Legacy

An array of pickups, vans and compacts dot the gravelly shoulder of the University lakes on Dalrymple Drive.

Passing through, University students can only briefly view the still figures sitting on old white buckets or standing at the water’s edge. The fishermen wait for hours, aimlessly staring at the water sparkling beneath the late afternoon sun. From time to time, they wander to various spots along the lake until their lines begin to jump.

Silhouetted against the water, calmly anticipating their next catch, these fishermen (and women) make up a community of retired and working folk feeding their addiction for fishing.

The Old Timers

Leslie Moses, 63, sat slumped in an off-white chair as if he were not trying to catch anything. Aside from the whir of traffic, the scene was so placid, I was hesitant to utter a word.

Maintaining his steady view of the reel, he told me, “I’ve been coming here for about a month, month-and-a-half.”

I asked if he had caught anything. In response, he simply pointed to a rope with all of his fish dangling at the end.

Every now and then, Moses flicked his wrist up, then glanced back at me to finish answering a question. He had crisp black curls and bloodshot eyes that blinked from beneath his denim hat.

He was dressed in a full-body, heavy work suit as if he were still on the daily grind. But for Moses, a newly-retired CATS supervisor, fishing is his new nine to five.

“Sometimes, I treat [fishing] like a job,” Moses said. “But I don’t fish at night, I leave around 5:30 or 6 [p.m.]. Some guys fish here to 1:30 in the morning.”

When asked how many times he drives to the lake, he laughed and said, “Just about every day.” His patience is rewarded; he can catch up to 12 sac-a-lait (a.k.a. crappie, a popular, wide-bodied game fish) a day. When the day winds down, he returns home to his wife and either pan fries or freezes the catch to give to family members.

As Moses described catching a fish, his face lit up with a rare spark, affirming his reason for even attempting the sport in the first place. “You come out here, and you will be fishing for two hours,” Moses said, “then — BAM — you start catching.”

The hobby serves as relaxation for Moses. “A lot of times when you have things that bother you, you can just throw your line out. It takes the tension off — just getting the line out and giving it a little bump now and then.”

Like Moses, 71-year-old retiree Howard Ferguson cannot imagine a more enjoyable hobby than fishing. “I’m too old to hunt!” He exclaimed. “Fishing is the only pleasure I have.”

Ferguson kept a pack of mentholated cigarettes in his pocket; his dry lips locked the cig in place during conversation. He sat on his cooler with two fishing lines and a concrete bucket full of water and bait within arm’s reach. The topics of conversation ranged from his five children to the glory days of Doug Williams’ Redskins.

“I started working at the age of 12,” Ferguson said. “I’ve seen it all. I’ve done it all. I’ve been in the dairy business, the salt-milling business and the construction business. Then I worked 17 years driving trucks for Redi-Meat.”

For Ferguson, fishing is a thinking man’s game. “I fish for sac-a-lait to try and outsmart them.” He smiled. “They don’t want to bite at first. But after 5:30 [p.m.], they come out and it’s like a game.”

The ‘Musical Whiz’

At first glance, Clifford Ellis looked like an extra from an episode of “American Chopper.” His neck was lined with tribal tattoos and black stars. He was dressed in a plaid shirt and stained shorts that revealed a prosthetic leg.

Ellis might seem like a war veteran with a chip on his shoulder, but he’s a jittery yet easy-going musician — named a “musical whiz” by 225 Magazine in the October 2008 issue — and has fished at the lake for 15 years. Having just downed a cheap cup of coffee, he paced from his sedan to the bait-box on his trunk, attaching bait to lines and answering questions.

When I asked what he has caught in the lake, he responded, “I’ll show you.” Ellis reached into his car, found his cell phone, then presented a picture of a seven-pound bass. “Most people don’t believe me when I tell them I catch seven- or eight-pound bass here, but you’ll believe me now,” he said.

Ellis fishes for it all — bass, sac-a-lait, the list goes on. When the 44-year-old spotted ripples in the water where a fish could have been, he momentarily stopped talking and perked his head up.
He glanced back over at me. “I’m sorry, man,” he apologized and laughed. “I’m too old to be acting like this, I know.”

Ellis has no patience and can’t wait for the fish to come to him. When he’s not roaming the banks near Dalrymple, he sets up reels, lines and canoes around the lake.

“You don’t need patience,” he said. “As long you don’t cuss too loud, you’ll be fine, but it’s a very frustrating sport. When you drop a good one, when you know all the technique in the world, [it] isn’t going to help you [when] he spits that hook out.”

I could imagine his mouth watering as he explained what it’s like to catch a bass. “It’s one of the most exciting things, especially when you can land one. These bass out here have seen every kind of lure. They know what they are doing. All your practice pays off in that one second,” he said, mimicking the battle between the line and fish.

“When they are biting, I come out here every day,” he said. “Sometimes, I’ll be out here three or four days straight. I don’t eat, I drink too much coffee. It’s like I’m a drug addict.”

His main ambition is catching “the big bass”; he wants that fiberglass replica from the Bass Pro Shop.

“People think it’s kind of silly. They might make fun of me,” he admitted, “but I want a trophy bass.”

The Queen of the Lake

Ellis interrupted our conversation and pointed to a woman 20 yards down the shoulder of the road. “She caught something,” he said. The woman had an ear-to-ear smile to go with her canvas cowboy hat and cargo khakis. She had indeed caught something: a three-pound bass.

Her name was Betty Hayes. At first, she was apprehensive about the interview; her answers were brief, but the reason for this soon became clear.

Hayes races from her job at Southside Child Development Center (near College Drive) to the lake every day around noon and uses her lunch break to fish. “I make myself a sandwich,” she said, adding that her co-workers knew the routine.

The False River native has fished for 45 years. Per week, she usually catches up to five bass and 25 sac-a-lait. Astonished, I told her, “You’re like the ‘queen of fishing’ out here.”

She laughed. “That’s what they call me!”

Though a queen might invoke an image of a ruthless tyrant, plundering the lakes for every last fish, Hayes does not care to eat the fish she catches. Instead, she gives her weekly catch to the elderly and cancer patients.

“Did you see that man who was with me?” she asked. “I gave that bass to him.”

When asked if she had any other hobbies, she replied, “Fishing, fishing and more fishing. I eat, sleep and breathe it.” She added that she watches the sport on television to pick up techniques from masters such as Gonzales’ own Greg Hackney.

“One day, I want to be able to fish with [Hackney]. If I could just fish with him one time … ” she left the sentence unanswered. Her desire was evident: this would be heaven on earth.

Could she compete with All-Star bass fisherman with career earnings over $1 million?

“I fish with anybody,” she said bluntly. “Doesn’t matter who it is.”