Fishing, 90s Style: Banana Boats and Questionable Lakes
Photo by There was a time in the 90s when my favorite hobby—other than playing video games—was fishing. I actually owned several tackle boxes, a multitude of lures and hooks, and all the paraphernalia you’d expect: nets, rods, you name it. I had it.
Back then, most of my friends were working part-time jobs—delivery boys, stockroom helpers—anything to make some cash for gas or to keep up with the car payments for the “fancy” cars they thought they could afford. Meanwhile, I was busy with school, studying hard, and trying to keep my grades up because I thought I wanted to pursue an MD/PhD program. By the time I was done studying and my friends were done working, it was already past 10 or 11 at night.
And you’d think that after a long day—me studying, them working—we’d want nothing more than to go to bed. But no. That was actually the best time to go fishing.
We’d call around to see who could drive—not because anyone was drinking (we weren’t), but because not everyone had a car or enough money for gas. We’d pick each other up and then search for a quiet spot to fish.
At the time, I lived in Bergen County, New Jersey, so “quiet” was a relative term. But we had one dependable place: right under Route 46 near a dam. There was enough traffic noise to feel safe and enough aquatic life to keep us coming back almost every night. Just as the sun dipped below the horizon, the fish would start leaping out of the water, almost teasing us. Tempting us.
Catching something, though—that was rare.
Truth is, I was never there for the fish. The water was questionable at best, and I wouldn’t have eaten anything that came out of it. What I really wanted was the feeling: the tug on the line, the rush, that small fight as you try to land whatever creature was down there.
One night, close to 11 p.m., we arrived to find our usual spot crowded—cars everywhere, far more than we had ever seen. When we walked down to the water, we saw about ten people fishing. They were all from Queens, and they had come for the carp.
And then we saw something even stranger: one guy, standing in the water in nothing but his underwear.
He was just coming out when we arrived, shivering a little, but acting like this was all perfectly normal. Next to him, we saw what looked like a log. Only, there had never been logs there before. When I pointed my flashlight at it, I realized that “log” was a massive carp—a fish so big it looked unreal.
My friends and I immediately wanted to know what kind of bait they were using. Meanwhile, I was feeling slightly ashamed of the Walmart plastic worms I had been relying on. These guys, though, were using homemade bait made of shredded wheat cereal mashed with honey.
The consistency of the bait wasn’t strong enough to cast far, so they had designated one guy—the underwear guy—as the swimmer. His job was to take everyone’s baited hooks in his hand, swim to the middle of the lake, drop them in, and swim back. And every single time he returned, everyone felt their lines being tugged. Everyone caught something.
Eventually, I swallowed my pride and asked if they’d share a bit of their bait. I didn’t dare hand my line to the swimmer, but with the little scoop of honey-cereal mash they gave me, I cast as far as I could.
That night, I caught my first (and only) carp.
Even in the nights that followed, when I brought my own shredded-wheat-and-honey bait, I never caught anything close to that again.
We kept fishing regularly, though. It was the 90s, and something else popular at the time was Marlboro Miles—a strange reward program that let you redeem points printed on cigarette packs. My parents smoked, and so did some of my sister’s friends, so we ended up with a mountain of those little coupon squares. We mailed them in, and somehow my family ended up with all sorts of things from the catalog—jackets, cameras, watches.
One of the items we redeemed was a bright yellow inflatable banana boat.
So one night—still determined to catch something from that lake but unwilling to swim in our underwear—we inflated that tiny banana boat. It barely fit one adult, let alone two, but my friend and I squeezed in together, balancing the tackle box between our knees and holding our rods upright like we were in some slapstick comedy.
We paddled out to the middle of the lake around midnight and started fishing from there. We got plenty of bites, and it was clear that the farther you were from shore, the better the chances of catching something. The real problem came when you actually hooked a fish: there was no way to land it in that flimsy banana boat without capsizing.
Still, one night, I hooked something big. We paddled slowly toward the shore, keeping the fish just close enough not to lose it. About three feet from the edge, where the water was shallow enough, my friend got out of the boat with the net. He reached down to scoop the fish—
—and the fish leaped straight out of the water, unhooked itself, and swam away.
Yes, I know fishing stories tend to be embellished, but this one is completely true.
And thanks to that absurd little banana boat, those late-night fishing adventures remain some of my funniest and fondest memories.