Fishing story

I was sitting on the bank fishing one cool morning. When I saw a tug on my line. I jumped to my feet, and grabbed my pole. My heart was pounding, and I stared at the line in the water. Looking at the end of the pole I saw no movement. The fish was gone, so I sat back down and waited. After a few minutes I saw another big tug on the line. This time it bent the pole way down. I jumped as fast as I could, grabbed the pole and gave it a big jerk. The line went slack. Darn it got away I thought with wild thought still running through my mind.

This time I’m not sitting down I thought. I’ll stand right here and wait. After what seamed like an hour. I felt a tug on the line. I whipped back on the pole as hard and fast as I could. Then heard the reel humming as the line fed off. My heart was pounding again, and thoughts were racing through my mind. The fish was going up the river. I knew that I would soon be out of line then it would break, so I started running up the bank. Cranking the reel as I went. Climbing over a large bolder, and then a log. I was getting a little line back when I tripped and fell to the ground. I got back up, and pulled back on the pole. The line was slack. Slowly reeling back in my line, will thoughts of anger ran through my head. I was mad as hell for letting the biggest fish I ever hooked get away.

Then out of nowhere the pole took a big jerk, and line was humming off the reel. It was still there, and now it was going down the river. I’m not letting you get away this time I thought. Then took off running down the bank. I chased the fish way down the river to a wide deep spot. I was breathing hard, and starting to get tired. I was tugging and reeling. I would get some line then the fish would take some line. It went back and forth until my arms started to tire. I thought to my self. No way am I giving up the biggest fish I ever hooked. I will fight it tell my arms fall off before I give up. Little by little I was getting him in. Looking down I could see him in the water. He was huge probably the biggest fish I ever saw. As I got him closer to the bank I saw something hanging out of his mouth. Then he let go of it, and swam off. My pole whipped back, and the thing that was in his mouth jumped out of the water. It hit me right in the face.

It took me a minute figure out what happened. Looking at the end of my line I saw the peace of leather that was in the fishes mouth. The hook was hooked tight into it, as I tried to take it off I saw writing on it. It read “I learned this trick at timebomb2000. Thanks for the lunch and fun.”

Hey, that was great, Wacko.

I fished a few times. I didn't have a clue what I was doing, but my buddy Phil hauled me out to the lake and stuck a pole in my hands. Holding it across my chest like a rifle, I lurked along the shore thinking, "Now if I were a fish, where would I hide?"

I found it! A dark place next to a boulder. That's it, that's where I would hide if I were a fish. I dropped the line into the water, hit a bluegill in the face, and hooked him through the nose. Phil was very appreciative of my success, although it looked kinda puny to me. I unhooked it and put it back.

We fished together often, catching nothing. That was ok, we had nothing better to do. At one point we went up into the mountains in search of trout. We came to a lake that had been drained for some reason. The water was so low the trout looked like they were crawling over each other. No point in wasting bait, we tied a line to a net and threw it into the water. The idea was to wait until a fish swam across the net, then pull it out with the line. But net had an aluminum handle, and it floated. I selected a rock just heavy enough to make it sink. Back in the water with it. Wait. Wait. Finally a fish swam lazily across our little trap. But I hadn't noticed that the line was under the rock. I yanked on the line, the fish was thrown two feet into the air, and I caught the rock in the net! At that point we gave up and went into town to get some hamburgers.

Another time we took our lunch with us, knowing in our hearts we weren't going to catch any fish. We took hot dogs. So we cooked a couple of them and took a bite. Eeeeyuck! These things were not fit for human consumption! Phil looked at the package and started laughing insanely. He was laughing so hard he couldn't tell me what it was about. All he could say was, "BEEF LIPS! HA HA HA! BEEF LIPS! HA HA HA!" I looked at the package. The first thing in the list of ingredients was BEEF LIPS! So tried to catch some catfish with this junk. Catfish will eat anything, right? Wouldn't touch it! We ended up swizzling this crap in the shallows. Crawdads would latch onto the meat and we could slowly slip a pan under them. We were seriously hungry by this time. We caught a dozen crawdads for each of us, cut the tails off, and boiled them. They were delicious, just like lobster, except for the sand. You're supposed to let them sit in a bucket of water for a couple hours to pass the sand. We didn't know that.

After two years like this, I finally decided to learn something about fishing. So I bought a book by Consumer Reports. It was very informative. I decided what I needed was a five foot pole, 4 lb line, certain kinds of lures, etc. I spent $75 on this rig, quite a chunk of change in those days. Phil razzed me constantly about this foolish expenditure. "I don't know why you spent all that money. The fish don't know what kind of a pole you got," he kept saying.

So I start fishing here, and he goes over there. I guess he didn't want to associate with me and my hifalutin equipment. I see a large mouth bass in about four feet of water, swimming slowly back and forth, like a duck in a shooting gallery. I rig up a 1/4 ounce jig with a plastic thingy that "looks like a living, breathing thing!" (That's how Consumer Reports described it.) As the fish swam by, I jiggled it in his face. He ignored it. So I got more aggressive: when he swam by I jerked it up as if to attack him. He snapped at it, missed, and kept swimming back and forth just like he was following rails. This went on for half an hour, until he accidently caught the thing and I had him.

I had him! I didn't even know how to act. "Phill!" I screamed, "I've got one, come help me!" Phil was ignoring me. The rocks I was standing on suddenly seemed slippery, although they hadn't been before. I reeled as hard as I could, since bass are well known for throwing a hook. But I managed to get one hand on my net, and when he came to the surface I arrested him. It was the only fish either of us had caught in two years!

Suddenly Phil was beside me. "Wow, nice fish! That's really nice. Say, what kind of a rod is that? What kind of lure are you using? Where'd you get this stuff?"

Two weeks later I put my fishing gear out in a yard sale and sold it. And I never went to a lake with Phil again.

I’ve herd it said if you give a man a fish he can eat for a day, but if you teach him to catch a fish. He will sit in a boat all day and drink beer.