AMERICAN IN AFRICA: The Spring Spawn

WORDS: George Robey III*

She came to me in the springtime, lured me with her charms and swept me away.

She teased and flirted, sleek and coy with darting eyes and an adorable underbite. It was just too much … her slinky green coat, midriff bulge and dismissive personality. The object of my affection both taunted and ignored for three long days and her every move intoxicated me.

It started innocently. My nine-year-old interest turned hastily to infatuation and soon to compulsion. My family did not understand the machinations of young love and told me it would never last. I was too young, they said. But, they were wrong, all of them. My first affair has lasted a lifetime.

My “girl” occupied a shallow flat in the family farm dam where she guarded a saucer shaped nest. She circled and swooned and occasionally nuzzled smaller bass that came calling. I dangled every lure in my tackle box in front of her but she paid scant attention to my clumsy advances.

I made a thousand fruitless casts. Swimming spinners and diving cranks inches from her nose, none of which excited her. She rebuked me from sunrise to sunset and when I failed to appear at the farm house for meals my doting mother became increasingly concerned by my adolescent obsession.  

Back then, plastic lures were not popular and most crankbaits floated, even the deep divers made of balsa. The only offering I could drop into her nest were inline spinners. I would dance them until the shiny steel blades sparkled in the sunlight. Sometimes, my lady in green would point her nose toward the lure and stare. But nothing more.

After two days I set down my fishing rod and crawled to the lip of the dam, mere meters from the spawning bass. I lay in fresh green grass, under the shade of an apple tree bearing fragrant springtime blossoms and watched her for hours. She remained motionless most of the day, her dainty pectorals quivering flirtatiously, until some primordial urge set her off. It happened in an instant.

Small bluegills had for most of the day filtered in and out of the nest site without so much as a glance, but suddenly the spawning bass began slashing at the hapless panfish, darting recklessly toward nearby movement. My calm and gentle swain became unexplainably enraged. I had an idea …

I belly-crawled away from the dam and ran to the barn where I found a trio of cane poles rigged with bobbers and small hooks. I hurriedly dug earthworms and caught a bucket of small bluegills from the far end of the pond. I rigged my shabby hand-me-down fiberglass spinning rod with a large single hook, impaled a bluegill behind its dorsal fin and crept furtively toward the action.

I settled onto my matted grass bed and delicately dropped the flapping bluegill onto her nest. The reaction was immediate. The enraged bass whirled and attacked then fought valiantly until I slid her over the grass bank and into my trembling hands. Foiled at last! I screamed a victory cry heard from all corners of the farm.

My family rushed to the dam and gathered by my side, delighted to know my conquest was fulfilled and that farm life would return to normal. It’s safe to say they never understood my first fleeting affair but learned through the years to accept my many springtime peccadilloes. But there is nothing quite like the first time …

A first love is never forgotten and so it is, even today when flowers bloom and warm winds blow that I am reminded of that springtime many years ago when a young man’s fancy turned to love.

*George Robey III is an American freelance outdoor writer/photographer now residing in South Africa where he reckons the bass fishing is better than in his home county in Ohio state in the USA. He is also the Africa agent for Venom Lures. Email him on info@venomluresafrica.co.za; follow him on Facebook/All Outdoors Africa.

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