HOW OLD IS OLD ENOUGH TO FISH?

I have been fishing since I was old enough to hold a fishing pole. As I have said before my 2 sons will tell you that we were still using sharpened sticks at that time, still not true. We already had cane poles. In our family we got fishing poles at a very early age along with BB guns when you were strong enough to cock them, even if you had to hold the stock between your feet and pull up the lever with both hands. And no, we never put out anyone’s eye, which was always our mothers greatest fear. But back to fishing. In those days fishing was a little different. Most fishing trips were impromptu. We rolled the back window down on the old Buick straight eight and headed out with the cane poles sticking out of the window. When we got to the fishing hole we bailed out the old wooden boat, which was the only bail out we knew of in those days. We threw the Firestone 3.5 horse power motor on the back of the boat along with the paddles. No life preservers, yet we survived. The old Firestone had no reverse, no neutral only forward as I have stated before, you just started it and made sure you were headed where you wanted to go. We have come a long way since then. Today when you go to Walmart or Academy, or Tackle Town you will see mind boggling rows and rows of lures. In my day we had a limited number of lures to choose from. My lure collection was basically the Hawaiian Wiggler, the Hula Popper, the Heddon Spook, and the Jitterbug. By today’s standards none of these looked like they should catch fish, but they did. The Heddon Spook looked more like a Halloween decoration than something that would catch fish. It was black with something that looked like a fish skeleton on both sides. But it caught fish. The jitterbug was my favorite because of the noise it made when you retrieved it.

These lures didn’t look like any living thing that I have ever seen but as I said before, they caught a lot of fish. Lures nowadays look so real especially the shrimp, that you don’t know whether to fish with them or dip them into cocktail sauce. And fishing attire what a change! In my day we wore shorts, a t shirt and a baseball cap. There was no 100 dollar amber or polarized sunglasses with lanyards. We went to the five and dime and bought a pair of sunglasses for 6 bits. That is 75 cents for you younger generation. The other day we were going fishing and my son said “You are not going fishing without your Magellan shirt are you?”

The only Magellan I knew of back in the day was Ferdinand Magellan, who discovered the 1000 Islands or something and I always wondered did he actually count them. I guess I wasn’t paying attention is history anyway, because that cute little girl named Deanna with the pigtails sat right in front of me. I just guess that Ferdinand was just trying to impress Queen Isabella and “one up” Vasco De Gama so that he would keep his government funding. Some things just never change. We didn’t have a GPS or a fish finder either and if we found a good fishing spot we just marked a big X on the side of the boat so that we could find it next time. As the songwriter once said “Those were the days my friend, we thought they’d never end.”

Thought for the day As Stephen Wright once said,” If at first you don’t succeed then sky diving is not for you.”