Dad’s Bugs  

By Steve Hudson, field editor

The other day, I heard a story on the radio about an artificial intelligence agent gone rogue. The short version: An AI system somehow escaped its handlers and (as the story put it) “broke out of the sandbox,” then started taking things over. But free-range AI is nothing compared to free-agent washing machines.

Bet you haven’t heard about those, have you? I thought not. Just remember you read it here first, and rest assured that in the end all of this really will have something to do with fly fishing. I promise.

But I digress, for I want to tell you about what we now call The Water Incident. It started with that washing machine, and it ended up sending us packing to the hills while they made repairs.

You know, now that I think about it, I do believe that the whole thing started a few weeks earlier when we began talking about getting a new washing machine – you know, one of those sexy ones with buttons and knobs and multi-colored lights. Yeah, we were making plans.

Did the old washer overhear us plotting? Did we make it mad?

They hear everything, you know. Washing machines don’t miss a beat. They’re smart, though they don’t let on. Some of ‘em even play cheery little tunes when the cycle’s done. How nice, we think. How cute! But maybe they’re just trying to distract us. Maybe it’s all part of their plan.

Yeah, it’s all sunshine and light with washing machines until it isn’t.

But I digress again.

In our case, the sunshine and light part went away at that fateful moment when the water from the washer went to the floor…and the carpet…and the sheetrock…and, well, pretty much everywhere.

Getting rid of the water required 747-sized fans and hulking dehumidifiers. It was impressive in an industrial sort of way. And then came the repairs. They’re still going on, and while they are, we’re hiding out in an Airbnb up in the mountains of northern Georgia.

Don’t misunderstand. That was not all bad, for our temporary home-away-from-home came with a lake.

Lakes are made to be fished, of course, so on the first full day of our exile I picked up the fly rod and toted it down to the water. I tied on a little yellow popping bug. Then I made a cast, had a hit, and caught one of the biggest bream I’d ever seen. Ever.

“Wow,” I said.

I sent a photo of the fish to my wife, who was back at the Airbnb putting things together in the kitchen.

“Wow,” she said.

After supper, we both went to the water. We took turns with the rod, and she promptly caught one even bigger than mine, and then another, and then one more.

Maybe, I thought, exile wasn’t going to be so bad after all.

My turn came around again. I took the rod, lost my focus, and hung the popper in a tree on my second cast. There was nothing to do but break it off, and that was the end of that – at least until I could get a few more popping bugs.

Popping bugs are named for the sound they make as you work them on the water. That sound – a deep, liquid galoompf –  waspart of the soundtrack of my childhood, and I suppose that its echoes will be with me for the duration.

The next day I stopped by Mom’s house for a visit. We sat at the round kitchen table, looking past the orchids growing in the window, out past the boat dock, out to the pond where Dad had so often fished popping bugs for his beloved bass and bream. He could make almost any popper do magic things, but his favorite was always one he called the Peck’s Popping Minnow. Developed by Earnest H. Peckinpaugh of Chattanooga, Tenn., in the early 1900s, it featured a high-floating cork body adorned with feathers. On the water, it suggests a struggling minnow, and bass and bream can’t leave it alone.

“It’s the best there is,” Dad always said, and he must have bought hundreds over the years, many, I’m sure, to replace the ones I left hanging in trees.

Well, at least I’m consistent.

Mom and I visited for a while. I told her about the fishing, and she offered me sweet tea and a piece of cake.

I asked if she’d mind if I went downstairs to see if a few popping bugs might still be lying about.

“You just help yourself,” she said, for she knew what a popping bug was and what it could do with big bream. The best ones always know.

So into the basement I went. I turned on the light and started to rummage about. That’s when I spotted it: an ancient aluminum tackle box, a box that had been part of my childhood.

And memory flooded back. I knew Dad had kept his most-prized lures inside that box – Hula Poppers, Rapalas, and red-and-white Heddon’s spoons. But those went in the second tray down. The top tray, the place of respect and highest honor, was always reserved for popping bugs – and the best compartments, the ones front and center, were always reserved for Peck’s Popping Minnows.

Might there still be one of them in that dented old box? There was only one way to find out.

With a sudden sense of gravity, I picked up the box and set it on the workbench. I eased open the latch. Hinges creaked a little as it swung open.

And lo and behold, there they were. Popping bugs – at least a hundred of them. They had been in that box a long, long time. Long enough that maybe I’d used one of them myself all those years ago?

They weren’t Peck’s, but they’d do. I picked out a dozen or so, favoring yellow and white like Dad had always done, cradling them like old friends in my hand. Then I went to close the lid, securing the rest for another day. That’s when something caught my eye from the shadows at the bottom of the box. What’s that? I looked more closely – and there before me were two little plastic packages, each holding a brand-new Peck’s Special Popping Minnow.

I had found the holy grail, and it was pristine.

About then I realized I was holding my breath. I exhaled slowly and deliberately reached to pick up the two little packages and the timeless treasure each contained.

For a time, how long? I just stood there in the half-light of the basement, thinking of…what? Of memories from years ago? Of memories yet to come?

I know I thought this:

When my Dad first met the lady who is now my wife, the lady with whom I share life and fishing and everything else and with whom I’ll share time on the water this very evening, he knew right away that I was onto something good. And when I told him that, yes, she was learning to flyfish, and that yes, she would even unhook her own fish, he’d looked me square in the eye and said, “Son, she is a keeper.”

You remember things like that.

After a while, I went back upstairs. Mom said I could have the popping bugs and the Peck’s poppers, too, if I wanted them. I did, so I wrapped them carefully and put them in a little box for safekeeping. Then I said goodbye and got back in the car. I drove slowly down the driveway, past the azaleas now resting from their summertime exuberance, past the shady pines and the sweetgum tree.

At the end of the drive, I turned north, willing GPS to take me home the short way (for home is where she is) and to the good fishing and all that’s yet to come. Isn’t it true? It all goes full circle. It does.

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