Fishing With A Vet
By Jim Gildea
Northeast Staff Writer
November 19, 2009
We all love to fish, and it feels good to help someone else out, but when you can do both, that’s even better. That’s what makes the New England Paralyzed Veterans of America (NEPVA) trail so much fun.
The events are run by the NEPVA and the logistics are provided by the Nam Knights. These guys are all Vietnam-era vets who give back to their brothers. They carry the wheelchair-bound vets into the boats, cook the burgers, and help out. For them, it’s a labor of love.
Here’s the format – they pair up a boater with a disabled veteran. The limit is five fish. The boater weighs three, and the vet weighs two. The vet can cull the boater’s fish, but not the other way around. In other words, to do well, you need to get your veteran on fish.
I’ve fished the Charles River tournament (in Boston) for the last four years. If you’ve ever heard the Standells song “Dirty Water”, you know all you need to know about the Charles. Now it’s not dirty – we’d say it’s “stained”.
The fishing is pretty good, considering the urban environment. Largemouth are the focus, but there are some smallmouth around as well. It usually takes around 10 pounds to finish at the top of the field for five fish, and lunker is usually a 3 or so.
This year, I was paired with Frank Vogeli. Frank is a retired New York City policeman and Army veteran stationed in Alaska during the Vietnam war. “It was cold up there, but that was fine with me”, he laughed. He didn’t talk too much about his time as a cop in Queens. I said he must have some good stories, and he just shrugged, and replied, “Yeah, I guess I do.”
The best option for the Charles River this time of the year is to drive all the way down to the Esplanade – which is a series of ponds in the heart of Boston. It’s about an hour, since it’s no wake the whole way, but it’s the best spot in the spring, and the fishing is easy.
As we drove down, Frank told me about his disability. He contracted a disease the attacked the nerves in his hands and feet. He was able to cast a rod and reel, but it was clear he had worked hard to master this skill, given his condition. He had to use both hands to cast -- one to hold the rod, and the other to hold the line, almost like he was fly fishing – but it worked well.
Frank told me the best day he had ever had on this trail in nine years was to catch three keepers, and he’d never culled. We had a goal now!
Frank is a big baseball fan, and when he saw the CITGO sign at Fenway Park, he was like a little kid. “Is that really Fenway Park?” he asked. I confirmed that it was and told him we’d be fishing in sight of it most of the day. “This is a great day already,” he pronounced. He’s a Dodgers fan, so we talked a lot about Manny Ramirez, the Dodgers, and the Red Sox.
We spent the first two hours in the small ponds that make up the Esplanade, and it was a slow two hours. I got a couple of small ones, but that was about it. As we worked our way out I got my third fish. Frank still had not caught one.
The goal was to get Frank two fish. I stopped fishing and started pointing out spots for Frank to throw at. He got a nice one, about a pound, and was pretty pumped up. We were throwing small Senkos and Kut Tail worms weightless along the rip-rap. “I see what you have to do,” he said, “you just want to let it float down slow.” Minutes later he got another, about 13 inches. Now we had a limit, and we each had one about 13 inches.
Since I couldn’t cull his fish, it made no sense for me to catch fish that could help him. Once we had our limit (I had three and he had two), and we each had a real small one, it made sense to fish again, since it didn’t matter who caught them.
At this point, Frank was in the zone totally in tune. The trick was to cast to the edge where it dropped from one to two feet, down to four. The water visibility was about two feet and the fish were sitting right on the edge.
We caught fish after fish. We were garnering quite an audience as it was a nice day in the park, and everyone was cheering us on. Frank, being a cop from NYC, wasn’t exactly shy, so he bantered back and forth all day long with the people on the shore, and on the walkways around the ponds.
We had a 2 o’clock weigh-in and a long run back, so we left at 12:30. We made one stop on the way back to hit a bridge abutment that always has a fish on it. One cast and Frank put the wood to a solid fish - the culling bags came out again. This one culled one of my fish and Frank felt pretty good about that.
We finished 5th with 7.63 for five fish. The winning weight was 9.23. They had a 2.97 fish so we were in the hunt. We just needed one good bite. We caught 14 or 15 keepers, which was more than everyone else reported.
Only six limits came in, so Frank’s seven fish (remember, his best day ever was three fish) was better than most of the field. Frank had never really fished this way before; light line, small hook, small bait. He asked, “Will this work other places? Can I use this at Roger Williams Park next month?”
The morale of the story is two-fold. First, all of us can give back more to our community, our friends, and others less fortunate. Take a few days and make sure you are helping someone else.
Second, working together with your co-angler as a team is important, whether it’s a team tournament, fun-fishing, or in a big event. The day is more pleasant, you learn more, and overall you do better.
Helping someone and doing something you love at the same time. It really doesn’t get much better than that.