Easton Fish Stories

It always intrigues me how diverse we are in what we like and in our passions and interests.  If you can believe it, I have had next to no interest in reading Harry Potter books or seeing Harry Potter movies.  So this puts me in some rare category, apparently.

Then again, all the sci-fi and fantasy adventure movies that bring in the top bucks at the box office are those that don’t interest me as well.

How about fishing?  There are people who go ga-ga over fishing.  I'm all right with fishing, but I don't get fired up about fishing. 

This isn't the case with my friend, Buddy Pucillo, with whom I graduated from back in 1981.   Joe works for the Easton DPW; he lives over in West Bridgewater with his wife Lynn.

Joe is a big-time fisherman.  He even goes to fishing expos – and gets his photo taken with champion bass fisherman.   I mean, Joe is hardcore. 

There are a lot of people out there, who, like Buddy, are fishing enthusiasts.  

When I was a kid, I used to do some fishing in Easton, mostly with my pal, Bill “Muga” Maguire.   We fished at Parker’s Pond, behind the Parker Estate – and at Shovel Shop Pond and Fred’s Pond.   Muga was more into it then I was.  He had all the equipment.  He even ice fished.

But I did buy one of those ultralight pistol grip Daiwa rod and reels that allowed one to have some sport and wrangling with the small bluegills – a member of the sunfish family – that were and are prevalent in the ponds and streams in Easton.

I have cited and referenced his art and work before in this space, and if you want to read some of the best nature and wildlife writing – including writing about fresh and saltwater fish – anywhere, check out the blog of Easton native, Doug Watts, a conservationist and writer who now lives up in Maine along Sebago Lake. 

One of his blog entries, titled, “On how to restore native brook trout to Queset Brook, North Easton, Massachusetts,” is very interesting.  Both, Doug, and his older brother, Timmy, are expert and have a strong interest in bringing brook trout back to Easton. 

Here is an excerpt from Doug’s post on the brook trout:

The ability of the "Trout Hole Brook" portion of Queset Brook in North Easton to support trout in the 20th century was proven by William Amory Parker ("Mister Parker"), who for many years in the 1960s and 1970s paid to privately stock brown trout (Salmo trutta) in "Parker's Pond," which is the small dammed pond on Queset Brook behind his house on North Main Street. Mr. Parker let us neighborhood kids fish for and catch these trout and play in his fields and woods, which is why he did it. Many of these stocked trout lived for many years in the pond and brook above it and below it and grew to lengths exceeding 20 inches.

Johnny Fresh, an Easton native and resident – and an employee of the Easton DPW – is a sportsman, and he loves to fish.   He eats the bluegill that he catches in Easton.  Johnny is a member of the Easton Rod & Gun, which has a pond that the club stocks with fish for its angler members.   Johnny says you get a piece of meat from the bluegill which is about the size of a thumb; he breads the meat and gives it a quick fry.  Johnny says the meat is sweet. 

Greg Rollins who grew up in Easton, and graduated from OA in the late 1960s, recently moved down to the Cape.  He is an adventuresome type, for he used to eat the legs of the bullfrogs he pulled out of the ponds and waterways in Easton. 

I saw a story in this past weekend’s Wall Street Journal about how down in Texas the brutal heat and lack of rain is drying up the Brazos River, threatening a couple of rare breeds of shiners – types of minnow fish – that live in the river. 

We used shiners for bait way back when – and they were plentiful, at least in the Muck.  The Muck is a dark and soupy pond that lies between the railroad tracks and the fields and town reservoir that abut the Clock Farm. 

All you had to do was take a piece of string with a hook that was baited with a bit of white bread and lower it into the water alongside the bank of the Muck, and the shiners would come a gobbling.  In 10 minutes or so you had all the shiners you needed to go fishing. 

There are all sorts of Easton fish stories.  I heard that during the summer when the pond dried up near the back of Picker Lane, that catfish could live in the bed of the pond, in the mud, all summer.  Not too long ago, one night, a gentleman was telling me a fantastic story of monster pickerel that swam in the rivers and ponds of the Hockomock Swamp.  He was talking about a section of the Hockomock that was over in, I believe, Taunton – but the “Hock” is all connected – and with the water flowing south from Easton toward Taunton – could these monster pickerel have come from Easton? 

By the way, I don’t believe these monster pickerel exist in the swamp. 

Easton native, Jim Craig, the goaltender for the 1980 U.S. “Miracle on Ice” hockey team, enjoys deep sea fishing – and during the summer gets out several times to fish on the ocean.  Jim was even featured in an episode of Charlie Moore’s, "The Mad Fisherman," on NESN.  

One of Jim’s good friends is another deep sea fishing enthusiast, New England Patriots coach, Bill Belichick.  The two met while they were on the same boat while participating in the John Havlicek Celebrity Fishing Tournament, which benefits the Genesis Fund (www.thegenesisfund.org), a wonderful philanthropy for which Easton resident, Brian McLaughlin, serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors. 

People get passionate about their fishing.

I am not an expert about these things, but apparently serious fisherman do not use bobbers – you know, those buoyant plastic balls that signal that you have hooked something – when they fish. 

My senior year in high school, a couple of my classmates, guys I know – guys who liked to fish – were figuring they were going to bust the chops of another one of our classmates, Shawn Grant, the co-captain of the football team, and bona fide tough, about fishing.

In the hall of OA, they called Shawn a “bobber fisherman.”  This was a mistake.  Now, I don’t know anything about Shawn’s fishing practices, then or now, but I know his lineage is of conservationists in town – including his father, John Grant, and his uncle, Clifford Grant, for whom the Town Forest is named. 

I am thinking that Shawn could do quite well fishing without a bobber.

Anyway, the “bobber fisherman” line didn’t go over well with Shawn – not at all.   Employing his gridiron skills, he crouched and lowered his shoulder and delivered a crushing block to the wiseacres – that’s right, hitting both at once – depositing the two on the floor of the hallway.

Then Shawn Grant walked away.

Yep, for sure, people get passionate about their fishing.