My dad and I went fishing together a lot in the summers when I was a kid, as I’m sure is the case for lots of fishermen. 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.
At any rate, my dad taught me what I call “still fishing”. Basically you pick a spot at the river and cast in your line and wait for a bite. The line had either a pickerel rig or a spreader with a couple of hooks and a sinker. We used worms usually but occasionally we would go get minnows as well. I had such a great time. We didn’t specifically target any particular type of fish, but in a way, that was the exciting part. We never knew what we were pulling up. It could’ve been any of almost a dozen different species of fish. We always fished in the early mornings and used the exact same methods. It’s all I was taught, and all I knew existed.
Well, eventually we stopped fishing together and I started fishing with my cousin who shared the passion. That’s when I bought my own fishing rod and tacklebox. My cousin and I even designed our own rigs which we called KayBee Rigs, which were just some sort of spreader. 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!
My collection of lures, mostly topwater bass fishing lures, grew quickly from the free offers and I ended up with a collection worth probably 2-300 dollars. 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…
