FISHING AT COOPER’S PONDS

Twins can create a lot of problems. Twin girls can really wreak havoc for a young boy. The Cooper family was prominent in the Slippery Rock area and I grew up with the Cooper twins. When I was a little older I dated both girls (thankfully not at the same time). They were both sweet girls and one of the great mysteries of the world remains which one I cared for most. The Cooper brothers owned a sand, gravel, and concrete operation at the edge of town. It was on the banks of the Slippery Rock Creek, which provided a water source for washing the gravel. For a more dependable water supply in time of drought, they had built three ponds atop the hill above the creek. I guess in the rainy climate of western Pennsylvania there was rarely a need for additional water so the ponds maintained a steady water level. At some point years earlier these ponds got stocked with largemouth bass and bluegills. This was one of my favorite fishing spots when I was young. They were much more secluded than the Sportsman’s Club and I, along with my fishing buddies, normally had them to ourselves during the daytime. In the evening a few adults would come there to fish after a day’s work.

As I have discussed earlier, that fifty years ago a boy in his early teens could jump on his bike and ride across town and into the country by himself for a day of fishing. On many occasions I did just that and had the Cooper ponds all to myself. When the fish weren’t biting I can recall vividly the wonderful experience of laying on my back in the tall grass and letting the sun warm my face. Like I had seen my dad do on countless occasions, I would pull a timothy shoot out of the ground and break off about a six inch piece of the soft, greenish white end. Then I’d chew on it for awhile. It didn’t really taste that good but it made me feel just like my dad. Sometimes I would doze off and sometimes I would watch the cloud formations and try to imagine various shapes in them. In those days there weren’t that many airplanes in the sky so if you saw one it was a big deal. I can remember following a plane with my eyes and wondering in my mind where it might be going. Where were the rich folks inside heading and what was so important that it was worth all that money for a plane ticket? My family always drove everywhere we needed to go. Several years later my brother and I would board a plane bound for Texas to visit my sister whose husband was stationed there in the Army. What a big deal that was. I can remember that we got all dressed up for the occasion.

I even wrote a poem for a school assignment about what a great feeling this was to relax on the bank of a pond on a warm summer day. I found a copy of it in my memory box, published in a high school pamphlet entitled, “Inklings.” – “Often I have sat upon a hill or by a quiet lake on a sunny autumn day and admired the sweet serenity of nature. When I look out and see the golden fields of grain waving in the wind, or the multi-colored forests touched with shades of yellow, red and orange, I am moved with the beauty of the simple scene. By a softly rippling woodland stream with birds singing and sunlight breaking through the trees to make patches in the shadows, the whole world seems to slow to a standstill and problems and worries vanish. When a person feels depressed or harassed by the trials of everyday life, my advice could be to get close to nature, go out to a grassy field and sit and stare at the clouds overhead, the birds in the air, at the moon and stars above. Here the whole world seems to take on a natural serenity and peacefulness that can be found nowhere else.”

It was not a Slippery Rock High School classic poem on the level of Laverne Link’s poetic work but it was not bad. Laverne Link was in my older brother’s high school class. He became famous when the teacher happened to read his homework assignment poem to the class. Laverne’s poem was entitled “Steamboat Bill” and it went like this -
“Steamboat Bill went up the Mississippi
Steamboat Bill went up the Mississip
Steamboat Bill went up the Mississippi
Steamboat Bill went up the Mississip
Love, Laverne Link.”

Laverne Link and his seminal work, Steamboat Bill, live in infamy in the annals of Slippery Rock High.

Getting back to my daydreaming on the bank of the pond – I believe that every youngster needs a place like this to think about the mysteries of life. You think about family, friends, relationships in general, girls (like the Cooper twins), school, work, the future, among many other topics. I suppose it may have been my comfort in, and love for the outdoors that led me to pursue a profession in Forestry and Outdoor Recreation.

Like the Sportsman’s Club pond I knew these bodies of water like the back of my hand. I knew that the bluegills would be in shallow water near the rushes and sedges that grew at the waters’ edge. Smaller bass were within casting range of the shoreline in water up to ten feet deep. Larger bass were out of casting range in the daytime hours but would come closer to shore to feed in the evening. Unfortunately I rarely fished at that time of day. Nearer dusk I would have to depend on my brother, Johnny, to take me along when he drove out to the ponds. Sometimes we would go in my dad’s old 1939 Chevy sport sedan. Don’t let the “sport” in the name conjure up later Chevy “Super Sport” models. The sport sedan was nicknamed “the puddle jumper.” The paint was medium brown, just about the color of mud, and about as dull as primer. It was indeed the perfect vehicle for evening fishing forays into the field.

On one such evening at the Cooper ponds I recall quite a commotion was coming from the small, most upstream pond. I am not sure how many of us were fishing at the larger pond at the time but I can recall at least Johnny, his close friend Dave Williams, and myself. There is a good chance that the Corso brothers, Roy and Danny, might have also been along but I don’t remember. Hearing wild shouts coming from the small pond we reeled in our lines and rushed over to see what was going on. When we got to the pond we could see that someone had a big fish on the line and was fighting it for all it was worth. We knew it had to be a sizable largemouth. When we caught what was, for us, a large fish (perhaps a pound to a pound and a half) it might take us a minute or so to fight it to the bank. This fish was taking quite awhile to tire out and we sensed it would be larger than anything we ever caught. It was. When this older fellow (he was probably in his late 20s to early 30s) with several missing teeth, wearing oil-stained work clothes and smelling of beer, finally brought the fish to his hand, everyone gasped. None of us had ever seen a bass over three pounds and this one had to be pushing five. Now a five-pound bass is not worthy of mention in Texas or Florida but for a small Pennsylvania pond it was a very big deal. I can still remember the black hula popper that hung limply from the fish’s mouth as its captor picked the bass out of the water between thumb and forefinger. One could have easily placed a whole fist down this bass’s throat with room to spare. It made the artificial lure look small.

We were all hoping that this rough-looking soul would do what Gadabout Gaddis or Curt Gowdy would do – release the fish to be caught again (perhaps by one of us). That’s what a real sportsman, an American Sportsman, would do. Unfortunately for the bass and those of us looking on, this guy did not fall into the American Sportsman category. As we figured from his teeth, his appearance, his odor, and his demeanor this was a subsistence fisherman. Whatever he might catch, be it large or small, bass or bluegill, was going in the frying pan when he got home. We didn’t know the guy’s name. As we told and retold the story of the big fish we just gave him the nickname “Clem”. It seemed to fit him. We didn’t come up with a last name at the time but something like Smoot might have been appropriate. Who knows, he might have been a fine, upstanding citizen and pillar of the Slippery Rock community. But I doubt that he was. I doubt that the Butler Eagle or Slippery Rock Signal ever published a headline like, “Clem Smoot Promoted to Bank Manager at Slippery Rock National.” More likely Clem may have made the “On the Blotter” section of the paper.

For the rest of the evening, as well as for some time to come, this monster fish was the topic of conversation. Out of nowhere one of us would blurt out, “Could you believe the size of that bass’s mouth,” or, “That big fish in that little pond, who would have thought it.” We had never see a black hula popper like Clem’s before. We figured any lure that was supposed to imitate a frog would have to be bright green with black spots on its back and a white stomach. Those were the sort of hula poppers (and jitterbugs for that matter) that we used. Fred Myers owned the local hardware store where we bought our fishing gear (remember this was before Dick’s Sporting Goods or Bass Pro Shops). He personally favored a lure called the “flatfish” and he always kept a big stock of them on hand, including huge ones that we figured could only be used on muskies in Canada. My brother nicknamed him Fat Freddy the Fabulous Flatfish Fanatic (try to say that 3 times quickly). Fred used to say, “They paint lures to catch fisherman more than fish.” I suppose he was right in my case but one thing was sure – after “the big bass” was caught that night at Cooper’s pond, everyone in town wanted a black hula popper and Freddy had to place a big order for them.

We had pretty much ignored the small pond up until that night but thereafter we flailed its water almost white with black hula poppers (not to mention almost everything else in the tackle box). All to no avail - I think there was only one big bass in that lake (the old “big fish in a small pond adage”) and once it was eaten by Clem Smoot there was no use trying for another. We went back to the places in the other ponds using other lures where we had achieved success in the past. But every once in awhile, if we happened to be at Cooper’s ponds in the evening, we couldn’t keep ourselves from a few casts of a black hula popper at the small pond – just for good measure (as my grandfather used to say). And now and again we’d remark, “Could you believe the size of that bass?”