Taken By the River
Surrounding the marina was a forest on 3 sides filled with wildlife and a river to the front. I was constantly playing in the forest with my two older brothers and was considered to be a “river rat” by most people I knew. My feet were always wet from playing in the water but this allowed me to get in touch with my passion.
From an early age (~6) I discovered that I loved fish. I was fishing all the time, during summer there wasn’t a time when I wasn’t trying to catch a fish. I was gifted at it. I figured out ways to catch fish with my bare hands, and little butterfly nets, that people often thought were impossible but I’ve probably caught more pounds of fish with a net then on a hook and line. Some of my best memories is when I would just sit beside a fisherman with a rod with just my net and catch more fish then him/her. The look on their face was always priceless and the follow up question of “can you teach me? “never got old. The key was to approach the fish really slowly with the net, create no surface agitation with the net or else it will spook, then as the fish is just inside the net lift straight up. I now use this strategy when removing fish from aquariums. Using nets has allowed me to catch and discover more fish than most. You experience a completely different set of species when you incorporate net fishing. This is how I discovered shiners, dace, rudds, suckers, goby’s, and hundreds more. My biggest catches by net was a few 40+ pound carp.
Then around the age of 8 I purchased my first minnow trap and dip net. I placed the minnow trap in the cattails by the river. I went out every morning and evening to check it. Then one day a juvenile largemouth bass was in the trap, I immediately wanted to keep it so I placed it in a bucket and brought it home. I had no knowledge of keeping fish at this point but I had a 10 gallon aquarium that came with my leopard gecko. I put the largemouth in there with an air pump and under gravel filter. Then the next day I checked the trap and there were three more juvenile largemouth’s. Again, without knowledge I threw these 1.5” fish into the aquarium. By the end of the week the aquarium had 11 largemouth bass in it. Yet, I was still not done stocking. The next morning I checked the trap and fish keeping changed for me forever. In the trap was a juvenile northern pike, this was my favorite fish at this moment in my life, I had dreams of them. I didn’t bring a bucket with me this day so I ran home with the fish in my hands and immediately tossed it in the 10 gallon. I kept these fish all summer in the 10 gallon, there was a pond down the road filled with fathead minnows. When I say filled there was probably 100 minnows per cubic foot of water, this was a big pond probably half a million gallons. So using this pond I fed my fish, they ate around 65 fathead minnows a day, but I loved feeding time. Watching the bass round up the minnows in seconds was amazing to see. The fish grew fast.
Eventually, I started researching fish and their requirements and realised my aquarium was way too small for the fish. So I started looking for bigger. I found a 20 gallon at Value Village for 10$ and started there. Then one of the boaters saw the aquarium and donated a 75 gallon to me. Now my hobby was just being fueled and I always wanted bigger. When I was 12 I sold the 75 and bought a 90 gallon. I had this aquarium planted with juvenile largemouths. One day a friend of my dad’s saw the aquarium and loved it, he just so happened to know a guy who was moving houses and had a rainbowtrout pond where the fish would swim up into aquariums to spawn. Since he was moving he was looking to give away 6, 12ft by 4ft x 3ft tall aquariums. My jawdropped when I heard I could get one. The friend and I went to the place to pick 2 up but when we got there the tanks were smashed. I was so sad when I saw 1 inch thick pieces of massive aquariums shattered. They couldn’t wait 1 day!!!!Oh well life goes on.
As I aged my interest in the river did as well. I became fascinated with the little ecosystems within. I started to incorporate more woods, plants, and rocks into my aquariums to resemble this river. I began collecting my own stuff, I had a collection of driftwood that I pulled out just lying in the shop (all my tanks were in one of the mechanic shops at the marina, it quickly became Matts shop J). I was always taking stuff from other lakes as well. Everything changes from lake to lake, Simcoe began to look completely different then Georgian Bay. I spent every second of my child hood by the water, walking up and down the docks noticing something new every day. At the marina itself, I knew all the locations where bass spawned, I knew the time of year when they spawned, and I knew that if the bass and the fry are all caught and transported to say a pond, the parents will continue guarding them in the new location. I discovered this when stalking the pond by my house. This could have been illegal, never looked into it and I wouldn’t second guess my decision for a minute.
Being by the river has definitely changed my life and the way I look at nature. I don’t know too many people who can name almost every fish they look down on from above that swims in the water. It’s a skill that took me years to master and countless hours to perfect. The amount of hours spent by the water is too much for me to think of, I’m a born “RiverRat” but I love every second of it.
