Ashumet Pond, Falmouth

Kettle ponds from a satellite photo


July 3, 1992
Ashumet Pond, Falmouth MA (fished by canoe)
Winds. 150 acre Kettle Pond. No bass. Caught a number of yellow perch on Mylar minnows.

In memory I recall a deep pond set back in the woods on the south shore of Cape Cod. While Jill would not be my fishing spouse, I had somehow been given the consolation prize of her Uncle Alan.

Alan Shoolman is a Brookline born, Boston native who is an enthusiastic flyfisherman. Alan is one of the last of the breed of pre-war American gentleman who grew up during the Great Depression. Because of this he is more grateful for the blessings of life and more cautious around extremists, kooks and people with bad manners. He reminds you of the quietly debonair Hollywood leading men of the 40s and 50s like Gary Cooper or William Holden. A smart understated guy who also happens to possess one of those true Boston accents movie actors can never seem to get right.

Alan lives in Back Bay with his wife Barby and has a house at the Cape (Cape Cod for those born anywhere outside of New England). He is still an active business leader at the age of 75 and seems to have more energy than most of my contemporaries who are 30 years younger -- save my twin brother Kevin and my childhood friend Val who seem to have been born with some type of special turbo thrusters in their mitochondria that the rest of us are lacking – but more on them later. Alan had told me about these Kettle ponds months before, referred to geologically as Kettle Moraines, and he had wanted to fish more of them in his new Old Town canoe over the summer.

The Cape Cod kettle ponds are literally left-overs from the ice age. When the glaciers retreated they left behind boulders and icebergs, some icebergs were buried and insulated over time by rocks and dirt. Some of these buried icebergs melted and became kettle ponds like Ashumet. Because they are too difficult to drain as some of the glacial icebergs punctured the water table, they are nearly impossible to fill-in and turn into housing developments – so they persist only because Yankee ingenuity can’t figure out a cheap way around them.

We paddled around the pond in the canoe, Jill joined us as we were still early in our courting and she wanted to show me that she was still in this for the long haul and would brave seeing fish getting their mouths impaled – even if it was emotionally traumatizing to her.

There was very little structure in the shallow areas of the pond -- a few downed branches, some rocks, but mostly just barren bottom with little area for fish to hide. On the far side of the pond there was a floating dock where people likely sunbathed in the dog days of summer. Under that dock there was a massive school of small yellow perch. These fish were so aggressive they would attack a bare hook; any feathery material was an impediment to their single minded pursuit of devouring any flashy object in their reach. After catching a dozen or so, we tired of the pursuit and paddled back to the spot where we launched.

There is a lesson to be taken away from this trip. Even though it was not much for fishing – I was curious about the term “kettle pond” – so years later I looked it up and came across all the information about the geology of New England and the buried frozen icebergs and the near incomprehensibility that water trapped at the bottom of these ponds was likely 100,000 years old. People brag about vintage wine – how about vintage water. So while the fish did not produce much in the way of angling excitement, years later my appreciation for the geology of those ponds still fires my imagination. This is a trick I’ve learned over time – if where you’re at isn’t doing it for you – learn more about where you're at.

A little knowledge of geology can salvage the worst of trips.