The Laughing Duck

If you ever wondered what the AFLAC duck did during lean times between commercial shoots, let's just say that I didn't shoot the pic ;-)

A fellow blogger -- Frank Baron -- wrote and photographed a wood duck on a pond near his place. Very colorful photo-op, the wood duck. I used to have a wood duck, that had been gutted and imbued with telephonic parts. When it rang, it "quacked".

It was annoying, and fortunately, it didn't work very long.

During the spring of '91, I took a driving road trip for the company. During the process of which, I was able to drop in on a long-lost cousin, who lived outside of Rhinelander, Wisconsin. He and his family had a very nice house on the edge of a "private" lake. On the day of my arrival, he had to work, and his kids were off to school, so he suggested I make use of his modest fishing boat, and partake of some of the lake's swimming cuisine.

I didn't have to be asked twice, and had already anticipated the offer, bringing my gear with me.

Just not the right gear, but more on that in a mo'.

Once I had my gear loaded in his 14' boat with an undersized Johnson motah, I decided to start by doing a tad of lake exploration; this was, after all, my first and only time at this secluded lake. I dunno how many acres it encompassed, but it was rather small, by Wisconsin lake standards; and there weren't a great deal of houses surrounding it. So after an exploratory "lap" around the lake, I began applying my fishing eye to a likely spot to try my luck.

In so doing, I noted a side cove not far from where I was, and saw that it was populated with a few dozen ducks. Mostly mallards, along with a brown-headed one that I wasn't readily familiar with. And one pair of wood ducks. A duck that, up to then, I'd only seen in books. So since here were a pair about 100 feet away from me, I thought I'd motah ovah and take a gander up close.

See what I just did there?

At any rate, the other ducks didn't seem to mind my motorized approach all that much; but the wood ducks were apparently anti-social. They pointed themselves in a direction away from me, and swam off with a duck version of "hmphf".

I wasn't of a mind to be snubbed by mere water fowl; besides, I hadda motah, and I wasn't afraid to use it.

Gradually, I closed the distance on the wood ducks, who continued to swim away from me, making subtle course corrections; but my undersized motah was faster than their webbed motahs, and I finally ate up the distance, and eased along side of them, with about 10 feet of separation. As it appeared they might take flight, I decided a bribe might be in order, so I threw before them a little bit of "bait": some bread balls I planned to use to temp a more fishinary response.

I was amazed that it worked: the wood duck pair stopped, and moved toward my offering with a vengeance.

I regretted at this point not having my camera in the boat; then again, back then it was a very nice 35mm rig, and with my penchance for mishap, I didn't want to take a chance on sinking it in a northern Wisconsin lake, the way I had sunk a cheaper 35mm, in a Wyoming wilderness river.

So I have no close up photos of the wood ducks. Or the duck havoc that shortly ensued.

My tossing of bread balls apparently didn't go unnoticed back in the cove; suddenly, I needed an on-board radar warning screaming "VAMPIRE, VAMPIRE, INCOMING WATER FOWL!", as ducks swarmed the dinner "table".

I would later assume that these ducks got fed by some of the lakeside residents; at the time, I reckoned a few of them were just mallardjusted.

*Ducking boos and throwd anything handy*

Having survived my version of Duck Harbor, I motahed over to another cove nearer to my cousin's house, where I'd noted a submerged tree. Baiting up a hook, I decided to see what would bite. I initially set the depth of the bait at 3 feet, and hooked up a bobber.

In a scene that looked like a combination of a Marx Brothers romp and the Three Stooges, my first cast drew a bevy of ducks, eager for more of what I'd heretofore offered.

I was sure Daffy was around somewhere, egging these yahoos on.

Seeing that the bobber option wouldn't do, I switched to a bottom rig, and went for it.

Two minutes later, my rod end did an unexpected 180 downward, almost taking me with it, followed by snapping back almost enough to *whap* me in the face, as the line broke. I never saw what it was that hit it; my cousin had told me the lake contained bluegill, crappy, large mouth bass, perch, walleye and...muskies.

I knew I was screwed if I tangled with the latter: I had 6lb test line on a light rod I used for backpacking. A coffee cup plate-sized bluegill would feel like a whale. Something bigger...Jaws.

Twice more I rigged up, and twice more my bait offering got hit by something that threatened to throw me out of the boat, perhaps catapulting me into a nearby area code. My line never held long enough for me to even have a prayer of figuring out what I was dealing with. "Maybe a muskie and a duck had mated", I mused. Whatever it'd be called, I knew it'd be politer to say than a cross between a pheasant and a duck, but I digress.

Not far off, a mallard -- annoyed I'd closed the boat buffet -- was quacking in a "laughing" manner.

I hoped the last laugh would be mine; before it was time to head for the dock, I managed to hook and boat a bluegill about the size of...a bluegill. Same size as I'd caught by the dozens in Iowa and Colorado.

"I came all the way to Wisconsin to catch bait?"

Again, that damned mallard quack-laughed. I'm not sure that the wood duck couple didn't join in. And after I'd fed the basta...bums, too.

That was my one, and only, fishing experience in Wisconsin. And one, and only, up close encounter with a wood duck.

Henceforth, I'll just look at Frank's pictures. Being laughed at by a duck, I am convinced, has stunted my emotional development. Well, maybe a little.