Me catching a first fish with Big Divin' Joe

Divin’ Joe never became a famous diver by diving through hoops propped up eighty feet below. And he didn’t dive off horsebacks, motorcycles or too many cars that I know of. It’s true, Joe has been known in his lifetime to sort of ‘dive’ while inside of cars, unintentionally flying off of bridges and what not while driving, but that’s different. No, the diving Joe I’m talking about is the kid I watched so often clear the side of our boat, hit the water and then send bubbles to the surface before splashing up out of the water for a breath of air. You might ask “How often would a kid have to jump over board from his own boat?” This really depends upon how many things you drop over board and that science, the art of losing everything possible overboard, we had down pat.

Diving Joe started young. He’d dive for about anything and our group alone ensured there would be a plethora of Lake Bottom items to dive for. Somehow lures, watches, hats, glasses, even our boat motor (I guess we forgot to tighten those screw bolts before we started her up) fell over or off our boat each year during the scant summer weeks I was up there. Simply and absolutely, there is nothing we didn’t drop over board as kids. But the ‘dive’ I remember most is not one of the many made in Mud lake for items ‘gone missing’ over board. His famous turtle dives aren’t tops on the list of my dive memories either. “Turtle Dives’ you ask? You see diving Joe didn’t like turtles and if he saw one down below, seemingly no matter how far down below, he’d spring off the boat, quicker then a slip, and go down to the bottom of the lake to harass it. He’d often burst back up for air and say, “They’re eating our fish!” just before diving down again. Anyway, forget all those zillions of dives. No, the one dive I’m thinking of had to do with a reel, a rod and a whole lot of time in between. Say what? Well, let’s go back, back to when ‘The Dive of dives’ started:…..

Joe’s face is a Christmas tree as my Uncle Mo, Joe’s Dad, hands him a brand new Rod and Reel. His brother Robin, Joe and myself instantly have jumping beans for feet as we slice glancing smiles each others way. Joe is an elder in our ‘band’ of fishermen and he just landed new gear. This is tops. Sure, it’s nice to get new under wear or new socks but this, THIS, is on a whole new scale of being. My ears actually feel somehow narrowed, now sticking straight up in air, bristling with excitement. Robin and I quickly take our rods and reels, the ones with the heavy black string type line on them, down to the dock.  I can hardly take my eyes off of Joes’ new ‘combo’. Sun beams glisten off the highlight strip running the length of the rod while gleaming as sparks of light shooting off  the highly chromed real. The sleek new fishing line on it seems almost fluorescent in my view. Maybe three minutes escape before our feet are settling on the bottom of a  12 ft aluminum fishing boat, one we still haven’t yet run a ground or lost-amazing! (All that would come later. Anyway…)

Mud Lake , Bell Point and Birch Island are reasonable fish ‘stomping ground’ destinations for our bunch but for one thing: these places are across the Lake . Who can wait with a gift like this? NO way, not us, not Joe, there’s not even a slim pickings of a way we could wait. We reach the nearest fishing point in about a minute.  We face a twenty foot bluff, a steep, rocky face known to us as Campanys’ Point, with the warm afternoon sun heating our backs. We drop one of the few anchors we haven’t yet lost while spilling various sinkers and lures over board with it. Rods hang out our lines with baited hooks of smelly worms-perfect. We start pulling in sunfish, bluegill and perch in no time. Our laughter dances from our mouths to the bluff and then back again to our ears with each catch we make. A new reel is like having a new life when you’re a kid, and we all three live through this champion piece for the moment. Then it happens-the unexpected.

Now really, the unexpected is what you do expect when fishing. This fact, oddly, makes the expected unexpected which then has to become expected, and so on. This is why no one ever knows what’s going to happen on a fishing trip. Anyway , expected or not, Joe’s rod, reel, the envy of our hopes and dreams, is now tearing out of his hands and hitting the water! “No Way!” are NOT the words coming from any of our mouths-those I can’t print. We may be young but we all quickly vocalize a new world class urban slang dictionary in harmony. My slow motion vision of this reel splashing the surface juxtapositions Diving Joe’s quick clothing removal-Superman lives! Shock is all that took 15 seconds up between the hideous reel drop and Joe’s heroic dive in after it. Seconds make up hours, so hours are in seconds: this is how it seems. Joe is emerging now and his hands are empty. He climbs aboard and we all just stare wordlessly at the bluff before us. “I couldn’t make it, too deep.” Mighty Joe sums it up, “Dad’s gonna be mad.” A leader slip fishing weight never hugs a line as fine as this thought does our minds. “Darn”, is not what we say to each other while rowing back, rod and reel less, to what had now become the ‘dock of doom’.

As often is the case, what seems to be the end of the world to young and old a like is really just the beginning of it. So we lived through the loss of that summer’s lifetime long enough to laugh about it. Still, fishing was not about to let me forget what it is about: the expected unexpected. It seems like about 30ish years later or so I found myself in a fishing boat anchored by the very same bluff. I honestly can’t remember if Diving Joe and another, as I think, were in the boat with me. Anyway, I felt a fish hit, a hard tug, a fight and then a drag on my line as I reeled in. Out of the water splashed an old, rusted beyond belief rod and reel. I looked closely and decided this was our reel, Diving Joe’s reel of reels! So we could have told Uncle Mo on that day so long ago that we really hadn’t lost that ‘combo’ after all! We knew where it was all along! We just were keeping it there for safe keeping. Oddly, to be truthful, this catch was totally unexpected for sure.

Oh, and here’s to Divin’ Joe, the ‘Diver of our Band’.

Franque—-

Divin' Joe pictured here in the center behind the Queens of Lake Bonaparte

Divin' Joe in the red shirt-good times still roll!