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Something Fishy - An Unlikely Alliance?

Remember when the railroad bridge in Newport was lined with fishermen trying
their best to catch a salmon - that is before Memphry reared its ugly head.

Much has been written about Memphry, the beast that has been said to lurk in Lake Memphremagog, a lake that stretches about 30 miles from Newport, Vermont, to Magog, Quebec. But with all the talk, no studies have been done about what, if any, impact the lake creature has on the lake’s fishery. Considering people who claim to have seen the monster report that it resembles that of plesiosaur from the Jurassic period, and spans upwards of 40 feet long, a group of fishermen, many of them from the fraternal organization of local River Rats – a group made up of local fishermen who grew up on the Clyde River, have banned together to rid the lake of the monster to save the fishery, especially that of the famed landlocked salmon.

The River Rats who were fortunate enough to survive childhood without drowning in the river while roaming its banks, grew up to become some of the finest darned fishermen in the country. They didn’t have any other choice – catch fish or go hungry.

Nobody has ever captured Memphry on film, but some people who claim to have seen the beast
says it looks like this rendition of a plesiosaur that appears in Grolier’s Encyclopedia of Knowledge

“Think about it, a cow eats about 100 pounds of food or grain each day, how many pounds of salmon can a beast that is said to weigh about 25 tons eat in a day ?” Scott Fisher grumbled as he and his buddies fished in the “Before Hole”, a prime fishing hole located in a large bend in the river. “Damn monster is eating all of our salmon and nobody’s doing anything to stop it.”

Nodding their heads in agreement, they all agreed that something had to be done to stop Memphry from doing even more harm to the lake’s salmon population. The springtime economy had once been built on the backs of the famed salmon run, that is until the lake creature reared its ugly head, apparently having emerged from an underwater cavern that is said to connect all of the lakes of the region. The salmon population is now only a shadow of what it had once been.

“If we don’t stop it now, we won’t have any fish left,” Dan Forest said, angrily slamming his fishing rod onto the muddy riverbank, obviously tired of not catching any salmon.
A burley man with chew dribbling down his chin more often than not, Dan is known as one of the best fishermen to ever drown a worm in the Clyde. Wearing worn out shoes and jeans that sag half way down his butt in place of waders, it has been said that Dan can catch a fish in a mud puddle if he tries long enough. He has caught his share of monster fish, and even bagged his share of big bucks, but he has never bagged himself an honest to goodness lake monster, that is with the exception of a snapping turtle the size of a washtub that nearly snapped two of his finger off when he tried to retrieve his hook from the snapper’s mouth.

“What excuse am I going to make to take off a day of work if there isn’t any salmon in the river,” Dan muttered, still obviously pissed off. Dan had used the opening day of salmon season in the upper stretch of the Clyde as a day off since he was in Kindergarten. He had no intention of stopping this annual “hooky day” tradition, lake creature or no lake creature, salmon or no salmon.
Smirking at Dan’s angry words, Scott loved to see Dan’s face turn red with anger. To raise his friend’s blood pressure a bit higher, Scott directed Dan’s attention to the other side of the river where two of the Cabela Boys now stood. Standing in the water almost up to their chests, they were flailing their fly rods and lines wildly through the air, catching more branches than fish. Like usual, the Cabela Boys were spending more time and energy trying to look good than catching fish.
“Damn fools,” Dan sputtered. “How they going to catch any fish dancing around in the water like that?”
Scott and the other River Rats agreed. With their lines whipping through the air it looked more like they were trying out for the rodeo than trying to catch a fish.
“Wished Memphry and his friends would chow down on those boys and leave our fish alone,” Scott chuckled the way he always does when he sees the Cabela Boys decked out in fishing outfits that cost more than his 10 year old, hard-driven pick-up truck. “They dress better than I do when I go to church.”

The River Rats and the Cabela Boys had agreed to call a temporary truce in their riverside war that occasionally escalates into all out warfare in the fishing holes, often sparked when one of the Cabela boys lays stake to a piece of prime river bottom, typically right in front of the rest of the fisherman, then goes about fishing with no concern about the other fishermen around him.
The wayward fisherman’s stay in the prime spot is typically short-lived. Taking the tiny split shot sinkers off their lines, the River Rats replace them with one-ounce lead sinkers, sinkers that are heavy enough to virtually kill a fish or whatever it hits. A couple well placed casts, with the sinker landing upside of the head, typically sent the Cabela boy packing. One time Scott even popped the lens of one of their $200 sunglasses, almost taking the fisherman’s eye with it.

Storming angrily out of the river, it isn’t unusual to hear the offending Cabela Boy sputter about the Rats not being “real” fishermen because they don’t dress like “real” fishermen. It doesn’t matter to them that it’s the Rats, and not them, that are catching the fish. They are just plain frustrated; frustrated that money doesn’t buy fish – at least living breathing ones from a river. No matter how many hundreds of dollars of fishing gear they wear and/ or drag to the riverbank, they can’t seem to catch the fish. All they do is glare across the river at the River Rats who more often than not are pulling in one salmon after another. Fishing for the River Rats is far more than about fish, it is a way of life.

Instead of working on their fishing skills, or turning to the River Rats for advice about how to catch a fish, the Cabela Boys work harder to restrict the river to fly-fishing only than they do fishing. They also want to require that all fish be released back into the water. They argue that their reasoning is based on their desire to protect the salmon and the other fish species. But the River Rats know differently. They know the slickers are just looking for any excuse to get the worm drowning River Rats off the riverbanks, not to protect the salmon, but to protect their own fragile, yet inflated, egos. It infuriates the Cabela Boys to see the Rats catching fish, while they, on the other hand, climb trees in an attempt to retrieve wayward “flies”.

Dan had never forgiven the Cabela Boys for hooking him in the ear as he was walking along the riverbank one year. He tried to dodge the Cabela Boys as they snapped their lines through the air, their hooks barely ever touching the water. Suddenly, a sharp pain raced through his ear, a pain that was followed by a vicious yank that made his knees buckle.
“Damn fool nearly ripped my ear off my head,” Dan said, obviously still embarrassed about having to walk into the emergency room to have a hook removed from his ear. He still sports a scar where the hook pieced his ear, pinning it to the side of his head.

Thinking they were insulting the “local fishermen”, the Cabela Boys, enraged by the “locals’” knowledge of the river, ability to catch fish, and their unwillingness to spend a month’s pay on a pair of waders, labeled them with the name – River Rats. Much to the Cabela Boys chagrin, the “Rats” turned the insult, a slur to the “locals”, into a badge of honor, after all, they were catching the fish, not city slickers that couldn’t catch a fish if it bit them.

But now isn’t the time to battle the Cabela Boys. That battle can wait until another day. It is now the time to do our research, then go in search of that illusive beast – Memphry– and rid the lake of the scourge once and for all.