The young man, the sea and the contented sturgeon

I awoke Tuesday morning this week aboard Nellie Peach, in Willsboro Bay on Lake Champlain. Cold feet, cold shoulders and a five-foot down comforter for my six-foot body. Outside it’s 52 degrees. Inside it’s 52 degrees. Time for the heat.

A sailor I was speaking with the other day remarked that there’s a shorter boating season up here than down our way. Fifty-two degrees in late August made that clarion ring true.

We’re 500 miles north of Lewes on our Hudson River journey. Makes a real difference. Maybe that’s what lies behind the recent buzz about a two-mouthed fish caught in the lake.

Yes, something right out of Ripley’s Believe It or Not. But the picture snagged from local news reports is here to prove it. A woman and her husband were fishing. She got a bite, felt it was heavy. Husband fetched the net. There, in the net, was a lake trout with two mouths.

Not genetic, not environmental, said a Harvard expert. More likely an aberration that followed a serious mouth wound. Kind of like how a fleeing salamander can grow a new tail when its previous tail gets snapped off in the hungry jaws of a predator. Not exactly, but you get the idea.

Or for the purpose of this story, my theory:  Just as the north country means shorter boating seasons, it also means shorter feeding season for fish. This fish, not satisfied with being hungry all winter, grew a second mouth to get more in its belly during the few warmer months. Just because you can’t prove it’s true doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

That’s kind of like the bumper sticker I once saw: “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean someone isn’t following you.”

So, the lady caught the highly unusual fish, took a picture and threw the fish back to continue fattening up for the winter. A friend posted the picture on Facebook and it took off like a nuclear reaction. No surprise.

Another, not so lucky

A teenaged boy I was watching the other day wasn’t so lucky, and it wasn’t for lack of trying. The waters up here are fresh and clear. We were anchored in the cove of Valcour Island just south of Bluff Point, out of a north wind. Five feet of water, lots of healthy grasses, lots of three- and four-inch baitfish nibbling in the grasses, and ... that’s right, as if I were looking in an aquarium, I saw two larger fish. Big fish. Not together, not at the same time, not the same kind of fish. But both in the five- to eight-pound category.

The first looked like a carp or a trout. Classic fish shape: Head in front, tail in back, just one mouth, large fins on top, small dorsal fins just behind the gills. Its slightly goldish burnishing made me think carp.

The boy, off a sailboat anchored 50 yards away, slid by quietly on a paddleboard. I mentioned I had just seen a big fish. It didn’t register. “Fish!” I said, louder, as I held up my hands and showed a span between them of about 18 inches.

That registered. Eyes wide, he turned his board and headed back to the vessel flying a Canadian flag. I think he only spoke French.

He was back in 15 minutes with a fishing rod. Soon he was trolling, holding the rod in one arm, sitting on the board, paddling with the other arm, searching the clear water beneath the surface for his quarry. Then he would stop for a while, cast and retrieve, then resume trolling and looking. This went on for the better part of the afternoon.

The young man left, and then returned with his little sister. She held the rod while he kneeled behind her and paddled. Still no luck. Such patience and persistence!

After sunset, in the twilight, he returned once again, this time in an inflatable dinghy with his father, the fishing pole, and his determination. The stars emerged before he allowed his father to return to their boat, empty-handed.

In the meantime, I had paddled into shore in the afternoon hours to explore a rocky ledge. On the way, I saw the second fish. I had to look twice, It was gray, had a flat head and two large dorsal fins flapping slowly behind its gills.

A shark?  That’s what it looked like, but there are no freshwater sharks. Once there were a few land-locked in Lake Nicaragua a century ago when an erupting volcano closed off from the sea what had been a saltwater bay. That natural event trapped sharks in what eventually became a freshwater lake. As the water freshened, the sharks eventually died out.

I checked internet sources for Lake Champlain fish when I returned to the boat. A sturgeon. No doubt. But I didn’t have the heart to tell the boy. He was obsessed enough with that carp-like fish I had seen.

I should note that neither of the fish I saw looked aggressive or hungry or thin. They looked fat and healthy. What a curse clear water can be! I have no doubt the boy saw his fish a few times and that’s what kept him wired. But to see the fish, and even dangle the bait or lure right in front of its face, with no response? Not fair!

The frustration only grew his determination.

I was making coffee the next morning just after the rising sun started heating the day. I looked out the window and there the boy was again, on the paddleboard, searching, trolling, casting, imagining the feel of that fish when it struck - but not catching. At one point I saw him reach for his net and shift the rod into his other hand. I was hoping for his sake that his patience had paid off. I really think the fish was just down there looking up at him, barely moving, and he thought maybe he could outright net the critter.

The blow of a horn ended the boy’s futile quest. The family was ready to go. He paddled slowly back to the sailboat, not entirely defeated because the fish had given him a purpose to ease some of his teenaged boredom on the family outing.

All the vessels that had anchored in the cove over the weekend except for about seven were gone by Monday morning. I was atop Nellie, pulling paddleboards up and securing them with lines that hold them snugly against an inflatable kayak.

Looking again into the clear water, I saw the baitfish once more. I wondered whether larger predator fish circle them and ball them up before flashing in to feed. Hawks do that sometimes, around flocks of blackbirds.

Then I saw the sturgeon again. Clear as day, four feet down, barely moving, definitely the same fish. No interest in the baitfish. Certainly, like that lazy carp, in no mood to take a hook.

Its return visit made me smile.

At 16 or so, the boy was probably not as satisfied with simply seeing a big fish as I was at 69.

But I’m definitely glad that I live where the boating season is longer, and where fish don’t have to grow two mouths because their feeding season is so short.