Historian shares the tale of jumping bass at the Oak Orchard
Oak Orchard on a serene day, 1900
By Catherine Cooper, Orleans County Historian
“Illuminating Orleans” – Volume 6, No. 9
CARLTON – You may have heard of bass jumping out of the water.
But have you heard about bass jumping out of water and into a boat?
A recent Orleans Hub article about restocking fish at Oak Orchard reminded us of this true tale recorded by Helen Allen in the 1940’s. Allen was a Town of Carlton historian and a 50-year local correspondent for the Orleans Republican.
She interviewed many older residents and chronicled their recollections. John Podgers, a blacksmith, was one of her sources. At one time, he had a steamboat which he used to take passengers up and down the Oak Orchard Creek and out on Lake Ontario, charging ten cents a person. He told tales of sudden onset storms out on the lake and close calls coming into the harbor. Helen recorded and later published Podger’s absolutely true tale of the jumping bass:
JOHN PODGER’S JUMPING BASS
“One lovely summer evening, two couples from the Inn had engaged John to take them for a ride up and down the creek. They were very tired and had come to the Inn for a quiet rest. They brought banjos and mandolins with them and played and sang as they rode along. John said the music there on the water sounded beautiful and he was enjoying it immensely.
Suddenly the nocturnal harmony was shattered by a woman’s scream and the clatter of mandolins dropped to the bottom of the boat! He looked around to see what had happened. The two ladies had dropped their instruments and were crouched up on the seat. A big black bass was flopping about on the bottom of the boat. The ladies were still moaning in terror, but the men were too excited to notice.
“Will that fish jump out?” asked one.
“Well,” John said, “he jumped in so I guess he’ll jump out if he wants to.”
At that, the man made a lunge and grabbed the fish with both hands.
“I brought out fifty dollars’ worth of fishing tackles and have been fishing for a week without getting a bite,” he said, “and this fish is not getting away.”
The ladies wanted to go in but the men insisted John go up the creek again. The bass kept jumping and soon there were six big ones in the boat. By this time their wives were in hysterics and the men had to take them ashore.
One of the men found a pail to carry the fish in and he said to John, “Come up to the hotel with me for no one will believe me when I tell this story.”
At the Inn everyone admired the bass. They weighed them and found the six totaled eighteen pounds, but no one would believe that they had jumped into the boat. So, John was engaged to take all the men from the hotel on a fishing expedition the next evening. The two musical ladies were in such a state they had to be sent home but their husbands stayed to prove the truthfulness of their story.
The next evening, a jeering crowd of men rode up and down the creek for a time without anything happening, but when it became dark enough for the steamer’s headlight to shine clearly over the water, the bass started jumping again and several landed in the boat.
After that, John and his boat were in great demand. Guests from the hotels, cottages, neighbors and people from Albion and farther away went out nearly every night. Usually, the black bass were accommodating but sometimes there was disappointment as some friend or relative was brought from a distance to see the jumping fish and nary a one showed up.
One evening, Elder Brown, the Presbyterian minister was in the boat when a bass landed on the canopy on top of the boat, flopped about for a minute and then slid off the other side. When they went ashore that night, Elder Brown told his friends that the fish had now taken to jumping right over the boat.
Charles Hart hired a fishing boat and followed the steamer. Quite a crowd of men were in the two boats and John said that the black bass were in great jumping form that night. Every time one landed in either boat, the men would yell and there was great excitement to see which one would get the bigger catch.
The steamer won out but together they caught 52 fish, and a bushel basket would not hold them all. Of course, only a small proportion of the bass that jumped landed in the boats and John said that from his position in the bow looking down the beam of the light, the fish were breaking water so fast that it looked as if the whole creek was boiling.
It was a fantastic sight, the bubbling water, the many fish jumping just above the surface and many more that leaped high and then came horizontally for a few feet, straight toward the headlight, with wiggling fins and tails and wet glistening bodies as if swimming through the air, and then dropped back into the water or into the boat.
The jumping bass of Oak Orchard Creek was the chief topic of conversation in a wide area of western New York and even in more distant places for a time.
The nest year the black bass appeared to be more sophisticated and scarcely noticed the steamboat’s headlight.”
Incidentally, the Oak Orchard River Bass Anglers Club is still active; it was started in 1975 by Jack Ainslie and Mike Elam.
