db: Showing up - Bassmaster

For all you who have asked me how to write stories, hereâs the secretâ¦SHOW UP. Thatâs what I did yesterday, just grabbed my camera, notebook and showed up where we launch at Waddington, saw this classic story scene of older man and young boy fishing, you should be able to get 1,00-1,500 words from just this one shot but thenâ¦

I heard coming off the water what sounded like cussinâ so I turned and saw a man in a boat with a cranky motor which he kept pulling, and cussinâ, and pulling, and cussinâ but thenâ¦

â¦finally gave up and took to paddling and cussinâ and paddling and cussinâ as he tried to get back to the dock, when finally came the perfect ending to his storyâ¦

â¦a tow in by on of the Elite anglers who just happened by and helped a brutha out.

All of a sudden I hear behind me this massive splash and thump sound and I turn around to see this dude swing this looooong fishing rod and hear another splash and thump about 150 yards out in the waterâ¦

â¦so I go down to talk to him and I ask, âDude what are you throwing,â and he says corn but it sounds like Karn, so I ask again, âWhat are you fishing for,â and he says Carp, but it sounds like Kharp, and I say âHuh,â and he says it a few more time so I say âHuh,â a few more times and then he says sit down here a second and he tells me heâs from England, his name is Marshall, that he and two buddies came all the way to Waddington to fish for Carpâ¦

â¦and they do that by throwing this things that hold a bunch of corn to get the carp eating the corn and then they string 5 pieces of corn on a hook and go fishing for Carp (Karp) and when I asked if it worked he said, âYep we want to break last years record of the 29 pound 5 foot long carp we caught here last year,â so we sat and talked some mainly about how much he loves fishing in America and how surprised he was that my home state of Connecticut wasnât next to Tennessee until I reminded him of âthat New England thing remember.â So the story wasnât about the corn holder bait tossing thing but about the dude from England who was tossing it but then it got sort of weirdâ¦

â¦all of a sudden the sea birds (I just call them that because I donât know their correct bird name and when I call a bird the wrong name Steve Kennedy who is a bird lover always txtâs me with the right name of the bird like some sort of bird name troll, but the birds go crazy and then I see whyâ¦

â¦there seems to be a very large beaver in the water and I think I read somewhere that beavers are trolls of sea birds but then all of a sudden the beaverâ¦

â¦barks and since I watch the Animal Channel Iâm pretty sure beavers donât bark and then I see that itâs actually a dog swimming, who btw got farther out then that guy in that little boat and I was going to tell you here what this story was about but I turned around and sawâ¦

â¦a bunch of cows on an island walk out and stand in the water and moo and even the guys from England looked a little bewildered as they watched cows stand in the St. Lawrence River and moo and who will now go back to England and tell stories of this here Waddington, New York where you can catch 29-pound fish with five pieces of corn, where dogs swim further than some boats and cows have their own private beach. You want to write stories, just go somewhere and show up.