TRAILER


Big City Secrets


SOMETIMES THE SMALLMOUTH ARE LARGER IN SUBURBIA BY JEFF LITTLE


I


hustle to drag my kayak to the creek bank. My pickup is double parked. Chil-


dren wearing backpacks point at me from their bus stop. I smile to them and wave. As I jog back to the truck, keys in hand,


thick diesel exhaust burns in my nostrils. Te stop sign swings out from the side of the school bus with flashing red lights. Several kids glance back at me just before climbing aboard. A man in a suit and tie has pulled his


Volvo too close behind my truck, unaware that the vehicle is unmanned. Squeezing between his pristine front bumper and my dented tailgate, I rush to get out of his way. He liſts his face from a five-dollar coffee as I smile and nod. I drive a quarter-mile up the road, pull into an empty bank parking lot, and walk back to where I dropped off my kayak and rods. While this neighborhood prepares for


its Tuesday routine, I shove off into an overlooked creek half a cast wide. It winds through miles and miles of cookie cutter houses on its way to a very well known and heavily fished river. We kayak anglers gravitate towards the


sport because it brings us to the kind of scenic places that allow us to forget that we need to clean the gutters or mow the lawn. So who wants to fish in the suburbs with those reminders all around? I do. Because I know it keeps everyone


else away. 46 … KAYAK ANGLER summer/fall 2009 Until recently I was ignorant of the po-


tential in my local creeks. As a kid, I grew up fishing locally out of necessity. But once I gained the freedom of a driver’s license, exploring far from home waters became my focus. I felt compelled to travel as far as possible to stalk trophy smallmouth. When my two sons grew old enough


to join me, I started fishing close to home again. Oſten, I found that I would teach a


many of the small watersheds. Unclaimed fisheries like these exist


everywhere, like the creek that I’m fishing today. Te whine of a golf cart’s electric drive


train grows louder and then stops a mere 60 feet away from the eddy I’ve pulled into. Te voices of two men griping about their coworkers carry over the seven-foot clay bank I am concealed behind.


The assumption that big fish only live in big water keeps most anglers away from local creeks.


class on some distant stream on a Saturday, guiding my students to several respectable smallmouth. Ten on Sunday mornings with my son Sawyer, we would travel less than 20 minutes and best the previous en- tire day’s efforts within the first hour. I realized that the assumption that big


fish only live in big water keeps most an- glers out of narrow flows. Fish grow large in small waters because they live long, un- molested by the kind of fishing pressure that even medium-sized rivers endure. Now when I travel, it is for a class or to


explore new water that I have researched. When I don’t have an entire day to drive, shuttle, fish, and drive again, I fish the Potomac River tributaries close to home, amidst the suburban sprawl that seeps into


A crisp thump felt in the cork handle of


my spinning rod interrupts my inadvertent eavesdropping. I lean in the direction that my line points, gather slack and swing hard. A potbellied smallmouth bass launches skyward, shattering the golfers’ illusion that their badmouthing went unheard. Following four drag-pulling surges, the 4- pound, 10-ounce smallmouth reluctantly allows me to scoop it up with my net. The gossiping duffers pause their


conversation. I hoist the fish in their direction, briefly smiling and making eye contact before they nod and return to their putts. “Your political secrets are safe with me


boys. Just don’t tell anyone what I just pulled out of this creek.”


ILLUSTRATION: LORENZO DEL BIANCO


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