bass I thought it was, I was just very happy that my streak of bad luck had been broken because I had finally caught a bass on the river.

          I joked with my dad that I could at least say I wasn’t a complete failure as a fisherman. I would have liked to catch a huge bass or catch 20 where it seems like you are pulling them in and throwing them back every cast. But just getting my first river fish in the boat, clearly without the need of the net, felt great.

          We fished our way out of that creek. My dad caught another fish a few minutes later. We both had a few other bites but weren’t able to land anymore fish. But our mission of finding new good areas to fish in the Pamunkey and my mission of finally catching a river fish this spring/summer were accomplished.

          Fishing can teach you a lot of lessons about patience, overcoming frustration, sticking to your goals, and being unwavering in your pursuit of the things you want.

          I wish I could say I had so much faith I was going to catch a fish every time I went I have let doubt fill me a few times. Sometimes with every empty cast I would worry I was never going to catch a fish on the river again. But that one little fish that pulled with a strength bigger than his body broke my streak of bad luck.

          Sometimes you have to switch baits, times, rods, reels, or even rivers. I had to go to the Pamunkey river to get the monkey off my back.