20September2007
Muddy Shoes
Posted under places beginning with: S; St Louis; Missouri.
This story was submitted by Evan Riehl of St Louis, Missouri whose candid fishing trip by the banks of the ‘mighty Mississippi’ became something of a surreal experience.
The dress code at the Big Brothers Big Sisters office is casual – a pair of jeans, tennis shoes, and a BBBS t-shirt is perfectly acceptable attire. Nonetheless, when I left the office at five o’clock to go fishing on Thursday, I wished that I had a change of clothes. My BBBS t-shirt had to last the whole summer, and I had on nice jeans. Most importantly, the tennis shoes I wore were my best pair; my fishing shoes were, unfortunately, sitting at home.
The plan was to take Riverview Drive north along the river, stop briefly along the Missouri side of the Mississippi River, then proceed to the Chain of Rocks Canal. One of the best things about fishing, in my opinion, is trying new spots. Thus, even though I had little hope for Great River Trail Park, I figured there was no harm in giving it a shot.
After pulling into the parking lot, I found a pair of old cargo shorts in my trunk and thought about putting them on. But figuring that the truck drivers on both sides of me wouldn’t appreciate my indecent show, I decided against it. I won’t be long, I thought, and I won’t go far. There would be no time or reason to get dirty.
As I made the short walk from the parking lot to the western bank of the Mississippi, two women and their shirtless husbands were sitting in lawn chairs under the shade of some brush. One of the men spoke to me: “Gonna catch the big one?” “Hope so,” I replied.
But I would need a lot more than hope to catch anything at this spot. A few cautious casts with a jig taught me that, though the current was not too strong, the shallow waters along the bank contained very few fish. After fifteen more minutes, as my patience began to run short, I turned to head back toward the car when I spotted a sandbar about a quarter mile up the river. Something about the enclosed area and calm waters appealed to me, and I marched upstream along the weedy and unkempt bank.
I should have heeded the warning from the patches of mushy ground that dotted the riverside, but I trudged on without hesitation. When I arrived at the sandbar, I discovered that it was not a natural phenomenon but the creation of both man’s invention and his ineptitude. At the head of the sandbar laid, literally, a shipwreck. A medium-sized iron ship, wholly rusted and smashed in the middle, had run aground some time ago and had since been utterly ignored. A strip of hard sand had built up over the indefinite period of time for which the boat had been abandoned.
The occasional jump of a fish, both large and small, renewed my hope of a catch. I quickly strung a quarter ounce spinner and tested a few different spots. Soon I moved over by the wreck itself, where the channel was at its narrowest, the water its deepest, and the current its fullest. I decided to try my luck near the ship, guessing that fish might get pushed up against its rusted walls by the current. I cast my spinner a couple feet short of the manmade wreck where it promptly got stuck.
Since I hate losing lures, I cursed myself as I walked up and down the riverbank in an attempt to free my spinner. This one was truly stuck, with its metal three-pronged hook likely locked on the hidden iron of the abandoned ship. Without snapping the line, I carefully continued a rhythmical tug-release sequence, endeavoring to encourage it free. While realizing that my spinner was lodged for good, my situation quickly became worse as I carelessly stumbled into a deceptively mushy area. In an instant, my only decent pair of tennis shoes sunk into the runniest and thickest mud I have ever seen, immediately coating them all the way up to the bottom of my nice jeans.
As I regained my balance on a conveniently-located but inconveniently-flimsy piece of Styrofoam, I contemplated my situation. My shoes would assuredly never be clean again, and my precious $1.99 Wal-Mart spinner was still firmly lodged next to the curious shipwreck. Thinking of the tragedy of my situation, an idea suddenly dawned on me. I shakily hopped off my temporary balance block and retrieved my pole. Glancing around, I found that, eerily, no one was in sight to view my series of laughable mishaps. A couple miles up the river, traffic whizzed by on Interstate 270, but the drivers were much too far and much too preoccupied to notice a 20-year old clamoring around in the mud like a toddler.
In spite of my two-decade age and my childish tendencies, I had never been skinny dipping before in my life. Slowly, it dawned on me that this would be the ideal time and place. I had two legitimate reasons to take a swim: a stuck lure and a pair of muddy shoes. Furthermore, I figured if I was going to experience my first naked swim, there was hardly a better place to do it than the Mighty Mississippi.
Before I had time to give my decision a sober second thought, I was wading in the river wearing nothing more than two mud-coated tennis shoes. The dip lasted no more than a minute as I swam across the slow-moving current, easily dislodged my spinner, and immediately returned to the riverbank. Stepping back into my boxers, I scanned my surroundings and breathed in the success of my mission: there was still no soul in sight, and my spinner gleamed brightly against the riverbank.
Moreover, my swim proved to be a refreshing, if muddy, baptism. In addition to the decent cleaning of my shoes by the current, my mood had completely transformed from gloomy to giddy. With renewed energy I thought to myself: I’m going to catch a fish. With full confidence and full clothing, I moved away from the ship wreck and cast into the deepest part of the inlet. Sure enough, two or three casts later, my spinner lodged once more on the bottom and this time, the line broke off.
Frustrated but undeterred, I knew I could hardly give up my lure now after already baring myself to the river once. Without removing my eyes from the spot where my spinner disappeared, I began to shed my clothing. However, as I stood in my wet shoes and boxers, the slightly movement about 300 yards down the riverbank caught my eye. Removing my eyes from the critical location, I saw the distant but distinct image of two children walking along the riverside.
For the sake of decency more than personal embarrassment, I hurriedly put my clothes back on as the children sat down to talk. Whether they spotted me or not will forever remained unknown, but it readily became apparent that they were not leaving for some time. In an optimistic attempt to remember the location of my vanished spinner, I laid a pile of sticks along the bank in the rough direction of my now distracted line of sight.
To kill time as the children chatted, I began fishing with my 1/16th ounce spinner, which also got stuck on the river bottom. When the children finally left, I once again stripped down to my boxers, only to see a pair of kayakers floating lazily with the current in the middle of the river. After redressing, I fished some more while the kayaks drifted downstream. Their lethargic movement taking just long enough so that two college boys could come to my shipwreck site and join me in my angling endeavors. “Any luck?” one of them asked – the one question that every fisherman hates to hear on a bad day, much less a fisherman in my situation.
As I continued to fish, I slopped back and forth along the bank, occasionally stepping back into the treacherous sinking mud. As I was rapidly ruining my shoes, the jumping fish in the cove gave way to another splashing creature: river otters. I watched as several otters paddled around with only their heads visible, occasionally diving to the bottom and crashing their tails against the water.
The two boys stayed for a near eternity, choosing finally to depart with both the sun and the eight o’clock hour. By that time, I had a metal jig and fake worm also stuck on the bottom – a much less expensive rig that I nonetheless refused to break off my line. The boys lethargically trudged down the riverbank at a pace that would make my 85-year old grandmother impatient. Fearing the fast-approaching night, I tore off my clothes before my fellow fisherman had vanished from sight and followed my line out into the water. The current was a little stronger now, and I thought to myself for the first time since devising my plan: this is a good way to get killed.
Throwing caution to the wind, I dunked my head under the 10-foot water and easily retrieved my jig. I swam a couple of feet up-current to the approximate location of my smaller spinner and, with little hope, dove back under the water. Miraculously, my hand grazed across a split shot, which led to the log that had claimed my spinner. With two lures in hand, I swam further upstream past two of the otters who, lounging on their backs, mocked my graceless flailing with the ease by which they floated.
It took several minutes to locate my pile of directional sticks in the passing daylight, and it took me only a couple of dives to the bottom to realize that my quarter ounce spinner – given new life by my first skinny dip – was now lost forever. Thus, as the clock moved to 9:15 on a Thursday evening, I found myself swimming back to the shore of the Mississippi River, naked as the otters themselves except for one thing: clinging to my feet in the current were a pair of muddy shoes.
