The sweet site of a disappearing bobber

There’s nothing sweeter than the sight of a red and white bobber disappearing underwater.

It’s probably what got me hooked on fishing. That and bluegill, which while I can’t remember back that far, were surely the first fish I ever caught.

I thought I’d given up bluegill when I moved West. I’d already given up bobber fishing after my father taught me how to use a fly rod and cast tiny foam spiders in the stripper pits of southern Indiana. It was a more efficient way to catch panfish than using a spinning rod and worms.

And it was fun. It was also the way most folks -- especially the guided ones -- fished out here. So I didn’t have to learn how to fly fish after I moved to Montana. I just switched from popping bugs and foam spiders to flies.

Over the years I caught all flavors of trout, including some large ones, on the fly rod. But I didn’t use it exclusively. Some fish, even trout at times, are better caught with different tackle. Light spinning rods and small jigs were the ticket for crappie at Tongue River Reservoir, and before the lake trout took over, Blue Fox spinners were money for cutthroat on Yellowstone Lake.

When I moved north and began walleye fishing I picked up some heavier spinning gear to troll crank baits and bottom bouncers, deep-water bait rigs tipped with night crawlers.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I was coming full circle. Worms, I’m sure, were where it all began. I was just missing the red and white bobber and bluegill.

Then a friend told me about a stock pond on the prairie rumored to be inhabited by state-record-sized ‘gills. I’m a sucker for such talk and a few days later showed up at that pond with a box of crawlers, a light spinning rod, and a little red and white bobber.

It was an unassuming body of water, only a couple of acres in size, but clear, and for the middle of summer, relatively weed free. And it was full of bluegill. Most of them were undersized, but every now and then I’d hook a slab as big as my hand, dark and purple hued, though none of them came close to the 11-inch, 2.64 pound state record.

As pretty as the fish were, however, the sight of that bobber disappearing into the depths was far prettier. It took me back to a place I hadn’t been in a very long time, a place I now realize I’d never really left.

Parker Heinlein is at

[email protected]