When I was just a kid, my dad took me fishing several times each summer. I don’t recall my first time going but I do know that I loved it and it was what I looked forward to at the end of each school year. I actually became quite depressed when I started seeing “back to school” ads on TV because I knew my fishing days were almost over. Strangely, we never went fishing any time of the year but the summer. Ice fishing was foreign to me.
At any rate, my dad taught me what I call “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. 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. 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 was taught, and all I knew existed.
As I got older I started fishing with a cousin of mine who had the same passion of fishing as I did. We fished constantly. 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.
Anyway, we watched lots of fishing shows and mailed away for all the free offers where we got magazines and free lures. We weren’t exactly sure how to use these lures at all, but it was exciting to see all the different things that people used to catch fish other than the rigs, hookers and sinkers that we were used to.
My collection of lures, mostly surface bass lures, grew quickly from the free offers and I ended up with a collection worth probably 2-300 dollars. For some reason, topwater lures just appealed to me. 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…