Gone Fishin
When I was just a kid, my dad took me fishing several times each summer. The fishing trips were the highlight of my summer and I looked forward to the end of the school year. Strange, I don’t remember my first time fishing but I do recall practicing casting in my backyard on the days that my dad didn’t take me. The end of the summer, when talks of going back to school began, were always really depressing for me. If I recall, it was my only real passion. For some reason, we just didn’t go fishing through the school year, which now seems strange to me.
I was taught one fishing technique only, which I later called “still fishing”. We would simply sit in one spot on a lawn chair and cast our line and wait for the fish to bait. It’s seriously all we ever did. I think it’s all my dad knew. Our lines were equipped with spreaders or pickerel rigs with a couple of hooks and a sinker. We always fished with live bait, which were usually worms that we caught the night before which was part of the fun. Occasionally we used minnows but not too often. Those days are unforgettable. It was always a crap shoot what we would catch which made it exciting. It wa always morning fishing that we did and we always used the same exact methods. It’s all I knew.
Well, eventually we stopped fishing together and I started fishing with my cousin who shared the passion. I got my own tacklebox and fishing rod and we even started making our own rigs which we called KayBee Rigs. My first initial is K and his is B so that was our clever name. We learned of other ways to fish but figured we could only try them from a boat or in a pond (yeah very naive) so we continued to “still fish” and had a blast.
When we weren’t fishing we watched lots of fishing shows. We took advantage of a lot of the free offers and got several free magazines and fishing lures. We really had no clue how to use lures really but we were excited to get them and not have to pay anything for them, not even shipping!
Over the course of a summer I ended up with a huge collection of surface bass baits, worth hundreds. I ended up having to buy a bigger box to handle all the lures that were being shipped to my house. These lures stayed dry in the box for many years. I wasn’t confident fishing them, I really didn’t know how. Years later I finally started fishing them and what a whole different experience for me!
To be continued…
Tags: fishing, fishing magazine, fishing shows, free lures