A Ditch Runs Through It

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The water levels in the ditches rise and fall unpredictably, responding more to agricultural and obscure water-resource stimuli than to rainfall or river stage. We've set out toward side ditches on the tail end of a March storm only to find them dry. The North Drainage is more reliable than most. The fish have noticed this, too. Having a year-round home, fed on a hearty diet of pesticide and toxic forage, they grow to respectable size.

Just the day before, I had hooked into one of them. I never saw it--they have to break the surface here to be visible--but it doubled my rod over as it ran up the culvert, smacking the rod tip against the pipe's metal lip. It bucked the current effortlessly and snapped my line when I tried to horse it out. Today, Billy hooks its brother (or, more likely, its sister). Billy is more fish-savvy than I am. He keeps the fish downstream of the pipe, wrestles it into the shallows by the riprap. He grabs it by the lower lip and raises it in triumph: a gasping, four-pound ditch bass. I snap a couple of pictures with his cell phone before he lowers it back into the water and releases it.

We are not the only brownwater anglers. We are, however, among the few with valid licenses on display. We draw suspicious glances from two Russian-looking anglers down the bank. They are among the latest wave of immigrants to probe the ditches.

A few years ago, it was common to share the bank with Vietnamese and Cambodian fishermen. They grew up fishing and were very good at it, but they're mostly gone now. They've moved on to the bluewater, to stripers and salmon. The ditches are a stepping-stone, a way station on the road to assimilation. At ditchside turnouts now, we more often run into Ukrainian and Russian immigrants in nylon tracksuits dipping cornmeal and white bread 'boilies' for carp. Like the two squatting on the mud ledge above the Cross Canal, they eye us with belligerent wariness, loosening up when we don't ask to see their licenses. They are extremely determined carp fishermen.

Most American fishermen, myself included, consider carp a trash fish. The dull color of wet cardboard, they slog through the soft ditch bed, slurping the bottom silt with round, sphincterlike mouths. They are ugly, which undoubtedly accounts for a portion of their pariah status. Our true selves are reflected, we believe, in our choice of prey--we are what we catch. Fishing for carp, therefore, demonstrates a lack of self-esteem.

Ditch fishers have no such handicap. They are on the bottom rung already, and if you have no problem with the stigma, the bottom rung can offer a great deal of freedom. Billy and I understand this, at least in relation to fishing. After all, when you consider a Dodge transaxle 'structure'--a bass-fishing term for underwater habitat--you don't have very far to fall. We are brothers. Companeros. The only difference between us and our friends down the bank is that they eat what they catch.

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