Marty Klinkenberg casts off Toronto's Polson Pier last month.Shawna Richer/The Globe and Mail
To grow up in South Florida in the 1960s was every kid’s dream. The landscape was lush and green and wild, and not yet smothered by condominium developments. We lived so close to the water in Miami that crabs had burrows in the back yard. Once, our German shepherd, Scamp, got too close and ended up with one clamped on her nose. Avocados, bananas, coconut palms, papayas and sugar cane grew behind our little frame house.
As a child, I learned to fish in Biscayne Bay. It was a bonding exercise for my father, my older brother, Jeff, and me. It also provided life lessons. It was possible to catch dozens of mangrove snappers from shore, but we kept only as many as we could eat. We were taught that it was wasteful to do otherwise. We learned to be patient, and to accept the vagaries of luck.
From the beginning, I was enthralled – and I have carried that devotion with me from the United States to Canada, and will likely for the rest of my life.
Marty at nine years old camping at Big Pine Key Fishing Lodge in 1966.courtesy of Marty Klinkenberg/Supplied
I was probably six or seven the first time we drove to the Keys two hours to the south. The water teemed with so many fish that it was like staring down into an aquarium. We would travel to and from on the same day, and come home with a cooler filled with our catch. Upon return, my mother greeted us like victorious hunters. She always had a roast beef dinner waiting.
As I grew older, we began to go on three- and four-day trips that revolved around fishing. Our favourite place was Big Pine Key, where endangered deer roamed through the campground at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. The Big Pine Key Fishing Lodge lacked amenities, but it didn’t need them to attract visitors. We were happy to simply pitch my father’s canvas army-surplus tent, which was sweltering in the summer heat, and cast lines and breathe in the salt air. I was about nine when I caught a bonnethead shark, a small cousin to the hammerhead, from a seawall near our campsite.
Marty's catch: a bonnethead shark, a small cousin to the hammerhead.courtesy of Marty Klinkenberg/Supplied
A bit about my dad, Ernie: He was a Second World War veteran, a pianist who once had his own swing orchestra, and he worked as the chief steward at the Fontainebleau, the most famous hotel in Miami Beach. The Rat Pack used to stay there, as did Marilyn Monroe, President Kennedy, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. As a musician, my father appreciated John, Paul, George and Ringo, but was not so enamoured with Mick and Keith. After seeing them lounging by the pool, he once told my mother, “Bea, I just wanted to get a bar of soap and bathe them!”
My dad worked long hours. To relieve stress, he did two things: tickled the ivories when he got home at the end of the day, and fished at every opportunity. By working at the Fontainebleau, he had access to discount coupons that were handed out to guests to encourage them to go out on local fishing boats. This became a regular adventure for us aboard a venerable old vessel called the Mucho K. Sometimes we caught something, other times not, but it was secondary to the experience. With poor results came acceptance; with good fortune, appreciation.
When we came home empty-handed, my father always said the same thing: “Bea, it was a beautiful day.”
I was about 12 when we moved into a home on a freshwater canal near Fort Lauderdale. Alligators basked in the sun on the bank. Largemouth bass were plentiful and accommodating: The largest I ever caught from our dock weighed 6 1/2 pounds. A pregnant female with a bulging belly, I let it go.
Early in my newspaper career, I was the outdoors writer for The Miami News and later the Miami Herald. The Herald was one of the largest and most respected dailies in North America at the time, and my position was a dream. Essentially, it called on me to fish and write about it.
Through this, I accompanied and learned from some of the world’s greatest captains and guides: the late Ralph Delph of Key West, Richard Stanczyk of Islamorada and Miami’s Bouncer Smith. I caught too many game fish to mention, but bonefish and tarpon, mahi mahi and sailfish, tuna and wahoo were among them. The latter is one of the fastest fish in the ocean, capable of attaining 100 kilometres an hour.
All of this, of course, turned me into a bit of a fishing snob when I left the subtropics. I moved first to New Brunswick, my wife’s ancestral home. I learned to catch brook trout and attempted, without luck, to fly fish for Atlantic salmon. I reeled in mackerel from the beach behind our sea captain’s house in St. Martins, a village on the Bay of Fundy.
The fishing was nowhere near as satisfying as where I grew up, but I shared my love for it with my then-toddling son, Matthew. He was thrilled when he caught his first small trout. We took it home to show his mother, and then took it to the Coastal Tides Restaurant, where Eunice Patterson, the proprietor, cooked it for him for lunch. Matthew is 21 now and a college student in Boston, and he still loves to fish. It has become somewhat of a tradition for us to go cod fishing at Prince Edward Island over Labour Day weekend.
Work as a journalist took me to New York. I lived in Brooklyn and Queens and, when I arrived, had a chip on my shoulder about fishing in one of the world’s busiest urban environments. I thought: “What a preposterous failure this will be.” I was shocked to catch one striped bass after another the first time I tried. Once, while out with a captain named Nick Savene, I caught dozens of flounder in New York Harbor between the Brooklyn Bridge and Statue of Liberty. I went out on boats on Long Island, and caught big bluefish and blackfish, a bottom-feeder that fights hard and is prized on a dinner plate.
Marty with a 26.5-pound king salmon.courtesy of Marty Klinkenberg/Supplied
In the spring of 2002, I went fishing on a tour out of Prince Rupert, B.C. I caught a 26 1/2-pound king salmon and a handful of halibut. In the months after 9/11, it proved good for the soul.
A new job took me to Edmonton, where I learned to garden but did not fish, despite the urging of my neighbour, Myles. He showed me pictures of the trout and pike he caught and released in summer, and invited me to accompany him, but I never went.
Toronto has plenty of urban fishing spots – but it takes patience to make a catch.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
When work lured me to Toronto last fall, I put fishing on my list of things to do. My gear is in storage in New Brunswick, so I purchased a cheap spinning rod and reel of questionable quality. I got out only once before the temperatures plummeted, but I looked forward to spring and wetting a line again. I studied online and learned Toronto abounds with urban angling opportunities.
As COVID-19 spread and isolation set in, my desire to get outside grew. I live in the city’s east end near Ashbridges Bay and, in May, tried fishing there first. Nothing.
Then I found Tommy Thompson Park at the Leslie Street Spit and tried near it. I had visions of pike and bass and perhaps a wayward salmon. Nothing.
I moved on to Grenadier Pond, the lovely little lake in High Park, an oasis of green space in the west end of Toronto. I got skunked – and this time a red-winged blackbird dive-bombed me and whacked me on the head.
I tried casting from the seawall at the end of Polson Street in the middle of the city’s busy port lands. It offers deep water and a stunning view of the downtown skyline – but apparently no fish.
I found a promising spot adjacent to Tommy Thompson Park and promptly cast my lure into a chain fence. Then I went to Colonel Samuel Smith Park in Etobicoke, in the western part of the city. What a gorgeous place. A lovely beach on Lake Ontario. Walking trails. A turtle pond. Almost immediately, I hooked another lure onto a rock.
Dave Clark, who founded the Toronto Urban Fishing Ambassadors, a volunteer group that helps teach kids to fish, casts his lure while fishing for pike on the Toronto waterfront.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
I was about to give up when I stopped last weekend to try another stretch of shoreline near Cherry Beach, on the north shore of Toronto’s outer harbour. Ducks and geese and gulls and swallows flew near me. Cormorants dived for fish. They did much better than me.
I tried another place nearby and there I bumped into a gregarious fellow named Dave Clark. He was the founding director of the Toronto Urban Fishing Ambassadors, a volunteer group that helps teach kids to fish. He is so devoted to the cause that he poured $30,000 into it in 2012 to get it up and running.
He usually holds several events a summer in public parks and gives each participant a free rod. This year, he has had to cancel them because of the novel coronavirus.
Clark says bass and bullheads, carp and drum, perch and pike, salmon and trout can be caught all across Toronto.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
As we talk, he waits for a carp to bite the hook he has baited with a handful of niblets of corn. He is 52 and has caught nearly 1,000 carp, one as large as 40 pounds, at this very spot. Carp are not exactly the most glamorous species, but they fight hard and there are a lot of them.
Clark baits his hook with a handful of niblets of corn.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Several times, carp splash on the surface close by. A half-hour turns to an hour. An hour to 90 minutes.
There are no bites, so Dave regales me with the tributes of carp.
“I’ve had them break my rods and break my nets," he says. “I have had them take 100 yards of line. They suck up your bait, but the more experienced ones spit it right out. You have a good chance at catching one, but they are smart. You have to be patient.”
He reassures me that I have been fishing in the right spots and am just having poor luck.
“There is always a learning curve,” he says. "And it is more rewarding when you catch something and it is minutes from home.”
He says there are bass and bullheads, carp and drum, perch and pike, and salmon and trout that can be caught all across Toronto.
I will keep trying. I have all summer.
