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Had to share this story:
Up at my wife's family home over the fourth, they have a small creek on their property that is used for irrigation and is dry most of the year, this was a good wet spring/early summer and the creek is quite full, I know some fish make it into the creek but I have never thought much about it.
So my 11 y.o nephew wants to make a fishing pole so I tell him to go get a stick and I will help him, he gets a stick and I grab about 10' of line from my fly vest, tie on the line and a hook and tell him to find a worm, there is a culvert by the house that goes under the road with a deep hole on one side, take him over and tell him to run the worm through the hole, I left his other uncle in charge of the "fishing" while I did some other things, came back awhile later and checked on him, pulled up his line and found that he had taped a rock to the line as weight, taped about 3" from the worm, I tell him to run and grab some more tape as I laughingly take the rock off, he returns and I tell him to tape a new rock on about a foot and a half above the worm.
Leave other uncle in charge as I head to the house to make lunch, about 10 minutes later the door opens and he says he doesn't have to fish anymore, I ask him why without raising my head, he says "cuz I caught one" I look up to see a 15" Brown hanging from his line!! I just busted out laughing and congratulated him, said he wanted to eat it, so showed him how to clean it and I fired it up on the grill for him...epic!
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Good story. Next time you need to take your phone out of your pocket and take a picture of the look on the kid's face. Now you are going to have to show him how to toss a fly with a stick.
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Great story Mike.
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I think it's something like this look:
[inline Bump.jpg]
If I had a dollar for every bluegill I caught as a kid on a stick and line "pole" - I could probably afford some "REEL" equipment!
Nice on the "natural" weight system. Don't poo poo the stones - there's some real potential there. Plus they can be a lead-free alternative.
[inline "Stone Weights.jpg"]
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Great story. Love the tackke system too.[cool]
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When I was about 7 and 8, I lived in Oakland, Ca. There was a park around a place called Lake Merritt (spelling ?) and a friend and I used to get up early on a Saturday morning, make up a bunch of dough balls, sometimes with Velveeta cheese. Ride our bikes the 3 or 4 miles from his house to that park, and catch Bluegill and Sunfish. We couldn't afford real lines, rods, reels, or hooks. We tied kite string to a long stick, sometimes a piece of bamboo if we could find it, tied a bent out safety pin to the string and squished the dough balls onto the "hook". We never caught anything big enough to keep and eat, but we had lots of fun. Think that is where I started learning patience when I was fishing. Was a tough lesson sometimes.
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"OCD = Obsessive Catfish Disorder "
Or so it says on my license plate holder
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When I very first went fishing as a kid, I remember using sticks as rods. Mostly we just caught various chubs and other minnows, but sometimes we'd luck into a small brookie or brown.
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My favorite story along those lines was a fishing trip as a boy scout. We went to a lake for camp and no one brought any fishing tackle. One of us had a survival knife with about 10 feet of line and a hook so we decided to make a go of it. We made a jig out of the hook using a piece of gum in the shape of a white jig. We caught about 10 nice crappie, including one that was over a pound before we ran out of gum. Good times!
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We only had one fishing rod between the four of my brothers so we would take spools of like down to Lindon Marina and sit on the docks and just drop a worm down. Did pretty good for white bass plus it seemed to make the fish fight harder.
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Good story Remo... and... it kinda touched my own diminishing memory bank too.
My first fishin' pole was a stick with 3-4 feet of string and a bent straight pin with a piece of worm -- worked great for up to 3 inchers.
Anybody remember the old telescoping metal fish poles? Mine invariable ended up with a dog-leg in the final section and later that section was completely gone. How about having to have a buddy take your line and worm back across the road so you could "cast" your worm out? I still have scars on the back of my head from being hit with a 2 oz. bell sinker I was trying to cast to a favorite bass hole. There was a lot of math and physics involved in making a cast back then that kids nowadays cannot appreciate.
All great memories but... alas, not much more than footprints in the sands of time... as Mr. Poe would say.
BLK
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Great story Remo. Hopefully the kid is "hooked" now!
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Yeah nice story!I remember catching carp as a kid with one of my buds using a fat branch, like no bend to it. Just a fat stick with string and a bread baited treble.landed some. Lost a lot more. We we're using embroidery type string mind you. We thought we knew what we were doing ha ha! The first fishing memories are golden! Hooked for life since. Then I got a REEL fishing outfit. No more broke lines, or not as many I should say.
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[#0000FF]Telescoping steel poles? Those were my first real fishing rods too. Actually started out with cut willows and a length of cord...not real fishing line. But I did have some real fishing hooks donated by a favorite fishing uncle.
I'm attaching a copy of a short story I put together about one of my formative fishing experiences as a kid in Idaho. Features a steel telescope rod.
[/#0000FF]
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