Intro
I'm your host Neil Colicchio, founder of New Dawn Tackle Co. On this episode, I'll be sharing some of my creepiest and scariest outdoor stories. I've got tales of a UFO, an encounter with Slenderman, a forest spirit, and an update on the haunted lure.
If you're listening with kids or if you're a bit squeamish, don't worry too much. There's nothing gory and no jump scares coming up. Like the sport of fishing itself, it's important to me that this is something anyone can enjoy.
To that end, I've been reading a lot of fishing stories lately. I'm listening to an audio version of John Gierach's Sex, Death, and Flyfishing while reading a hard copy of The Last Wild Road by T. Edward Nickens. I love older outdoor writing like Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac and anything by Jack London too.
I'm trying to find the right tone that's descriptive, compelling, and still family-friendly. I alternate between reading straight from the script and telling my stories the way that I would in a conversation. I have a hard time doing this while also keeping swears, filler words, and non-sequiturs to a minimum. So if I sound stiff or like I'm reading directly from a teleprompter, don't worry about it. I'm practicing with each new episode.
Speaking of teleprompters, I hope the people watching the video version of the show will appreciate a couple of changes I've made this month. I just picked up a new external webcam and a backdrop. I'm also experimenting with a teleprompter in an effort to keep me on track and prevent some of the abrupt cuts you've seen in recent episodes.
Another big change is happening this month, but it's not something of my own doing. The state of Massachusetts has begun their fall stocking schedule, and trout season is back. I've been out already, but I only caught a couple of small pickerel. I did see a few trout, so I'm optimistic that I might catch one or two by the end of the week.
If you like fishing blogs, I posted a target species teardown on building the perfect tackle box for trout a couple of weeks ago. I focused on conventional spinning gear, mostly for shallow stream fishing in the Northeast. I've got a couple of tips on lake trout too, though I've yet to catch one of them.
Queue impostor syndrome. If I've appeared to be a fishing expert, it was a happy accident. Despite spending more time on my trout game than any other species or technique over the years, they're still the fish I struggle with most. I've caught brookies, browns, rainbows, and cutthroats, and I stand by anything I've written on the subject. However, it's a funny thing to try to sell fishing gear as a fairly average angler.
But that's the thing about fishing, right? No matter how seasoned an angler you are, every trip will surprise you. There’s always something unexpected waiting for you on the water. Maybe it’s a new personal best, maybe it’s a day when nothing’s biting, or maybe it’s one of those moments that makes for the kind of story you end up telling around campfires or dinner tables for years to come.
Every cast has the potential to be the start of a great story. It could be the story of a triumphant battle, a journey of self-discovery, or even a horror story. As you might imagine, a hobby that regularly takes you to the water, often alone and in low light, can lead to some scary experiences, and I've had a few that stick with me to this day.
The UFO Encounter
Despite my best efforts, I cannot picture the pier in my mind's eye. Its memory, like many others from my childhood trips to Florida, is more of a feeling than a specific place or event. I remember the feeling of live shrimp and small crabs scampering out of my hands and back into the bait bucket, I remember the slightly irritating glow of pier lighting after dark, and I remember the excitement of seeing shadows glide through the water below—stingrays as big as the rental car hovering just above the sandy ocean floor.
While we tried our luck at least once every April school vacation, I can't recall any of us—Dad, Nick, my two cousins, or me—having much success. Dad reminisces about the pompano he caught decades earlier, but I remember no such catch after I came into the picture.
I can think of just two exceptions. The first was when my eldest cousin pulled a basketball-looking mass from beneath the pier. Moments before his line snapped, we could make out the features of an agitated and fully inflated puffer fish, which fell back into the ocean with a hollow sploosh.
The second exception was a catch of my own, commemorated in part by a tattoo on my inner elbow, which also serves as a memorial to my late friend Erik.
When I was younger, most fishing trips that didn't involve ravenous schools of scup or insatiable sunfish seemed to last an eternity. Only my dad could tell you whether or not this particular trip did.
For the sake of this story, I'll say that it was late in the evening, my fingers were pruney from chasing shrimp around the bait bucket, and my eyes felt a slight burn from hours surrounded by the ever-present glow of the pier lights.
With no bites and no signs of life, I was prepared to call it a night. If left to my own devices, I'd have grabbed an ice cream and hit the arcade several hours ago. In fact, one part of this story that takes zero creative liberties is that I was much more interested in catching anoles at the hotel than catching fish of any size at the pier.
The idea of the pier was great and I looked forward to spending time with the guys, especially my older cousins. In reality though, I couldn't last more than an hour or two without getting restless. The cousins weren't around for this trip, so I was just about ready to hop on my Razor scooter and tear up the broadwalk.
When the line came tight and I confirmed that it wasn't stuck on the bottom, all thoughts of lizards and arcade games subsided. Ice cream and Razor scooters could wait. After nearly a decade of sitting on that splintering, old pile of planks, the gods of sand and sea took mercy on me. It was a quick fight. I kept constant pressure on the line though there was nothing but deadweight on the other end.
As we did with the pufferfish years before, three of us looked over the rail in anticipation. Rising up from shadows, an amorphous blob hung limp at the end of my line. A wet mop would be more identifiable, if slightly less shiny, in the dim light of the pier.
I swung the rod tip over the rail, Dad's hand grasping the line and directing what we'd soon discover was a UFO—an unidentified flying octopus. Splat! It landed on the pier and immediately extended its tendril-like legs in all directions, slinking and slunking along the planks.
We froze, debating whether to cut the line or boot the octopus like Adam Vinatieri and send him sailing through back through the rails. While we deliberated, the octopus graciously unhooked himself and unceremoniously flopped over the edge of the pier with a dull sploosh.
The UFO remains the weirdest thing I've ever caught, but it's definitely not the scariest experience I've had.
The Forest Spirit
In my early twenties, about a year after I graduated from college, my wife Lauren and I rented an apartment steps from the town recreation field. Soon after moving in, we got our first dog, Penny. We'd take her to the field before and after work to get the zoomies out and socialize with the other local dogs and their owners.
Most of the other dogs were there to splash in the shallow pond at the far end of the field, opposite the parking lot and beyond the soccer fields. One of the regulars was a medium-sized lab with an affinity for fishing. We watched one day as she snorkeled around the pond in search of bluegill and pint-sized bass.
Not believing it at first, we confirmed with the other dog owners that she was a fishing dog—a pup who liked to unwind with a bit of fishing after spending the workday by her owner's side. Years later, I, too, could be described as a fishing dog.
After seeing this dog spend a solid hour plodding around and snapping just short of fish after fish, we decided to throw some crumbs from the bottom of the kibble bag into the pond. The crumbs, barely small enough to create a ripple, were suddenly swarmed by ravenous bluegill—none of them bigger than 3 inches long. It looked like a scene from the Amazon, the "we have piranhas at home" version.
Just across town was a K-Mart, the most disorganized, poorly-stocked, and even more poorly-staffed department store I've ever had the misfortune of shopping at. While I rarely found snack food or apartment necessities there, the store did have a small sporting goods section.
With $20 in my pocket and panfish on my mind, I bought a Zebco Slingshot rod and reel combo. It served me well in my early fishing and kayak adventures before becoming my backup rod for the better part of a decade and eventually meeting its demise in a car door incident.
The reel is still attached to another rod in my shed; the bottom half of the rod that met its own tragic end when I shook the upper section loose in a southern New Hampshire stream.
Along with my new rod and reel, I bought a selection of Blue Fox Vibrax spinners in silver, gold, and copper. These didn't last as long as the Slingshot combo, but they've become staples in my tackle tray for every season since. The same lures that produced bluegill and bass back then are among my most-recommended and favorite all-around lures 12 years later.
One muggy night in late August, Lauren and I were at the park with Penny and I decided to hang around for an extra hour or two to do some fishing. The other dogs had left at this point, the sun was going down, and the mosquitoes were gathering in dense black clouds around the marginal areas that formed the boundary between the park and the surrounding trails.
I walked around the pond, casting from a few different spots, catching and releasing as I went. As the shadows of the red oaks grew longer and the dark of night crept in, the mosquitoes grew in number. Not expecting them to swarm us as they did, I hadn't packed bug spray when we left the apartment. Eventually, they got bad enough that I started trying to blow them off of my face with sharp breaths so I could keep both hands free to fish.
Zzzzzzzzz.Pff! Zzzzz. Pff! Pff!
A few rounds of this cat-and-mouse game passed, when suddenly the pattern changed.
Zzzzzzzzz.Pff! Zzzzz. Pff! Pff! Snort!
The open water has become my sanctuary in recent years. By day, I'd say the same about the woods. By night, there's an energy that's always made me uneasy - even thinking back to my cub scouting days. Something about it just feels like I'm a visitor in the realm of the forest spirits. I really don't want to find out what happens when I've overstayed my welcome.
Stamp, stamp, snort!
I turned around to see if my wife and dog had returned to the picnic table over my left shoulder, but they were already walking back to the parking lot. The hairs on my neck stood on-end. I whipped around to check over my right shoulder where I found a whitetail buck stamping the ground and snorting at me - challenging me to a gentleman's duel after my own blasts of air summoned him from across the field.
I grabbed my fishing gear, white-knuckled, and slowly stepped back from the pond. Now facing the deer, with him front-left and the pond immediately to my left, I backed up slowly.
I've always been told to make noise and make yourself appear larger when you need to scare off a black bear, but I didn't have the first idea what to do when you've upset an amorous deer.
Our standoff ended almost as suddenly as it began when something in the woods caught his attention. The deer walked briskly across the field, putting half the width of a soccer field between us before stopping and surveying the park one more time. He looked back to me with a final snort before returning to the domain of fawns and fiddleheads.
The Slenderman of Bear Lake
Lauren and I arrived in UT on September 16, 2019, the day after our wedding. We flew into Salt Lake City, stayed there for a night, and drove up to Bear Lake the following afternoon.
After checking into our rental in Garden City, we made a trip back through the pass and out to Logan to pick up some groceries and fishing supplies.
I'd only learned that Bear Lake existed a couple months before when my aunt sent a list of places in her timeshare network that were located within driving distance of Yellowstone - a destination we planned to reach a week later.
A few hours scouring the internet had convinced me. I was in search of three things that week - solitude, big lake trout, and the Bear Lake monster - so I wanted to stock up at night and start my fishing and hiking adventures first thing in the morning.
I picked up a collapsible rod along with some tubes, jig heads, and frozen bait. I don't really remember what I got for groceries other than some frozen tamales and a pack of blueberry lemon snack bars.
With the cooler bag full and fishing supplies acquired, we grabbed a sandwich at a local gluten-free deli.
As a side note, when traveling with someone who has celiac disease, you'll soon develop unparalleled navigational skills - making a mental map of every local dive that has a gluten-free menu and keeping a running list of all of the national chains in at least 3 surrounding states.
Bellies full, bags packed, and car gassed up, we returned to Logan Pass just after 9 PM. The uphill drive was dark and unremarkable except for the 18-wheeler that started closing distance just before the weigh station.
For those unfamiliar with the area, the Bear Lake side of the pass terminates in a series of switchbacks that starts with a weigh station near the crest of the hill. Large trucks and anyone towing a boat must pull off; small cars can continue on. It's easy enough to navigate, but the 55 mile per-hour S turn in the pitch black was a treat.
It was at the start of the very same S turn, truck lights shining through the Nissan Kicks that the rental agent in Salt Lake City had provided as an upgrade and a honeymoon gift, that I noticed a shadow approaching in the distance. At first, it looked like a tall man who'd just stepped out of Hot Topic circa 2004 - black hoodie, black pants, and not an ounce of body fat to him. Something was off about him, but I couldn't tell what.
The first clue that something wasn't right was his position relative to the road. He was mostly on the shoulder, but much closer to oncoming traffic than any sane human would choose to be - even in broad daylight. Secondly, he was at least as tall as any player in the NBA past or present. Third and most disturbing of all was that he didn't budge. This Slenderman lookalike was lumbering up the hill, halfway in the road, and I was headed straight for him at 55 MPH with an 18-wheeler following just 3 or 4 car lengths behind.
As we entered the turn, I tapped the breaks and started veering into the left lane. Before my mind had time to process what was in my headlights or how I'd avoid a total rollover, my wife shouted "ELK!"
We rounded the first half of the s turn and slowed to a more leisurely 35 miles per-hour as we exited the second turn. A quick glance at the mirror revealed that the truck was no longer tailing us - either clobbering the elk or making it into the weigh station before we could check our 6.
Another deep breath, and I pulled off the road unsure whether to faint or vomit. I chose a third option - turning uphill, flipping off Slenderman, and giving the car a solid pat on the hood for surviving the encounter.
We'd soon come to know that we were visiting Bear Lake during the rut. The tall, mysterious goth was a bull elk facing us head-on. His height was impressive with or without the antlers. His stature became much more apparent as we swerved around him and saw a 3/4 view.
I've seen what whitetail deer can do to a car at just 40 or 50 MPH. I shudder to think how that night would have ended if we were just a foot or two further over.
The Haunted Lure
The haunted lure is a story that I began telling in episode 7 of The Cottage Chronicles. If you haven't already listened to that segment, pause this episode and listen to part one. For the rest of you, I've got an update that you won't want to miss.When we left off, I'd taken the haunted lure on its maiden voyage. It caught trees, logs, and river bed - everything but fish.
You may recall that my collection of spinner was dwindling, and this size 3 Black Fury with the yellow polkadots was one of the last medium-sized spinners I hadn't bent. At the end of the day, I packed it back up and began hatching a plan to break the curse.
You'll notice I refer to the lure both as a haunted lure and a cursed lure. I haven't experienced any encounters with it; it just kept showing up when I thought it was gone. That's the haunted bit - somehow, the lure kept finding its way home to my tackle tray.
The curse, as I figured it, was the utter inability of this lure to catch fish and the total destruction of other lures, leading me to fish this lure in the first place.
Shortly after releasing my last episode, I loaded up the kayak and hit the river in search of the mother of all pickerel. I hit the pond, scoured the lily pads, and even looked for the raccoon corpse before heading upstream to the pickerelweed. A few casts with a spoon yielded nothing but tangles and clumps of decaying plants - fading memories of the lush pads and stem plants that flanked the pickerelweed stand just weeks before.
If I wanted to catch a pickerel, it was time to pull out all the stops. I needed something I could cast further into the shallows and weave precisely between the remaining lilypad clusters. There was no question I needed a spinner, and I had just the one for the job.
I tied on the cursed lure and almost immediately hooked a 16. 5" pickerel. It wasn't the monster I was after, but I thought it might be the key to releasing the curse. It stood to reason that whoever lost the lure placed a curse on it, likely shouting a 4-letter word and lamenting how they couldn't catch a thing on it. If I could then catch something with it, surely I'd be released from this curse.
A few casts later, the lure snagged. I pulled and I shook, but this time it wasn't coming loose. Could it be? The lure might find its home in a new river, waiting for the next unsupecting victim? Snap! Just like that, the lure was gone.
I returned to my spoon and paddled upstream to the spot where I caught my first crappie earlier in the season. The water was several feet lower now and the logpile where the crappie were holed up all summer had collapsed with the topmost log floating into a nearby cove. A couple casts later, my spoon had snagged and my line snapped. Was the curse still following me?
Again I paddled on, this time to the spot where I caught an early season PB when my Ned rig was draped over a low-hanging branch. I tied on a Ned head, hooked a stickworm on, and immediately broke off on a submerged tree.
I paddled to the opposite bank, tied on my smallest remaining spinner, and took a few casts in search of bluegill. One cast, two casts, three casts, snap! Another lure gone.
I lost count of how many lures I broke or lost that day. If a normal day means losing or damaging three lures, I was at double or triple that by the time I stopped counting. I hope that this was the final condition to break the curse - if my spirit remained unbroken by the end of the day, the curse would lift.
I still haven't caught my monster pickerel, but I'm happy to say that the lure hasn't reappeared in my tackle trays. If you're fishing a river and you pick up an abandoned size 3 Mepps Black Fury with a peeling polkadot sticker and a wonky bucktail, don't say I didn't warn you.
I've been out fishing a couple more times since then and I've continued to lose loads of lures. I know part of it is this time of year when I'm fishing shallow streams, I'm fishing closer to brush and overhanging trees, and I'm taking much longer casts with my spinners. But something about it just feels like that curse is still hanging on.
I'm going to find a way to break this curse one way or another. Stay tuned and I'll keep you updated.
Outtro
If you liked this episode, check me out on Instagram and Facebook at New Dawn Tackle Company. Keep an eye on the blog for more target species teardowns, updates on my trout fishing season, and updates on fall bass.
If you need to stock up on any fishing gear, check me out at newdawntackleco.shop.
And if you like the show, keep an eye out on Spotify and on YouTube. Give me a like, subscribe. Leave me a comment, let me know what you'd like to see in a future episode.
Till next time, tight lines and happy fishing.
