Fishing...Man's favorite sport, so I've gathered. Well, maybe not every man's favorite sport, but certainly one I've been quite fond of for many years. My love affair with it began many years ago when I was just a little feller. Seems we went on a church outing someplace, I think it was on the banks of Poteau River in southeastern Oklahoma, and most everyone brought along a fishing pole. I could not have been more than four or maybe five years old, but I can still recall flashes of memories standing on a steep muddy bank throwing out my baited line that was connected to a seven or eight foot long cane pole. The old bobber simply sat there somewhat motionless in the slack water. There were lots of people lining the bank, some casting with fancy fishing rigs, but most simply using the old tried and true cane pole method. Not sure what bait I used, probably worms, but I do remember seeing minnow buckets dangling from the bank into the water several feet below. After what seemed like a very long time, someone, one of the men I think, walked by and asked where my cork bobber was. I said I didn't know, it went under a little while ago. He said lift your line up and to my amazement, a fish was dangling from the other end. I have no idea what kind it was, it was just a fish, but lots of folks sure made a big fuss over me catching that smelly old thing...and thus my career as a fisherman began.
A few years later on what was my 7th birthday I believe, my grandparents actually came to visit us and we went to some local park where there was a little creek with a bridge crossing it. My grandfather gave me a long package wrapped in brown paper. Of course I asked him what it was and he just smiled and said it was a flag pole we were going to setup at the park. I believed him of course and eventually after we set up the picnic table with whatever food and birthday cake we had, they all called me over and told me it was time to set up the flag pole. I was all excited and ripped open the long package. To my astonishment, there was no flag pole. Instead there was a brand new Zebco 202 fishing rod and reel. Like a dummy I asked where the flag pole was. After they all stopped laughing, my grandfather told me there was no flag pole, but that fishing rod and reel was all mine, a birthday present, and I could fish the creek below the little bridge if I wanted to. It took me all of three seconds to rush over there. I suppose I just naturally knew how to use that rig for I spent quite a while throwing the hook and bobber into the water...never caught anything if I recall, but every cast was filled with anticipation.
That rig also came with a hookless practice plug, and after we left I'd spend hours throwing that thing as far as I could throw it then reeling it in. The first thing each morning, I'd grab that fishing rig and head outside so I could cast it and begged my dad to take me fishing again. Eventually he did, on occasion, but he was trying to finish his college degree that had been interrupted by World Was II and he didn't have a lot of free time, or money, to take me very often.
Over the next several years my fishing exploits were sporadic and fell somewhat into a drought, but the drought was broken when my grandmother's brother, Uncle Manly, took me and my brother fishing one summer morning to a favorite farm pond of his. Said the pond was full of crappie and bass. By this time I had graduated to a newer, more advance fishing rod and reel, a classic True Temper brand, with a blue fiberglass rod and a bait casting reel filled with a few yards of braided fishing line. We over slept of course, and Uncle Manly got patiently irritated with us, but we managed to arrive at the pond just before sunrise.
He extracted the sections of cane pole from his trunk and with the patience of a master fisherman, and in spite of arthritic fingers, attached a hook, bobber, and a minnow. I was too advanced to use such archaic fishing techniques and began to throw my Lazy-Ike fishing plug. Before he made his first toss, I must have cast a dozen times...no catches. He smiled and flipped the line out about 20 feet or so, and before the bobber settled, a huge crappie gobbled his minnow and he pulled it in. I turned the surface of the pond into a froth with that Lazy-Ike, still no catches, but he simply hooked another minnow on, gave it a quick toss...and within a few seconds landed a second nice crappie. After his third or fourth catch, I humbly asked him if I could use one of his minnows, and of course he said sure thing. A few seconds after tossing it about 30 feet out, boom, my first catch of the morning.
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| Classic Lazy-Ike like the one I had |
This pattern continued until the sun got too high and the fish simply quite biting. I did manage to catch a couple with the Lazy-Ike, but I was taught a big lesson about fishing that morning, and I understood more clearly what being humbled really meant. We caught a good stringer of fish that morning and I caught my first glimpse of what it meant to be a real fisherman and the other values associated with the quest to catch a fish. I kept that old Lazy-Ike lure for many years and caught a lot of fish with it, but on a float trip down the Buffalo River in Arkansas, I, against my better judgement, cast it into a nice looking pool and true to its fish catching ability, I hooked a nice smallmouth bass. A few seconds later, the line snapped and the fish and my vintage lure were gone.
That old True Temper fishing rod and reel served me well during the summer. My summertime friend Geary, whose grandmother lived across the road from my grandparents, and I would get into all kinds mischief together. We'd hound my grandmother or his to take us out to Wister Lake so we could fish below the spillway, which was a great place to catch all sorts of fish, black bass and white bass, to drum and buffalo and even carp, catfish, or gar. One day my grandmother took us out there and simply left us, we were both probably about 8 or 9, unheard of today to leave kids like that, but we were excited. We had no food, no water, just a paper sack with a few hooks, bobbers, and sinkers inside. We waded a shallow area onto a gravel bar that offered a perfect location to cast into the current created by the outflow coming from the dam. Geary had made a DIY dip net out of an old screen door where he had extracted the screen, tied some string to each corner, and placed a rock in the middle to make it sink.
We'd wade over to a shallow area where some minnows were swimming, drop the net into the water and wait a few minutes for the minnows to return, then lift the contraption. Each time we'd catch 2 or 3 minnows, toss them into a minnow bucket, then do it again. After a few attempts we'd end up with a dozen or more free minnows.
Curiously, an old timer had waded across onto that same gravel bar. He had one of those tackle boxes that opened up into 3 or 4 levels of trays and he carried 3 or 4 fishing rods with fancy rod holders he plugged into the gravel. Geary and I would attach a minnow to our hooks. Using a heavy lead weight attached a few feet above the hook, we'd cast way out into the current which was strong enough to bounce the weight and minnow along the bottom. Ever so often we'd reel in the line and recast. On one such cast, I felt a heavy jolt on the rod and when I started to reel it in, it felt like it was hung up, but then it started to pull back. Whatever was on the other end was so large and in that current, that old True Temper reel's drag could not keep up and it stripped out almost all of my line and bent the pole almost doubled over. I was unable to reel it in. Geary dropped his rod and grabbed the line and pulled it in by hand as I took up the slack. After awhile, we dragged a giant buffalo, or maybe a drum, I'm not sure which, onto the gravel bank. We were jumping up and down...and that old timer simply watched us in amazement. That was the single biggest fish I've ever caught of any kind. All afternoon we continued to catch fish like that until my grandmother showed up to take us home. Cannot recall if that old timer with all the fancy gear ever caught anything, but I don't think he did.
My eye instantly locked in on the scene and I extracted my camera from its watertight container. The light was low, very low, and I had to shoot at a very slow shutter speed in relation to the 300mm lens focal length being employed, even after boosting the ISO up a notch or two. I fired off several shots trying to hold the camera steady, hoping that at least one of the images would not be blurred by camera shake. The fishing that morning was excellent and I enjoyed those few hours alone with nature. When I returned home and started to browse through the few images I took, I locked onto that first series with the heron. Although I caught several nice bass that morning, that one photo turned out to be the best catch of the day.
Those days afield during the early years when I learned about the sport of fishing were some of the best teaching moments of my young life. During those years more than fishing skills were engrained into my world, things like self reliance, adaptability, persistence, strength of character, and respect for what nature has to offer. As the photo of the heron demonstrates, the most important thing I learned about fishing can be summed up in one phrase: There's more to fishing than catching fish.
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