It brings me immeasurable joy to watch my son Thomas fish. His skill is increasing daily, and unfortunately his appetite for fishing is only surpassed by his appetite for whining about wanting to go fishing. While the fishing infatuation of his is wonderful, and watching a child stalk small fish in clear water on a sunny Sunday is indeed idyllic, the constant requests for bait get a little old. My parents refrigerator usually has at least one carton of night crawlers in it at any given time, but even that continually restocked supply runs out with remarkable consistency. When that happens, we’ll resort to something I’m quite embarrassed about- the cut up hot dog. At least I don’t cut it into coin shapes like many; instead I cut thin little strips, you know, so as to look like a pork and lip worm.
We don’t always fall back to the hot-dog-worm, but I must admit, for all of young Thomas’s fishing desire, he’s not the best at finding worms under rocks. The same rocks that line the crooked little stream that weaves through the Loch Vista park that I turned over in search of worms 25 years ago. I should have added a + after the 25, but I didn’t. We bought a large net in hopes of netting copious quantities of minnows which would in turn be deployed as bait, but the net has proven a bit too unwieldy for an almost seven year old. I tried to teach Thomas how to snag minnows and then just leave the minnow on the hook to fish with, but his efforts led quickly to frustration and an annoying request for more bait. Or hot dogs, whichever.
This past Sunday, while basking in yet another Lake Geneva weekend that registered “glorious” on my weekend measuring scale, I decided it was time. It was time to set my son on a path towards fishing independence. No longer would his fishing schedule be dictated by the open and close of the gas station worm refrigerator. No longer would hot dogs be an unfortunate necessity. That day, that glorious Sunday, Thomas would learn to catch his own bait, and I, his portly father, would teach him how.
I shed my shirt. I placed my cell phone, watch, key, and camera on the bow of my fathers Chris Craft (pier art). I grabbed a scuba mask, and found another for Thomas. With regret, Thomas didn’t actually have a mask, as his was at home, instead he had to use some pink goggles, but the effect was the same. May tagged along, though she was put in charge of watching the bucket. We dove into the shallows and the hunt for free bait was on. But this wasn’t like flipping over rocks for worms, because this bait fights back.
The object of our baiting desire was the mighty crayfish. Crayfish abound in Geneva, but most people will never see one alive. They live under the rocks and inside pier cribs, and they are the preferred food for everything from perch to small mouth bass. They are neat little creatures, and with a lifespan of up to 30 years, there’s a chance that some of the crayfish near my parents pier are just about as old as I am. Oh, and another thing about Lake Geneva crayfish- please don’t ever call them crawfish or crawdaddies. The crayfish are insulted by such names.
Finding crayfish isn’t difficult. The clear water makes it easy to spot all sorts of underwater creatures, and the procedure is quite easy. You hold your breath, dive to the bottom (a task made easy by the shallow water nature of the hunt), and turn over medium sized rocks. When you turn over a rock, you’ll see either one of two things. The crayfish will either shoot out, propelling himself backwards and under another rock or into the safety of seaweed, or he’ll just sit there, claws primed, daring you to come near his deadly tweezers. To grab a crayfish, it’s a good idea to grab them from behind, as Thomas is illustrating here in this photo. For bait on Geneva, there is simply nothing better. I remember reading somewhere that it’s illegal to fish with crayfish, so if you fish with them and end up being hauled off to jail, screaming “Dave Curry told me this was allowed!” will not get you anywhere.
After Thomas and I corralled a few, we walked to the end of the pier, baited a hook, and caught a couple fish. This is the most organic form of fishing, fishing with bait that was just hand caught in the same waters. After we exhausted two crayfish, I decided it was time to let Thomas do some searching on his own. He strapped on the pink goggles and went on the hunt. He asked for a cup to aid in his catching, but I assured him that just as there’s no crying in baseball, there are definitely no cups in crayfishing. This summer, perhaps if you’re sitting on a Lake Geneva pier desperately wishing you had some bait, don’t first reach for the hot dog. Instead, take of your shirt, find a swim mask, and start turning over some rocks.