It was as hot as it should be in Mississippi as June spilled into July, but Joe Fortunato ignored the sweat beading on his brow and dripping down his neck as he lifted bream after bream out of the lake.
The water of 35-acre Nob Hill Lake was stagnant on a no-breeze morning, but gradually the fish shrugged off their sluggishness. The former Bears linebacker has lived in Natchez since the 1960s. He not only seems to know everyone in town, he knows where to fish. That’s one reason he bought this little private preserve.
“If they don’t bite, you won’t be mad at me?” Fortunato, 76, said the night before as we ate dinner with his wife, Catherine. “Of course, I’ve never been out there where I didn’t catch a fish.”
Certainly that was a reassuring comment on the odds of getting skunked for someone who had traveled 875 miles. The trim Fortunato probably hasn’t had anyone mad at him since he retired in 1966 from a 12-year career with the Bears that included five Pro Bowl seasons. He looks much younger than his age and stays fit by working out on a treadmill and performing minor weightlifting reps.
“Feel that,” he said, holding out his left biceps for a squeeze during the appetizer course. “Pretty good for a man my age.”
Fortunato probably had the same muscularity playing at 6 feet 1 inch and 225 pounds during his Mississippi State and Bears days, when players were much smaller.
He is gracious with those who recognize him around town, offering a smile and a handshake. Fortunato also seems far less intense capturing fish than he did in blasting ballcarriers foolish enough to trespass into his territory, especially during the Bears’ 1963 National Football League title season.
Fortunato had extended the invitation to fish for bream (pronounced “brim” in the South and known as bluegill in the North) months earlier and we finally had connected. Bream was the lake’s specialty, but even with 90-degree temperatures they aggressively chased the crickets we used for bait on 12-foot cane poles that also dangled a small hook and a bobber. Fortunato steered a 14-foot dinghy with a tiny trolling motor and a paddle.
“Oh, that was a nice-sized bream,” Fortunato said of a fish that wriggled free. “Boy, he took it too. If they’re hitting in here, it’s just a ball.”
Fortunato was enthusiastic about every bite and more so about every catch.
The several-inch-long green fish offered increasing cooperation.
“Boy, isn’t that pretty,” Fortunato said, holding up another bream. The fish were light and were not reeled in, but simply raised out of the brackish water. “Boss, we might catch some today. Even if you don’t catch anything, it’s nice and peaceful out here.”
Fortunato, who also has a getaway cabin across the nearby Louisiana border, sometimes fishes this lake on his lunch break from his decades-old business, Big Joe Oil Co., which explores for oil and drills wells.
My bobber sank like a brick.
“You got it! You got it!” Fortunato said. “Sometimes they just take it across the water. Isn’t it fun?”
It was. We were surrounded by trees, had a little shade near shore, and the fish were biting. Fortunato labeled just about every bream caught a “pretty” one and teased me when I didn’t keep pace.
“C’mon now,” he cajoled, “I’m getting ahead of you.”
We slipped up to a pool that was half-shaded by overhanging branches and Fortunato eyed it.
“It looks fishy,” he said.
Good hunch. We slammed them, hauling in three bream in the quarter-pound range, my biggest one biting hard.
“I thought he was going to take it out of your hand,” Fortunato said.
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When Fortunato completed his 16-interception career with the Bears, he stayed with the club for two years as an assistant coach. But his business connections were in Mississippi. He stays in touch long distance with old teammates such as Doug Atkins, Rick Casares, Johnny Morris and Ed O’Bradovich, and he wears his Bears championship ring.
“I miss Chicago in a way, but this is a beautiful town,” Fortunato said of the community of 20,000 famed for its antebellum homes.
He does root for the Bears, though.
“Oh, yeah, I’ll be a Bears fan till I die,” he said. “I watch every game they play.”
Catherine has persuaded Fortunato to take more trips to Chicago in recent years.
During one autograph appearance, Fortunato said he signed 900 times. Catherine said she would like to see her husband get the call from the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Whenever she meets a football-connected person, she brings it up and occasionally writes letters.
Fortunato seemed uncomfortable with the topic and said, “Oh, Catherine.”
In the meantime, Fortunato might get nominated for the fishing hall of fame. Three hours on the water produced 30 fish, 25 of them keepers.
He looked down at the pile of bream in a cooler.
“That’s a pretty good mess,” Fortunato said. “Aren’t they pretty, pard?”
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