Call me Ishmael is the first line of the iconic writing of Herman Melville’s classic novel Moby Dick.  The story of my search for big fish began when I was but nine or ten years old.  Fishing for carp with my brother was always interesting.  Especially, the day he baited his hook, loaded down with a heavy sinker and rested his vintage hand-me-down fishing pole on a Y-stick at the shoreline.  He then turned his back to the water and proceeded to enlighten me about the correct way to catch a Leviathan size carp.  I tried interrupting him to let him know that a big fish was hooked, instantly pulling his prized rod and reel into the deep while he was lecturing me.  I can’t repeat the bad words or how many times they were repeated in my story.  But just let your mind wander and you’ll get the picture.

Now, let’s bring ourselves to the present.  We’re not harpooning for whales, but we are bowfishing for big carp.  Captain Dave Schillinger rang me up and asked me if I wanted to board the Night Stalker for a night of bowfishing on Lake Ontario.  My mind was racing.  To me it was Captain Ahab beckoning that we set sail on the infamous Pequod from Melville’s novel.  Of course, I was imagining all this, but isn’t that what adventure starts out as…imagining?

“Permission to come aboard, Captain Ahab….errhh…Dave?”
“Permission granted, come aboard.”

Another friend of ours is Jim Nelson who accompanied us that night.  Jim had never bowfished for carp before.  We were all too happy to show him how it was done.  It was difficult at first for Jim to realize the emphasis on aiming really low and how it was just so unnatural not to be able to strike with that technique.  After missing his first dozen carp, he started to settle in and really cause damage.

Captain Dave was to strike first.  The first carp of the evening was a real Leviathan.  Nearly forty pounds of fish that gave us a bit of a “Nantucket Sleigh Ride.”  For anyone not familiar with a Nantucket Sleigh Ride; it begins when whalers lance the whale and then the whale, being speared with a lance and thick line, will actually tow the whaleboats around the ocean, and every once in a while, to be dragged down into the depths of the ocean!  When Captain Dave stymied the engine, the big fish was able to turn our vessel almost completely around before being boated!

Man, what a fight.  This was what we were out here for.  The excitement was too much for me.  I yelled out in Ishmael’s voice: “Lash the helm a ‘lee Mr. Starbuck!”  Dave and Jim thought me to be nuts!  “Fasten the rudder so the ship remains pointed into the wind, stopping its forward motion.”  There I go thinking I was on Ahab’s ship the Pequod, harpooned to Moby Dick…and yet we were only carp hunting.  I was thinking about having Dave, Jim and I cross our carp arrows like Gregory Peck did, to be as ‘lightening rods’ so we could have the ‘tri-pointed trinity of flames’ of St Elmo’s Fire.  God’s burning finger would be laid on our boats to grant us safety and good omen. “Avast! Do ye think me crazy lads?”  Well, I believe Jim and Dave might have, if I had requested the St Elmo’s Fire enlightenment.

-Author’s note on St. Elmo’s Fire-
St Elmo’s Fire is a weather phenomenon in which luminous plasma is created by a corona discharge from a rod-like object such as a mast, spire, chimney, or animal horn in an atmosphere electric field.  A blue or violet glow around the object often accompanied by a hissing sound.  The phenomenon, which can warn of an imminent lightning strike, was regarded by sailors with awe and sometimes considered to be a good omen.  In Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, St Elmo’s Fire stops Captain Ahab from killing Mr. Starbuck.

We all returned to the upper top portion of the railing deck where the shooters are stationed.  We saw so many carp that night, they looked like dolphins parading under water in hue of the green lights surrounding the bow of the Night Stalker.  We probably saw a hundred carp that night and more than likely took that many shots at them.  But we did manage to wrangle more than twenty of them on board.  Some close to the forty- and thirty-pound weight class.  The rest, twenty pounds and better.

Go ahead call me Ishmael, if you like, I’d prefer that.  After all, I was now a seaworthy salty dog and I was hunting with Mr. Starbuck and Captain Ahab aboard the Pequod.  We were christened by St. Elmo’s Fire and we were after Moby Dick the Leviathan carp!

“Aye, breach your last to the sun, Moby Dick!” cried Ahab. “Thy hour and thy harpoon are at hand!  Down! down all of ye, but one man at the fore.” Almost simultaneously, with a mighty volition of ungraduated, instantaneous swiftness, the white whale darted through the weltering sea (Moby Dick Chapter 135).

I was fishing with my old standby Damon-Howatt sixty-pound hunter recurve.  I deer hunted with this bow for over forty-five years and so decided to retire it roughly six or seven years ago.  She is now the Siren of the Sea, sweetly singing her mournful songs to lost sailors.  She carries with her the wrath of Ahab.  Beckoning me to launch hellfire into the side of a behemoth monster carp.  “Thar she blows, mates.”

I arrowed another monster carp that almost took the Siren out of my hands.  But my hold was solid.  For if not, she would have seen the depths of Davy Jones’ locker, the bottom of the sea in sailor folklore.  Even though we were only on a lake, it still would have been terrible to lose my mate.  After all, St Elmo’s Fire was giving us luck.  While boating this carp, I looked up to the heavens with awe, and reverenced the stars and all their glory. It was brilliant.  It was that magic moment in time and space.  Captain Schillinger’s silhouette against the blackened sky reminded me that I was still on the Pequod thinking him to be Ahab.  My mind was swirling again.

The carp were at a fever pitch.  I mean, they were exploding from all sides of our boat.  I was perched on the top left side, Jim directly in the middle and Schillinger the top right.  At one point, all three of us shot at the same carp that swam left to right fifteen feet in front of us.  We all missed!  But it did not matter!  It was one of the best misses three friends could ever have.  We were living large that night.

“Look ye, Nantucketer; here in this hand I hold death!  Tempered in blood, and tempered by lightening are these barbs, and I swear to temper them triply in that hot place behind the fin, where the white whale most feels his accursed life!” Moby Dick seemed combinedly possessed by all of the angels that fell.  ~ Moby Dick Chapter 131.

Our hunt was over.  We pulled into dock around 3:30 am.  We were tired and weary, but we had the time of our lives.  Watching Jim Nelson arrow his first, second, and third carp of the night was extremely satisfying.  I was giddy with emotion.  I was so tired; I actually…could not sleep.

No, we weren’t on the Pequod, no we weren’t hunting Moby Dick, and no I am not Ishmael. But what I am is the carp hunter that lived to tell a tale of high adventure with supernatural imagination.  …Yes, go ahead call me Ishmael. I’d like that.

Author’s note: The Equipment used is a Damon Howatt Hunter Recurve 60 lbs.  Muzzy fish points with 1400 grain arrow, and 200 lb line for reeling in.  The carp fillets when consuming them are mashed completely and molded into burger-size patties.  Then they are covered in seasoned Panko breading and deep-fried in a flavorful cooking oil.  Simple and good!

-Epilogue-

Yay, Are we not “fishers of men”?  Godly men?  Were our hopes and tribulations like brave Ulysses dashed against the rocks from the haunting songs of the sirens that laid to rest so many forlorn sailors to their ice water mansions?  These were the sons of Neptune, God of the underworld depths who gave us safe passage through the supernatural fiery River Styx, where it is said she never gives up her dead.  Yay, theirs is a tale of high adventure.  If only in the mind of this writer.  But this was their story and it had to be told, mate. …”Raise the mainsails and set our course Mr. Starbuck…Avast, thar she blows…”