Being mid-summer, and hot as hell outside, I thought it might be fun to talk about one of America's great past times...fishing. I have fished my whole life; oceans, lakes, rivers, streams, ponds, if its got fish in it, and even when it doesn't apparently have fish in it, I have wet a line. At a certain point even hanging with commercial fishermen. It is a great sport, hobby and/or way of life. Thank God...
Here are my most memorable fishing experiences. All of which are true, you know, being fishing stories...
At #10, going on a canoe trip with a good fishing buddy and a new friend (and to this day a very good friend) and his brother for a 6 hour float on what one could consider challenging for a novice. The brothers, both city slickers, had never been in a canoe. We were their guides of sorts.
My canoe buddy says to me 1 mile into the trip that he has lost his keys. We tell the brother's boat we are going back(up stream) because he knows where he dropped them and we will catch up with them. Of course the keys were not there. We walk country roads until we find a firehouse. One good gent calls his wife who is out shopping and thank god picks us up and takes us back to my buddy's truck which entailed me riding in the back of the station wagon with the dogs...no problem. Oh, and by now my buddy has accidentally snapped my rig in two.
Well, here is what the brothers unaccompanied by their guides thought was going to happen over the course of the 6 hours...Suburban Guys Like You or Your Neighbor
#9 as a young lad, accompanying my uncle during his "commercial fishing" which meant lots of treading water with the instruction to drop the stringer if I saw a game warden or shark..
#8, fishing with Wendy on the back of the houseboat in her vintage red silk pajamas, Guinness in one hand, fine cigar in the other..God I miss those days....btw that was Wendy with the Guinness and cigar. ;)
#7, fishing dam tailwaters with a bunch of other fishermen. Many of which were there to feed their families. The dam horn blew and the last gates closed leaving standing "ponds" that were completely filled with fish. The fishermen grapped the buckets they were sitting on, ran into the dry river bed and started scooping up fish! I wandered out into the pools. It was like being in an aquarium with no windows. The fish would move away as you moved, still just inches away. Absolutely fascinating until the horn blew again and they raised a gate to wash all the fish downstream sending us running for our lives.
#6, my father (ya, I'm going there, ;), after telling me to not change this expensive lure over the boat,and I did exactly that, and dropped it into the water unintentionally, and when he told me to get out of the boat, I did, including having all of the fishing poles in the boat and their lures snagged to my life vest go with me..
#5, fishing with my uncle in the Gulf again. Being an infamous fisherman/pirate, I asked him how he would pilot charter sailboats all the way to Key West..his response? Pull out and turn left..
#4, being in a smaller urban area with a river where there are restaurants advertising a slang term for a type of fish sandwich that I know the distributors are not selling but is harvested and sold nonetheless.
#3, with our families up the hill, my buddy and I decided to check on our lines. When we got back to the dock his entire rig was gone with the fish. He picked up the bottom fisher rig, cast it out for 5 minutes, and reeled in his pole and a nice striper bass. Never saw that before....
#2, wading in a small river, backing up to what I thought was a rock, like all of the other rocks in the water, until the rock moved and I was face to face with a huge mean ass snapping turtle.
#1, ran out of bait and headed back to camp. I stumbled upon a black racer snake with a frog in it's mouth. I picked up the snake and tried to get the frog out to use as bait. Not wanting to hurt the snake, I took my flask of Jack Daniels and poured a tiny amount into the snake's mouth. It dropped the frog and I placed the snake back into the water. I baited the hook and just when ready to cast felt a tap on my leg. It was the snake with two frogs in its mouth...
Happy Fishing!