Harley Earl, head of product design, General Motors
After my return from Cuba it is already June. The bass will be vacating the shallow spawning flats now, heading for deeper water where they will spend most of the summer. They have lost up to 1/3 of their body weight in spawning, and they must eat furiously to make it up.
June is often a tough month for me on Van Isle. The bass seem to sulk for a while, before putting on the feed with a vengeance again in July. I try Shawnigan Lake at dawn on morn. Somebody has taken a chainsaw and carved a cool head out of a big fir stump along the road to the boat launch.
Reminds me of the cedar stumps I carved into Easter Island Aku Aku heads out of big cedar stumps on my property in Clayoquat Sound in days of yore.
The bite is spotty. Only one big fish – a 19" slug that erupts on a buzzbait right near the Bullship.
There are 6 bass lakes ringing Nanaimo – Long, Diver, Green, Westwood, Holden and Quennel. Quennel is my favorite, a really unique lake. Three parallel channels grooved out of solid sandstone bedrock by glaciers, and connected by crossing channels in a couple spots. 2 miles long, but usually only 50 – 100 m wide, and very shallow. Surrounded by ag and residential land, its dark tannin-stained waters are described as "hyper-eutrophic" in the lake survey done by the province in the 1980s. As opposed to Shawnigan, which is oligotrophic (relatively sterile and un-fertile), this lake is boiling with life. Frogs, turtles, dragonflies, lily pads, and repeated massive algae blooms that often reduce the surface waters to something that looks like split pea soup. In most any other place where you might find bass this would be ideal LM water. But here on Van Isle the lake only contains the two staple invasives that were brought in from Ontario a century ago: SM and pumpkinseed sunfish.
Hard to believe that I have been fishing here for at least 35 years now. I love this place, partly cuz it reminds me of the bass lakes I used to fish in Wisconsin as a kid. On a calm morn it is a refuge from the industrial commercial energy of Nanaimo.
Today there is not much happening, post spawn blues, and I only catch one on the buzzer, and two 19" pigs on a black yum worm.
Well, this postspawn fishing is kinda slow. The wily bass have had every lure in every fishing catalog tossed at them by now, and most fish have been hooked at least once. They are getting tired of being fooled by the same tired old tricks. They have become jaded consumers, tired of looking at that same old crap on the Wal Mart shelves. They want something new, different, trendy.
The tendency towards over production … of surplus commodities encourages "market research" techniques to deliberately create pseudo-needs in consumers … and introduces "planned obsolescence" as a permanent feature of business strategy.
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Port Huron Statement
So this year I decide to try a different approach.
Most sane people fish for bass during the day. They use the same lures, bought from the same stores and catalogs. Dawn and dusk are often the best times. But few people fish after dark. At certain times and places the bass will move into the shallows to hunt after dark. Crayfish mainly, and small baitfish. But if they are out there cruising the shoreline sometimes even the biggest, wisest, most lure-savvy bass can be fooled into hitting surface baits. They can’t see much at nite, but when the lake is quiet they can hear a pin drop in the water.
What if somebody designed a bass lure that attracts fish by sound, instead of sight? The all time classic nite bass lure is the Jitterbug.
In 1908 Henry Ford invented the Model T. By merging assembly line technology onto of a solid engineering base, Ford produced a product that changed the world. Now almost all working people could afford a car. People everywhere started driving around, exploring. It was the dawn of the basstravaganza. He made the Volvo hotel possible.
Ford believed that changing product design increased costs, which would have to be reflected in higher prices, which he hated. So for 20 years he stolidly refused to make any changes to the Model T. Developing a good lasting paint that would bond to the metal parts was a challenge in those days, so Ford stayed with the color of the most durable paint he could develop. His marketing strategy was siimple: "Any customer can have a car painted any color he wants, so long as it is black."
Meanwhile, his biggest competitor GM was bought up by the multinational DuPont, who were experts in dyes and paints, and also in marketing. GM soon realized it could not design a better car than the Model T. But if could design prettier cars. And cars that changed a little bit every year, so that you could tell at a glance who had a new one, and who did not. In a society where social status is defined by conspicuous consumption, having a new car with the latest version of chrome trim, running boards, and tail fins became far more important than having a car that ran will forever.
Finally, in 1928, Henry Ford caved in, shut down his giant car factories, retooled with a new design. In the fall came out with the Model A. But again he misread the heart of the US public. He marketed the car as "so solid and well made that no one ought ever to have to buy another." What a terrible mistake in a world where his competitors were flogging the idea that a truly successful person should by a new car every year! Finally, Ford was forced to face US market reality, and produce junk vehicles that wear out quickly, with lots of irrelevant trinkets and frills that changed annually, and distracted the owners into thinking they adorned better vehicles.
Our whole economy is based on planned obsolescence and everybody who can walk without moving his lips should know it by now. We make good products, we induce people to buy them, and then, next year, we deliberately introduce something else that will make those products old fashioned, out of date, obsolete. We do that for the soundest of reasons: to make money.
Brooks Stevens, inventor of the Oscar Meyer wienermobile
In 1938, Fred Arbogast invented the Jitterbug in Akron, Ohio. It is a Model T of bass lures, essentially unchanged since that day. I saw one of the first models on my original basstravaganza, in the Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame in Wisconsin. The only big difference since then is that the Jbug bodies are made out of plastic nowadays – not carved out of wood like the first ones. The concept is simple: an egg-shaped body with 2 big triple hooks attached. On the front end is a curved metal plate, to which the line is attached. Throw it way out onto calm water, and it floats. Begin a slow retrieve, and the water pressure lifts one side of the plate, pushing the lure to the side. Then it flops down with a soft "blurp", and pushes to the other side, with another "blurp". The Jbug skitters in across the surface, jittering a few inches back and forth on the retireve, making a quiet "blurp blurp blurp" cadence that sounds a lot like the noise a swimming mouse might make. It is about the size of a mouse, and at 2 AM it is hard to get a good enough look to see that it is not a mouse.
Jitterbugs do not seem to work unless that lake is dead calm. Even the smallest ripple causes the blurp noise to get lost in the general clutter of the surface chaos. And a calm nite is no guarantee that the bass will bite. Sometimes the lake is just absolutely dead, and nothing seems to be able to trigger a surface hit.
I decide to try Shawnigan. I have nite fished there a few times in past years, with limited success. Only a few small fish on the best of nites. I launch the Bullship at midnite. Shawnigan can be a madhouse in summer, with thousands of horsepower ripping around. Ski boats, jet skis, V-8 rigged racing boats all churning the surface, throwing big wakes, driving the bass into deeper water. But at nite most of the boats are tied up. Nobody is towing water skiers over the ski jump in the dark tonite, as sometimes happens here.
And so the high priests of business elected a new god to take its place with – or even before – the other household gods. Obsolescence was made supreme.
Paul Mazur, Lehman Brothers, 1928
The Jbug is the Model T of bass lures, and I follow Henry’s lead. When I am nite fishing with a Jbug I generally limit myself to a choice of 3 colors. Always and everywhere I start out with black. If that fails I keep trying black, but if I still get no bites I switch to black. And if neither of those colors works I resort to my ace-in-the-hole – black. If I can’t find black Jitterbugs in the store I buy the ones painted in fabulous bright colors that are impossible to resist. For fishermen customers that is. Then I paint them black.
The moon is full, but still it is hard to get your bearings and navigate this big lake. I like to fish on full moon, cuz it is great theater to see your Jbug jittering along the surface, silhouetted by the glowing moon, ripples scattering the moon reflection into a V pattern, when all of a sudden CRASH!!! and a huge smallmouth explodes where your Jbug used to be. The bass can’t see much, but they can see a jitterbugging black shape, and hear a gurgling blurping noise coming from it. And those crazy humans that like to sneak around and trick us into getting a hook stuck in our mouth are never around after dark, so … what the hell!
But similar to years past on this lake, the bite is not happening for me tonite. After a couple chippy hits I finally catch a bass. Just a dinker, but my first nite fish of the year, and at least I did not get skunked.
I catch another bass, another dinker, but bigger. Maybe 10".
You can see that I have painted the bottom side of this frog-colored lure (the side the fish can see) black. Including the metal lip. Black.
After an hour plus I am frustrated, cuz I know there are lots of big bass in here. Will they not bite on a Jbug? Hard to find calm water in this big lake, which is usually rippled at nite as cool adiabatic breezes roll down the valley from the mountain peaks. In Cuba it never gets cool enough for me to be comfortable, but here on Van Isle near the summer solstice I am wearing 4 layers of shirts and sweaters, and I am still a bit chilly. Fortunately I have a thermos full of hot coffee, and a flask of OP rum to add to it - in celebration for the first big fish. Little by little I start to put things together, and come up with a strategy. Turns out the fish are not scattered around everywhere. But they are out there, and they will bite.
It is amazing that a lake can be filled with big bass yet you will seldom see or hear them. They mostly do their business at or near the bottom, and a rare swirl at dawn or dusk is the only trace most people ever have of their existence. But after dark they will attack a surface lure with a vengeance that is hard to describe. As if they are sending a message: "I am the apex predator in this world, and any life form small enough to fit into my mouth had better live in fear and terror. Hear, and hearing tremble!" Even a small hit sounds like sword slicing the water. A big fish hitting on a dark still nite is a shock to the senses.
Suddenly a huge fish crushes the Jbug. I get it right up to the boat – a 4 lber! But it shakes off. I could not find my miner’s headlite, so all I have with me is a couple small flashlites. Another big fish smashes the Jbug. Must hold the flashlite in my mouth, the rod in one hand, and fumble to get the camera ready with the other. Yikes! My first toad nitetime SM of the year, about 3 lbs.
I am into a pocket of piggies now. Time to put this obsolete lure to work.
It is the ambition of almost every American to practice progressive obsolescence as a ladder by which to climb to greater human satisfaction through the purchase of the fascinating and thrilling range of goods and services offered today.
Christine Fredericks, Selling Mrs Consumer
Obsolete or not, on every cast the poor little jitterbug gets pounded. Big explosions in the dark like someone dropping bowling balls into the water. Sometimes the lure gets attacked the instant it lands on the water, before I can even jitter it. Other times a fish will crash it, miss, hit again, get hooked, jump, and spit it out, but another big bass will charge in a crush it before I can finish the retrieve. All in the pitch dark and dead calm beside shore. The fish are all concentrated along about 100m of shoreline – where I get maybe 15 big hits, of which I catch a few.
I head over to Memory Island, where there is an outhouse, and a picnic table where I can enjoy a hot coffee w/rum – which I well deserve.
I have a plan now, and it works. I won’t divulge it here on the world wide web, but after many years I know that I finally have figured out how to fool these Shawnigan pigs at nite. I head back out, confident, heading for a spot that matches the mix of conditions I just fished. I sneak in deathly quiet with the electric motor. Even the slightest noise will spook these fish at nite. The tap of a rod on the side of the boat, the tap of your rum/coffee thermos on the seat. I fish barefoot, to stay quiet.
And the fish are here too! One after another big fish are pounding the Jbug. Mindboggling bass fishing. I am expecting another couple hours of this, but suddenly, it is over. At this latitude in June, nite does not last long. Does not really get DARK until 11 pm, and you only get about 4 hrs of full dark. By now – 3 AM – there is already a smear of lite along the E horizon. Damn! It can’t be morning already.
The Jitterbug is like Cinderella’s slipper. Turns into a pumpkin or something at dawn. No fish in its right mind would be stupid enough to bite on a Jitterbug in daylite, when the fish can see how stupid it looks. Only a matter of minutes now, and as the E horizon turns from black to blue the Jbug bite fades quickly to memory. The most furious frantic nite bass bite I have ever seen.
The biggest fish I landed was 18", around 4 lbs, but I lost bigger ones. Many fish got off, and many more missed on the strike. Maybe 50 surface hits on Jbug in total?
When the Jbug bite dies off around 4 AM, it is still long before sunrise. I switch to a Zara Spook type walking bait. This lure will catch fish in still water, but unlike the Jbug it seems to work better in a slight ripple or chop. On the first cast over a rocky reef top it gets crushed. 20.5" monster. Turns out this will be my biggest fish of the year.
The spook bite is furious and ravenous this morn. The big fish have moved out of their nite time hangouts and are smashing the surface bait all over the flats. On my way back to the boat ramp I miss an even bigger fish that rolls and misses. And then it is sunup, and time for me to load out, head home, and go to bed.
Time for a quick trip out to the W coast. On the way I stop at Spider Lake. Catching bass at nite is a challenge any time. In the Bullship I have lots of space, lots of flat seat area upon which to place camera, pliers, flashlites, thermos of rum & coffee. Well, Spider Lake is oars only, so tonite I will try nite fishing from a pontoon boat. An idiot plan. In all the nite fishing I will do this year I will never see another bass fisherman out in a boat at nite – much less a pontoon.
This is tough, but it is beautiful being out on the lake alone under the moon. Again, I have forgotten to bring my headlamp, so when the first fish hits I have to hold the rod with one hand, find my little flashlite, turn it on and put it in my mouth, and then aim the flashlite with my mouth while I try to reach over the pontoon and grab the fish by the lower lip – without getting stabbed by one of the triple hooks shaking furiously around in the dark. Next time I must remember to bring a headlamp and a landing net! The first one gets away, but the second one I actually catch. About 17". The first bass I have ever caught at nite from a pontoon boat!
Maybe the first bass anyone has ever caught from a pontoon boat at nite? I believe the word lunatic was invented to describe people who do things at nite that others find strange. After this the bite mysteriously ends. I throw the Jbug around for another 2 hours without a single bite.
The Jitterbug is a coelocath of bass lures. Perhaps the only commodity in the world that becomes obsolete faster than cell phones and women’s cosmetics is bass lures. Every winter they come up with the ultimate new scam to fool the wily bass into biting on a piece of plastic. If you do not buy this hot new lure you will not catch another fish, and you will have to suffer the shame of watching the trendy fishermen all around you catching big lunkers one after another, while you wallow in the scorn and desolation of skunkdom. The bass fads come and go like lipstick displays in the windows of shopping malls. The Texas rig, the Carolina rig, and Alabama rig. But like the Little Lebowski, the Jitterbug abides. There is a new cell phone marketed every month, and zillions of old ones – perfectly functional but "obsolete" – tossed into the trash. But the Jitterbug is unchanged in 75 years. Years ago I bought a bunch for $2 each in the clearout bin at Wal Mart in Oregon. And at 2 AM they still outfish any other lure on the planet.
Of course, you can imagine that anyone who drives a 22 year old car will be somewhat retarded in terms of chasing the latest greatest consumer item. I like old things. I enjoy getting maximum use out of material goods. That is one reason I like Cuba. I would rather relax and have a good time than compete with a bunch of sleazy, aggressive hypocrites and psychotics to buy the latest useless glitzy trash dumped on the mass market. Maybe it is genetic. Maybe I was born with a shriveled Conspicuous Consumption Gland? Maybe it is nurture. My dad was an advertising exec, who wrote the crap that fooled people into buying stuff they did not want or need. Then he ad to go back out and try to live in a world of people who believed the stuff he wrote.
Advertising exec is a position without a lot of job opportunities in Cuba.
"My sister went to Cuba. She hated it. She said there was nowhere to shop."
Teller at CIBC (my bank)
Well, here I am, back at Shawnigan again. Backing my 1979 boat into the water with my 1989 Vovlo, to fish bass with a 1938 lure. I launch at 10 PM, catch one nice fish on a spook just before dark, then head over to Memory Isle and go to sleep for little while. Now it is midnite again, exactly 2 weeks after I the legendary pounding I put on the Shawnigan bass. That was under the full moon. Tonite there is no moon. Some say the nite bite is better under the full moon, others say the opposite.
And tonite there is not only no moon, there is a solid deck of low cloud so there are no stars. The big lake is flat calm, and it is spooky racing around. This gives a new meaning to the word DARK. Will the bass still bite in the pitch black? Will consumer-conscious bass be able to tell in the dead of dark that I am using an obsolete 75 year old lure?
People are everywhere today disobeying the law of obsolescence. They are using their old cars, their old tires, their old radios, and their old clothing much longer than statisticians had expected.
Bernard London
(London – during the depths of the Great Depression - proposed a unique solution to the recurring problem of overproduction, which had undermined every attempt to build a stable capitalist economy. In order to sustain the "free market", London proposed a new government agency that would: "assign a lease of life to shoes and homes and machines, to all products of manufacture". After they became obsolete "these objects would become legally ‘dead’ and would be controlled by the duly appointed government agency and destroyed … and the wheels of industry would be kept going…")
Well, I guess I just have to accept the fact that I am a criminal, out here in the dark, disobeying the Law of Obsolescence. What if there is a government appointed controller checking for old fishing lures?
It is hard to even find the islands in the lake tonite, much less cast accurately along shore without throwing the Jbug up into a tree, where the wily bass seldom bite. But fish or no fish I am perfecting my craft, learning what not to do. Must throw short low casts, never throw the lure higher than you can reach from the boat, so you can pull it back out of the tree if there is a branch in front of you when you cast into the dark.
It is deathly quiet tonite, and other than docks and cottages along shore, there is no light at all. The other senses take over. Fish or no fish, there is a comfortable rhythm to the casting. The quick buzz as the line pulls off the reel, followed by a soft plop as the lure hits the water. Then wait – 5 seconds, 10 seconds – and then the steady blurp-blurp-blurp of the retrieve, very faint at first, louder as it gets closer. The worst thing to hear is the quick buzz of line pealing off, followed by silence…silence…silence. Oh no – threw the Jbug up into a tree again!
"’Why is it prohibited?’ asked the savage.
The comptroller shrugged his shoulders. ‘Because it’s old. That’s the chief reason. We have no use for old things here."
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
My god – what if the bassmaster crowd with their metalflake purple 300 hp bass boats rigged with hi-tech electronics and a thousand newfangled lures find out about me? I will be scorned out for life. Or worse. Am I getting paranoid now? What were those headlites coming down to the boat launch as I was heading out? Maybe might have been the Comptroller of Obsolesence, huh? Coming down to check me out? In my dark midnite mind the Comptroller of Obsolescence people drive shiny black, unmarked SUVs, like the Georgia State Police SWAT teams around the Flint River. They ask questions like: "Do you have any obsolete fishing lures in that old vehicle?"
Damn, it is hard enough to catch a fish on a nite like this, but the dark and silence give your mind time to wander.
What if there is a Comptroller boat out here looking for me right now? Huh? Another reason to stay QUIET, and tuck in near shore. For this Jbug to work at all you need to be as silent as the nite. Sneak in with the electric motor, do not even bother to make a cast if there is a car driving down the other side of the lake a half mile away, wait till it is gone, quiet again, wait for all the universe to lay still, until there is only one tiny noise on the whole lake – the sound of a little mouse swimming desperately to reach shore… blurp ... blurp ...blurp...
SMASH!
Well – the wily bass DO hit ancient vintage lures in the dead of a moonless nite!
Yes, they are out there, and yes, they will attack a 1938 surface lure. This Jitterbug idea seems to have evaded the grasp of the Comptroller. Fell off the ladder of progressive obsolescence. And there is a fat 15" SM on the end of my line to prove it. Jumping wildly now, pissed that he did not read Christine Frederick’s book, in which case he never would have bitten on a lure this out-of-date.
But the bite tonite is much different than it was 2 weeks ago. Instead of being clustered around dark calm pockets behind islands and points on a bright nite, the fish are scattered everywhere. Mostly smaller fish, 1-2 lbs, and they miss a lot of strikes in the pitchblack. I know there are some rockpiles coming up from deeper water further out, but there is no way to find them in the dark. So I keep casting to shore, but occasionally throw a cast back over my head out into deeper water. If I happen to throw the Jbug on top of one of these rock humps, which the SMs love, I might raise a fish. After many blanks I am retrieving from a deepwater cast when it sounds like somebody dropped a piano into the lake behind me. Bingo! Found one of those rockpiles.
But no hookup. Swing and a miss. But now I know where you are. Silently I rotate the boat to face the strike zone, throw the Jbug way out past where the fish hit (no trees out here, so I can throw as far as I want), and drag a slow retrieve over the spot where the fish hit.
Blammo! Another thermonuclear bassxplosion, and this time there is a huge fish on the end of my line. SMs are notorious for jumping when hooked, and were described by James Henshall as "inch for inch and pound for pound the gamest fish that swims." Maybe so, maybe not. But without a doubt, SMs at nite go stark raving bonkers when they feel a hook in their mouth. The sound and fury is made all the more shocking contrasted to the absolute stillness and quiet of the surroundings.
This turns out to be my first ever 20" SM caught at nite in BC.
I get into a number of good fish this nite, including landing an 18" and 19".
And I am learning so much, and actually getting comfortable out here in the dark. I have my headlamp, and a landing net. Getting to be a pro almost. At first lite I switch to the spook again, but the furious dawn bite of 2 weeks ago is not repeated. I only catch one good fish, 17", in daylite, and leave before sunrise. And before the Comptroller of Obsolescence shows up at the boat launch looking for me.
Two years ago we proposed a reduction in the life of flashlight lamps … if this were done, we estimate it would result increasing our flashlight business about 60 percent.
Internal General Electric memo, submitted as evidence (US vs GE, 1934)
Well, the heck with daylite fishing. From now on I will do almost all my Van Isle bass fishing at nite this year. Nite fishing is way too much fun. And I make a decision to use only a single lure –a big black jitterbug. If fishing lures were designed by Christine Mazur and Bernard London, there would be only a set number of casts allowed for each lure. Then they would have to be cast upon the alter of N American trash, in order to promote the profits that flow from the invisible hand of capitalism. And just in case the Comptroller is waiting for me to come back to Shawnigan again, tonite I will try Quennel.
I launch the Bullship at Zuiderzee Resort in the evening. This is the only place on the lake where I can back my boat in the water, but they close up at dark. But there is a public access site that is accessible all nite, so I load my bicycle into the boat, drive the boat a mile around to the public access, tie the Bullship up there, load the bike out, fall flat on my A in the slick clay there, pedal back to Zuiderzee, drive home, and take a shower to wash the mud off me. This nite fishing is a real challenge. Then at midnite I drive back to Quennel, and ease out into the dark with the electric motor.
It is of remarkable interest to learn from a highly placed engineer in a prominent portable radio manufacturing company that his products are designed to last not more than 3 years.
Design News magazine, 1958
I have tried nite fishing a couple times here in past years with no success. Maybe it is because my Jbug was obsolete? Fishing is slow at first. The Jbug I used at Shawnigan is now stuck high in a tree there, victim of a bad cast in the dark, never to fulfill its life mission of catching more bass. The one I have tied on is from the discount bin in a Wal Mart in Oregon. Maybe the fishing lure cartel has gotten ahold of Arbogast Co, and forced subtle changes in the design of the Jbug, unknown to consumers, that limit its effective lifespan. Like GE did with light bulbs. An inferior product means greater profits! At least in a US corporate economy.
There is a moon, but in the shade of the big trees along shore the stillness smothers the nite like a deep snowfall. When the bite is hot, nite fishing is electric. But when the fish do not bite I lose focus. My mind wanders to other zones. What if the Comptroller of Obsolescence works for some huge, secret government agency. A-and they have the money and staff and technology to track every single lure sold at Wal Mart? Make sure that it does not catch too many fish, or lay around too long in the tackle box of a consumer who could be buying another.
Is Byron in for a rude awakening! There is already an organization, a human one, known as "Phoebus", the international light-bulb cartel, headquartered in Switzerland. Run pretty much by International GE, Osram, and Associated Electrical Industries of Britain, which are in turn owned 100%, 29%, and 46%, respectively, by the General Electric Company in America. Phoebus fixes the prices and determines the operational lives of all the bulbs in the world…
Thomas Pynchon, The Story of Byron the Bulb
Now, it is well known that Arbogast does not close the eye of Jbug. There is a small piece of wire inserted thru a hole in the wobble plate, riveted on one end and bent into a circle on the other end. Well – almost a circle. This is where it gets spooky. The eye should be a complete circle, but it is not. Never is.
Pic
They never close the eye in the factory, and the average fisherman never notices that the eye is not closed. You can tie a perfect knot, have the fish take off with your lure in its mouth, and suddenly it is gone. You reel in and find that the line did not break. You get your perfect knot back – it just slipped off the end of the eye. This has undoubtedly cost fishermen to lose thousands of Jbugs over the years.
Before you ever tie a line on this lure you must remember to take a pair of pliers and bend the eye closed. Then your knot won’t slip off the lure. I, who fashion myself as a reasonably skilled nite fisherman, should know better. But I make a rookie mistake. Tie the new Jbug on, forget to close the eye, make the first cast, and schwing! …the knot slips off thru the gap, and my new Jbug goes sailing off into the night. Lands with a plop far down the shore. Must turn on my headlamp and scout around in the dark for 10 minutes before I can find it. This time I close the gap in the eye before tying the knot.
As his burning lengthens toward 600 hours, the monitors in Switzerland begin to keep more of an eye on Byron … and a cadre of superclean, white-robed watchers wander meter-to-meter, light as snowdevils, making sure that nothing’s going wrong, that through no bulb shall the mean operating life be extended. You can imagine what that would do to the market.
I miss one good fish, and then work along a brightly lit shoreline for an hour without a bite. Beavers are a recurring problem for nite fishers, cuz they don’t like you intruding into their turf after dark. They start slapping their tails on the water and spooking all the fish. Once they start slapping I figure it is game over, and I try to motor away from them and fish elsewhere. But tonite I have thrown a long cast out along a lily pad bed when a huge splash erupts out in deep water. Beaver, dammit. No chance for bass here any more, so I start reeling in the Jbug.
Kablammo! A giant bass smashes the Jbug. It is a 20" pig, tied for my biggest bass ever in 35 years of fishing at Quennel. Well, I guess this new Jitterbug works after all. Fishing is slow tonite, but I get a few hits and catch 2 more fish – another huge one around 19" and one about 17". Unfortunately, I forgot to bring the camera.
So I go back a few nites later in the pontoon. I have made a major modification to the toon. People often call me a genius, but they someimes exaggerate. No exaggeration here. This is one of the greatest advances in nautical science since the invention of the keel.
There is no flat spot on a pontoon boat. Anywhere that you put something, and it falls in the water. There are zipper bags, but these are slow. I need something handy, where I can put my little pliers, and tiny flashlite, and a maybe a spare Jbug. Most important, I need a secure place to hold a mug of coffee or a slurpee. Nothing ruins a midnite bass session quicker than spilling your rum & coffee overboard after you have run a mile in the dark and gotten set up on a hot bite. I have cut the bottom off a plastic pop jug, and ducktaped it onto the frame of the toon.
Pair of 20" SMs, Quennel Lake
The other bulbs watch, in barely subdued terror. The word goes out along the Grid. There is nothing we can do. … There’s never been anything we could do … anyone shows the meanest hope of transcending and the Committee on Incandescent Anomalies comes in and takes him away.
And I do not see another fisherman. In fact, in a full summer of nite fishing I never see another person out fishing on these busy urban lakes. The lake is ringed with houses, and one after another you can see the nite owls turning off their TVs, watch the windows go black, feel the silence pour over the lake.
In less than a fortnight a gong sounds… Not many gongs around here. Gongs are special. Byron has passed 1,000 hours, and the procedure is now standard. The Committee on Incandescent Anomalies sends a hit man to Berlin.
In past years I found that the bass nite bite best during late May and June. Hard to get hits as the summer wore on. Well, I must test the theory, so I am back at Shawnigan again.
Saturday nite, Aug 4. The government of Canada, or of BC, have made a great step forward in human culture. Unlike the Colossus to the South, which created new holidays in the middle of bassless winter to honor presidents and black men assassinated by the ruling class, Canada has created a new holiday out of thin air in August! While the poor US sheeple are required to work straight thru from July 4 until Labor Day, the people of Van Isle get to head out to Shawnigan for a 3 day weekend jamboree. Yee Ha!
Now Shawnigan is the ultimate party lake. Entirely ringed by suburban houses, most of which have their own dock, and their own rocketship speedboat, used only on a few days of the year. On any summer day the big lake is a madhouse of roaring speed. If boat horsepower was real horses, there would be huge herds racing around, up and down thru the narrows, with a herd of thousands running in a big donut around the north end. No place for the Bullship. Saturday nite is turning into Sunday morn now, and I am hoping the lake has calmed down enough to allow for a surface bite.
It is midnite as I back down the boat launch. I feel a bumping, as if my engine is missing. What is this? The old Volvo never misses a beat - unless the motor dies. But the closer I get to the water the less I can ignore it. The car is shaking with every bump, as if a piston is not firing. Finally, I turn the car off and coast down. But the bumping, booming noises continue. Getting louder. This has nothing to do with my car. Sounds like artillery now. The whole earth is shaking. Boom Boom Boom!
I get out of the car and look around. Turns out this is not a terrorist attack. Not a single terrorist in sight. Whew! In fact, there is a giant party happening on the lot next to the boat ramp, with a live rock band, with really huge speakers. I am 50m away, but you can feel every backbeat like a nuclear shockwave, and the car and trailer and even the big cottonwoods along shore shudder in seismic time with the dancers on the lawn. These people know how to rock. As I load in, drunken people wonder out of the bushes, holding little plastic drink cups, asking how the fishing was. What the H? You are launching your boat, not hauling out? You are going fishing? Now?
The band is really good. They seem to play only covers of 60s and 70s rock faves, back from the days when there was still music. These pics were taken from my boat in the lake.
The singer reminds me of a young Burton Cummings.
These guys are great! I could stay here for hours. Floating just offshore and listening to the tunes. Maybe I should wander in there and help myself to a drink? But I will never track down the wily bass if I an anywhere near this crowd. Time to head out far from here, find a place where it is quiet. Where you can toss out a 1938 lure and … blurp blurp blurp …
The cartel have already gone over to Contingency Plan B, which assumes a seven-year statute of limitations, after which Byron will be considered legally burned out.
Well, finding a quiet place to fish turns out to be a challenge. There are parties all round the lake tonite, and still lots of boats ripping around in the dark. I head across the bay, sneak in along a place where I seldom fish. Might the clever bass be hiding right under all these docks? I toss the Jbug into a dark pocket, retrieve a few feet along a dock, and the water erupts. 18 incher on the first cast! I get into a few more fish along here, but soon I get washed out by big waves rolling in from the rowdies racing around in the middle of the lake.
I speed along for half a mile, shut down, and wait. Not only is there really loud music blasting from a party nearby, there are also a couple of giant speedboats full of drunken giggling shouting revelers roaring around in the dark, making huge waves. Not a good spot for a surface bite. I race another half mile down the lake, shut down. Much better here. The drunken speedboats are far away, and I will have a couple minutes at least before their bow waves arrive to rock the shoreline. The party here is much more subdued, tinkling glasses and light chatter around the single voice of a woman singing a capella. And around the point is a dark quiet spot. I ease in quietly with the electric motor, toss out a cast. Blammo – another big one, shakes off. I get a few more hits, but soon another boatload of partiers roars by, and I have to go find a new spot. This continues for another hour. There is a bite happening, but the old Jbug only works in calm water, and there is precious little of that tonite. I keep racing around in the dark finding calm quiet water, and the drunks keep racing around in the dark until they wreck my spot. This is a tough nite for fishing, and I toy with the idea of just driving around to different parties, parking offshore, and listening to the music. Some wonderful tunes rolling out over the water tonite. But I keep on fishing instead. Eventually I get another 20 inch monster, long and lean.
Around 2 AM the parties die down around the lake, and the roaring drunk speedboats all head into shore, and the waves settle down. The lake goes dead flat. And – oddly enough – the fish seem to be partied out too. I never get another bite.
Phoebus based everything on bulb-efficiency. The ratio of useable power coming out, to the power put in. The Grid demanded that this ratio stay as small as possible, that way they got to sell more juice. On the other hand, lower efficiency meant longer burning hours, and that cut into bulb sales for Phoebus… More important were items like tungsten. Another reason Phoebus couldn’t cut down bulb life too far. Too many tungsten filaments would eat into available stockpiles of the metal … and disturb the arrangement between General Electric and Krupp about how much tungsten carbide would be produced, where and when and what the price would be. The guidelines settled on were $37-$90 a pound in Germany, and $200-$400 a pound in the US. This governed the production of machine tools, and thus all areas of light and heavy industry. When the war came, some people thought it unpatriotic of GE to have given Germany an edge like that. But nobody with any power. Don’t worry.
Later in August I try Green Lake, a small lake on the N side of town that has limited bass habitat. This lake is special for me, cuz I once caught a 10 inch SM there. Even tho I knew it was illegal to transport live fish or keep native fish in captivity, I put this bass in a 5 gallon bucket, and brought it back to Tofino (where I lived at the time), and kept it in a 10 gallon aquarium. SMs have an underslung lower jaw, and a pugnacious attitude and aura, which reminded me of a certain famous movie star. So I named him Arnold Bassnegger. Eventually, after I bought property in Clayoquat Sound, I moved Arnold back and forth between the aquarium in my apartment in Tofino and a bathtub on my property at Cypre. I fed and looked after Arnold for 10 years. When he was in town he liked to watch TV. His favorite shows were Hockey Nite In Canada and The Young And The Restless. I went away for a week once and returned to find Arnold petrified on the rug. He had jumped his tank while I was away.
Tonite there is a truck parked at the launch where I arrive around midnite. Is this a Comptroller of Obsolescence rig, waiting for me? Turns out there is a guy camping at the boat launch. I show him my Jbug as I launch. He cannot believe that fish will bite on this crazy lump of plastic, so I return shortly and get him to take a pic of me with my first fish.
Years ago I was casting a Jbug from shore at Elk Lake in Victoria, throwing straight out at a full moon hanging over a small cove. I could see the V wake of my lure crossing the moon reflection when I saw a shape sail out thru the trees, angling down. Another shape was sailing along the water, angling up. The reflection of the shape in the sky. Before I could think, the two shapes converged on a point – my Jbug – and the V wake was slashed by a big splash going sideways. I waited, and reeled in a little. Nothing there. Was my line broken? A big great horned owl sailed across the sky, arced around to my left, and then flew behind my head over the parking lot. Suddenly my rod jerked backwards. The owl had grabbed my Jbug off the water and was trying to fly away with it. The owl let go, and the lure fell out of the nite sky and landed next to a picnic table. You never know what you might catch with an obsolete lure at nite.
Later in August I head back out to Spider Lake in my pontoon. The bite is slow, only a couple fish. Have not had a bite in an hour. Why am I here? How boring can it get? I am casting along the shore of a dark cove, blurp blurp blurp, the Jbug is about 40 ft away when a darker shape sweeps across the silhouettes of trees against a dark sky. Yikes! It is a big owl, and it is after my Jitterbug! The owl spooks at the last instant, pulls out of its power dive, and swoops back up, 10 ft in front of my face. I can feel the wind from its wings as it disappears.
Well, this is twice I have had owls attack at nite, and let me tell you this will get your adrenaline flowing. I fish the jitterbug around the end of the cove where the owl chased me, but the Jbug bite is just not happening. Plus, I can see the rosy fingers of dawn creeping up in the E. So I paddle out off the point, turn on my headlamp, with the red lens which is supposed to be less visible to fish, and replace the Jbug with the spook – my default crackofdawn lure. It floats half out of the water, and splashes back and forth if you do a jerky walk-the-dog retrieve. I also take time to relax, and sip coffee from my thermos, and watch the stars. It has been nearly half an hour since the owl attack now, but I am in the same general area. When I am finally ready, I throw the spook way out off the point. With my 8 ft steelhead rod I can throw a spook a mile. It is too dark to see the lure on the water, but as I start walking the dog I can see the ripples. And something else, a dark form sailing out of the trees, angling down. And another shape, a reflection, angling up. Converging on my lure. Oh no! Before I can jerk the lure away there is a slash across the surface, and my line goes slack. The owl banks, and heads back toward the shore. It is very dark, but I can see and hear that it has landed in a tree.
Well, what to do now. There is no way I want to mess with a great horned owl, especially from a pontoon boat, especially in the dark. Maybe I can yank the lure away from the owl? I know it sounds stupid now, but your mind does not function perfectly when it is flooded by adrenaline, and in any case your options in this situation are limited. I reel in the slack. The line is not pointing down toward the lake, it is pointing up, towards a tree on the shore. I give a big yank, and there is commotion in the tree, then a big splash, then silence. I try reeling in again, The line is pointing down toward the water now, but it won’t budge. So I start rowing in towards shore. Can’t see a damn thing. As I near the shore I can begin to see a grayish lump on the water, as if the top of a boulder. What the H – there are no boulders here.
I am about 50 feet out when I decide to turn on my headlamp. Flash! The lump is not a rock. It is an owl. An owl that would not let go of my Jbug, so I jerked it right off the branch it was sitting on, and before it could get its wings set it fell 10 feet down, right into the lake! Now I have a great horned owl on the other end of my line. An owl with huge claws and a meanass beak, and an owl that is probably not in a particuarly good mood. And I am in an inflatable boat that can be puntured by a blackberry bush, trying to get my lure back. Only bad things can come from this situation – right?
Wrong. As soon as the light flashes on the owl it lets go of the Jbug, flops off the water in a great fluffle and splash, and disappears into the night. The spook is left swinging in the air, a foot over the water, dangling from the branch the owl landed on.
This process of making previous models look outmoded when the new models have no better service to offer is known as "planned obsolescence" or "artificial obsolescence", the latter is the more accurate term but still not as accurate as just plain "gypping".
Walter Dorwin Teague, designer of the Texaco "Star" logo
Well, I am getting so good at this nite fishing that I am going to dial up the Degree of Difficulty again. Instead of the Bullship I am gonna fish Quennel from the pontoon. It is a perfect nite, and I am on top of my game. It is an awesome an legendary nite. I have been here nite fishing twice already this year. Done my homework, developed a plan, and I know exactly where and how I plan to fish tonite.
There was one spot I found last time that was loaded with big fish, so I end up back there. Tonite it is on fire. Along a stretch of about 100m along shore there are big LMs stacked and ravenous. Every cast gets hit, and every fish leaps and thrashes repeatedly before either shaking off or coming in to the boat to pose for a picture. Must then paddle out to deeper water, sip slurpee, and wait for 10 minutes for the chaos to die down before sneaking in again, 50 ft further along, plop, blurpblurpblurpm SMASH! Another tyrant smallie crushes the Jbug, jumps twice, throws the lure, which I start to reel in again. SMASH! Another giant SM erupts from the silence …
The hilite of my fishing summer. You don’t know what bass fishing is all about until you catch back-to-back 20" SMs on consecutive casts from a pontoon boat at 2 AM!
After the first part of August the nite bite really does die taper off. Maybe this 1938 lure really has become obsolete, finally. Or maybe next summer there might still be a few wily old bass who let their aggression and hunger get the better of their logic and common sense, and decide to make a midnite snack of that black mouse swimming along shore…
Like bass, autos breed once a year in N America, and each spring a new breed is released into the environment. The spectacular evolution of the tailfin resembles the fantastic and utterly useless evolution of flamboyant plumage in the bird of paradise species in the tropics. Tailfin evolution came to a crashing halt in 1957, the year of Sputnik, the demise of the Edsel, and the year Volkswagen started flooding the US market with cheap, reliable, simple cars fronted by simple honest black-and-white magazine ads showing just their car, and the words: "The ’51, ’52, ’53, ’54, ’55. ’56. ’57. ’58, ’59, ’60, and ’61 Volkwagen", or what Giles Slade describes as the "completely subversive":
"Live Below Your Means"
As Slade says, "Increasing numbers of Americans bought products like the Volkswagen, and later the much more expensive Volvos to demonstrate that they were wise to the game."
Note: Many of the quotes and much of the inspiration for this section came from the book "Made to Break", by Giles Slade. Check it out – it is a great read.
No comments:
Post a Comment