Chain Pike, killer fish, survivor
Biting through lure-tipped fish lines easily when leaders were lighter weight, by fishermen's error, but also through lines that were appropriate gauge for a pike like her, the dark denizen of Lake Lundgren near Pembine WI always escaped capture. Was there every any thickness of leader that could defeat this aboriginal Esox Niger who plumbed the depths of her territory, her little lake whose few cabins claimed most of the surround, but for a Bible camp with a beachfront and pier?
It was known and still may be as Lake Lundgren Bible Camp a few miles west of Hy 41 and a bit south of Hy 8 heading toward mythic hodag country, Rhinelander.
That old Houdini fish may still be snapping lines today, with her necklace, her breastplate of gathering, rusting lures still dragging behind her. Like Marley's ghost in Dickens' A Christmas Carol, she wears the chains she forged in life. Only in the big fish's case, she perhaps proudly wears the chains she ESCAPED in life.
We wrote about him/her once in the raccoon news. For the complete unrevised posting and a fanciful drawing go to http://raccoonnews.blogspot.com/2008/09/fish-wearing-breast-plate-true-story.html. Otherwise, we've copied and pasted the free verse at the below. We were reminded of the bespangled behemoth the other day by an article in the New Yorker about other more huntable Chain Pikes:
In this report we changed the name of the lake to Wunderken to protect the fish, not that she ever worried about that.THERE WAS AN OLD LUNKERFISH
who'd been inhabiting a northern
Wisconsin lake, Wunderken,
for years and years
and years;
nobody could catch him
(or it might have been a her)
though the townsfolk had been trying
for years and years
- AND years;
tourists would ask
'any good fishing around here?'
and the locals would say nope
and they said that
for years;
they planned for one of them
to land the Wunderken monster
locally, in-house,
but they'd been trying in vain
FOR YEARS;
the old, great and mighty strong fish
a northern chain pike
struck from time immemorial
and snapped their lines
with ease
and had worn their snagged
and severed lures
like a breastplate of bangles,
carrying their vicious hooks in her flesh
..............for years.
I saw this legend once
as I snorkled beneath Wunderken
on a sunny day;
something shiny and moving fast
caught my eye through my facemask
as the sun shone down through the water
and reflected
off the trailing lures,
copper spinners and ill-conceived
man-made tricks meant to ultimately fool
the wise denizen;
How majestically she wore them!
armor hard-earned,
a finny knight in armor
she was.
Year by year, endlessly, the townsfolk
circled the lakeshore and spun a thick web
of fishing lines
across it in their little boats,
staring down for a sight of this creature
that I - an interloper,
not a hopeful local,
had fortuitously and graciously seen
- for I was not hunting her.
The finned magician was too smart
for these trick-trying "masters"
whose lines were futilely snapped like thread
or bitten through by razor teeth
if stronger gauge.
Their garage-hung landing nets
eventually rotted over those years
and the new ones they bought
likewise over the years
mouldered and went
to crumbly, holey mesh,
sometimes with the help
of gnawing mice;
while the snapping pike
gathered more and more
decorations on her chest,
medals
of the mortal combats
thrust upon her
by the tiring fishermen.
Is she still in Lake Wunderken?
I wouldn't know
for I haven't been up there
for my own years and years
and years
but I'm guessing she still rules
the deep waters of that tiny lake
and will
until the eventual weight
of her albatrossian lure collection
holds her
to a laken grave.
I say she won't be caught
no matter how many
years and years
and years
go by.
