Renaissance Redneck: ‘It was a monster!’

By DAVID KITTREDGE
Ah, the one that got away.

“It was huge I’m telling you! It was a monster of a fish.”

I have heard those words many times over the years as fishermen spin their yarns about battles lost with the lunkers of the deep while beads of sweat build on their foreheads and their breath shortens along with their sentences which are pared down to stunted phrases and eventually to single descriptive words.

“Hellacious, monstrous, a beast of a fish. Probably was a state record. I fought it for over an hour. It was pulling my boat through the water.” And this was on Lake Sunapee! I have of heard two fish pulling boat episodes occurring on the Lake of the Wild Goose, the meaning of the Algonquin word “Sunapee.”

One incident was portrayed by a Newport fellow who was prone to fabulous exaggeration most of the time anyway, so when he related this tale of his boat being propelled through the water by a Jonah sized fish, no one believed him. Years later, a friend of mine had the same thing happen to him on Sunapee while fishing near the bottom with a live sucker for bait. He felt his line go taut, and the rodeo was on as his small boat was towed along, he struggled to gain line on the underwater dreadnought to no avail for close to an hour, until a close passing motorboat’s propeller cut his line. This was followed by a severe incidence of lake rage, as my friend spouted out cuss words, bringing in the passing boater’s whole family tree into the diatribe along with their unseemly relationships with one another.

After hearing my buddy’s account, while realizing he was not prone to exaggeration — he doesn’t need to, he is a very good fisherman — it brought to mind the first account I had heard of, which was then plausible also. Both of these fellows claimed that they had big lake trout on, which they never saw, but I think instead they had the American eel on their lines, which inhabits Sunapee Lake and can grow to a length of five feet, which is rare, but four feet is probably more realistic. These snakelike creatures have a continuous fin that runs down their back from the midway point or the body to the tail and up their belly again to the midpoint. This fin design constitutes a lot of pulling power in the water along with the surface area of a four foot fish.

I have fought 30-pound plus king salmon on a river, which are very powerful, combined with the river current and I can’t picture one pulling a boat, if at all, for any length of time. Another thing to consider when fighting a big trout is that they build up lactic acid in their muscles and the larger the fish the more lactic acid is built up, which tires them out quicker than a smaller fish. I fought and caught a 20-pound Northern pike in the Chibougamau Region of Canada, and then fought a 30-pound plus pike later that same day which tired sooner than the smaller fish. I let this fish go, it had an alligator sized head, and I didn’t want to try to wrestle it into the boat.

This supports my eel theory in that even if a was big enough, a Lake trout couldn’t pull a small boat around for an hour or so with the lactic acid build up to tire it out.

One of the biggest trout that I ever fought was at the base of the dam in Errol, N.H. on the Androscoggin River. It was before dawn, and I was fishing on the bottom with a giant stonefly nymph fly pattern. Bam! The fish hit and started to run downstream, I let the trout take line against a light reel drag to let it tire itself out until I was down to my backing and then I started to reel it in, fighting the fish and the river current. I had gotten back about half my line when the two foot plus fish jumped and cleared the water, showing me its full profile, square shoulders, black back with a ruby red sash emblazoned on its side. A moment of hubris struck me as an image of the Rainbow trout mounted and hanging on my wall flashed through my mind. The fish plunged back into the river with a resounding splash. It zigged and ran down river cutting my leader as it zagged around a boulder. If I were a younger man, I would have scampered along the manmade boulder lined riverbank in pursuit toward the fish while we fought, but I deemed it a treacherous act for me to try at my age while fishing alone at 5 a.m.

And speaking of big fish getting away, I just read an article about another sighting of the Loch Ness monster. A fellow by the name of Eoin O’Faodhagain (that name threw the old spell check for a loop) took a very grainy photo of the creature. Even the trees and foliage in the forefront of the picture are smudged and out of focus. In this age of high definition cameras with megapixels coming out the wazoo, it would seem a photo of the legendary creature would be distinct enough to portray its eyelashes from a hundred yards.

There are also theories that this creature could be a large eel.