At the Huck Finn Fishing Derby, you should have seen the one that got away

The Arboretum, out in Arcadia, held its first Huck Finn Fishing Derby on Saturday, and I was supposed to catch the first fish.

A volunteer had called me a few days earlier and asked if I would do it.

I said it was doubtful that I would catch a fish at all, since I am not a fisherman.

“Somebody will bait the hook and take the fish off for you, if that’s what you’re worried about,” she said.

That was exactly what I was worried about. I didn’t want a gallery of kids snickering while I tried to bait my hook. We elders are made to look incompetent enough in movies; I didn’t want to disgrace my generation.

“I wish I could go,” my wife said. “I’d like to see you catch a fish.”

She happened to be going to a family counseling workshop that morning, which seemed about as unnecessary for her as catching a fish did for me.

I had to be there at 10 minutes to 9. A volunteer was waiting at the gate to drive me over to the lagoon where the derby was to be held. Droves of children were already waiting to get in.

The lagoon looked beautiful with its fringe of trees. On the far bank stood Lucky Baldwin’s pretty Queen Anne guest house. Willows wept into the dark green water.

Rows of fishing poles were set out, and a table full of bait. Food and drink stands stood under the palm trees. At a minute or two after 9 the children began to come in. Some had painted freckles on their faces and wore straw hats, to look like Huck Finn; but most of them just looked like Southern California schoolchildren in summer.

Someone announced over a loudspeaker: “Jack Smith of the Los Angeles Times will catch the first fish.”

Someone gave me a bamboo pole and someone baited the hook and I walked over to the bank under a palm and a eucalyptus tree and threw my line in. It was only a short line, four or five feet, and I could see the cork floating out on the murky water.

Five minutes. Ten minutes. Nothing happened. I was beginning to feel that I would fail my mission. Children began to appear around the lake with poles. Each was to have half an hour, then relinquish his or her pole.

“Are you sure there are any fish in there?” I asked.

I was assured that there were hundreds of fish in the lake, dying to be caught. Catfish and carp. They had caught and tagged 50 big ones, and any child who caught one of those was to win a prize.

I got a nibble. My cork bounced and sank. I felt a tug on my line. I brought the pole up quickly, to hook the fish, knowing that much at least, and he came out of the water, flashing a moment in the air before he slipped the hook and splashed back in.

Damn. I knew the frustration of all fishermen.

Twenty minutes went by. I hooked him again, or one of his friends, and again he got away. Then they began playing with me. The cork would bob rapidly, and I knew one of them was biting. Two or three times they got away with my bait, and I had to have the hook rebaited. I think the bait was liver.

My 30 minutes were almost up. I was going to be disgraced. Then I got a good strong jolt on the line and I jerked up on the pole and I hooked him and he came out, struggling in the air, and I brought him in.

He was a good six inches.

“You caught one!” someone cried in excitement or disbelief.

I went out to the path and several people took my picture with my six-inch catfish hanging from the line. But it wasn’t the sort of trophy you’d have stuffed and hang over your fireplace.

In his adventures Huck Finn told of catching a catfish as big as a man, must have weighed 200 pounds; but then Huck had a tendency to exaggerate.

A little girl came walking down the path with a catfish that looked at least 10 inches long wriggling from her line. The little girl looked pale.

A woman with a snapshot camera blocked her way. “Hold it up, honey,” she said, “so Mommy can get a picture.”

The little girl took the fish in her hand and stood there with a look of astonishment and horror on her face. She didn’t look any better a fisherman than I was.

It wasn’t a good day for catfish. Not a lot of fish were caught. Maybe it was too late in the day, someone reasoned. Or maybe there were too many fisherman crowding the banks and popping balloons. But everyone seemed to be having a good time.

A Dixieland band showed up--four banjos, a piano and a clarinet--and started out with “Bill Bailey.”

The stands were doing a good business in soft drinks and hot dogs and watermelon, and off in the distance the peacocks were making their blood-curdling cries.

A volunteer told me that the peacocks were indeed proud and vain. “They’re very well named,” she said.

I suggested they have the next Huck Finn Derby at 6 o’clock in the morning, when the fish might be livelier.

“No way,” she said. “The volunteers won’t get up that early.”