Reeling In Time with Fish Tales. Brian E. Smith

      “Hold this straight up, Champ,” he told me as he took a can of corn and the can opener. He cut the lid so it was hanging on to the can by a thread of metal. He drained the corn juice on the ground. “Let’s switch.” He gave me the corn can and took the cone of newspaper with the breadcrumbs. We walked down to the left side of the point together. By snapping his wrist sharply, he scattered breadcrumbs five to ten feet off the bank as we walked along the water’s edge until the breadcrumbs ran out. We backtracked along the shore doing the same thing with the corn in a more hit and miss pattern. Dad used the lid as a choke to keep all the corn from going out in one toss.

      Some pretty white ducks were swimming toward us when we were putting out the corn.

      “You have to use a fish-call that sinks quickly, otherwise you’re putting out a duck-call, and a duck-call, when fishing, can lead to trouble,” Dad told me. The ducks swam around where we had tossed out the fish-call, but soon lost interest when there was nothing for them.

      “When are we going to start fishing, Dad?” I repeated.

      “Let’s go get the fishing poles and bait; I’ll explain the fishing rigs while the fish-call works.” He picked up my fishing pole from the picnic table. “Do you know what this is and what it does?” He pointed to a pencil-shaped piece of Styrofoam pinned to the fishing line.

      “It’s the thing that lets you know when you have a bite, right?” I asked.

      “You’re headed in the right direction.” He went on to tell me by many names such as cork, float, bobber, tip up, and even a strike indicator by fly fishermen. He explained that bobbers come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, depending on their application, and always to use the smallest bobber necessary. However, the important thing to remember is that they all do the same job, and that is to keep the fish bait suspended in the water at the depth you want.

      “How do you set the depth, Dad?” I asked.

      He explained that most fixed bobbers have the fishing line pass through the middle and use a wood or plastic peg to pinch the line and bobber together. He showed me the peg on my bobber, and how by removing the peg, the bobber could slide up or down to change depth.

      “Today, we’re going to be fishing close to the bank. The water is three to four feet deep, so we set the bobbers to keep our bait two feet or so below the water.”

      “This is called a split shot,” as he pointed to a BB bump of lead pinched on the fishing line six inches above the hook. “Son, what does it do?”

      “It makes the bait sink, Dad,” I said with confidence.

      “You’re right, but it also makes the end of your line heavier so you can cast further. Champ, if you put too much lead under your float, what will happen?”

      It took me some time before my eyes popped wide open, “Sink!” He gave me a high five.

      “Hooks are important, Champ.” He told me hooks come in more shapes and sizes than bobbers do. “We’ll talk all about hooks later, but in a nutshell…,” he said, “you need to create balance. You have to consider the bait you’re using and the fish you’re after or most likely to catch. For example, today, we’re fishing with small bait for hand-sized bream, so the hook needs to be on the small side. Keep in mind, bream tend to inhale the bait deep, so a long shank hook will help with hook removal.” He pointed to the hook he tied on our lines “Champ, this is an Aberdeen #8, it is strong and small enough to catch bream, yet light enough so the bait we’re putting on remain alive and act natural.” I know I had a glazed look on my face when Dad said, “Champ, I just planted a seed in your noggin so one day you’ll figure it out without realizing you had even given it thought. Just remember balance.”

      Dad cut the lid off the other can of corn before we walked down to the shore with the worm bucket, cricket cage, and tackle box. We set up on the left side of the bank where Dad started the fish-call. He flipped the worm bucket upside down, taking off the lid. Sure enough, the worms were on top. He ran my hook twice through a fat worm.

      “Go ahead and toss it out.” When he dropped that green flag, I fired off about thirty feet of line from my reel toward the middle of the lake. With a slight smile and nod he said, “Been practicing, I see!” I smiled back and said nothing, just glad he noticed. He pinned a worm on his hook, flipped it just ten feet from the bank and the bobber sank.

      “Too much sinker on your line, Dad,” I grinned when I said it. He pulled a fat bream out. My face spoke for me.

      “You over-shot the fish, Champ. The fish-call brought them to us. Reel yours in about twenty feet.” I did it with speed and my bobber sank. “Set the hook, Champ!” I heard him say as I ran up the bank past him. I stopped at the picnic table. That poor fish had left a slime-trail in the grass for the first fifteen feet before it ran out of slime.

      “I got ’em, I got ’em!” I squealed, jumping as if I were a gold medalist of some sort, raising the fishing pole in the air, Stanley Cup style. Dad came along in a minute, fish in one hand, fishing pole in the other. He dropped both down, grabbing me up.

      “Way to go, Champ!” We celebrated that bream as if the International Game Fish Association (IGFA) were honoring my catch!

      Dad and I walked back to the lake with our fish still dangling from our fishing lines. Dad pulled a nylon stringer from his tackle box. The stringer was just a heavy cord with a metal ring on one end and a four-inch metal spike crimped to the other. He unhooked his fish first. While he still had his fish in hand, he slipped the metal spike underneath the gill plate, out the fish’s mouth, and ran the spike back through the ring to secure his fish to the end of the stringer. Holding the spike end of the stringer, he tossed his fish into the lake, dropped the spike end, and stepped on it, holding it solidly to the ground.

      “Champ, let me show you something.” I came up to him with my fish that was barely flipping and worn out. A foot above the fish, Dad pinched the line between his thumb and forefinger on his right hand. Using his left hand, he formed a circle around the line with his thumb and forefinger; he then slid his left hand down the line and let it form over the fish until he had a firm grasp on the fish with just its head sticking out from his hand. “Did you see how that worked?”

      “Dad, you just grabbed the fish; what’s the big deal?”

      “Watch.” He let go of the fish. “Did you see that?” He pointed out that when he let go, the fish stuck its dorsal (top), pectoral (side), and pelvic (bottom) fins out. “Those fins are sharp as needles; they’re a defense mechanism to protect the fish. As long as the fish doesn’t have teeth, sliding the fish through your hand like this—he did it again—brushes the fins down so they won’t poke you.”

      “It’s always something new, isn’t it, Dad?” I sighed.

      “Let’s do some more fishing!” And we did! The game was on, no more explaining things. Well, almost. He told me to reel the fish in and not take it for a sprint up the bank again.

      Dad pinned a couple more worms on our hooks and we couldn’t finish a sentence before one cork would be yanked down, then the next. It went on and on as long as there was bait in the water. Some of the fish were big enough to go on the stringer, but most were a bit smaller and we tossed them back. It didn’t matter what size the fish was; every one of them was fun to catch.

      “What about those crickets, Dad?”

      “You’re right, Champ, I’ve been a touch lazy. We went through the trouble to get them and bring them. Let me show you how to use them correctly. When I have a bird in the hand, it is hard to go for the one in the bush, Champ. The worms were catching fish so well, I kept using them.” The cricket tube was lying next to the worm bucket. “Quick, let me show you something.” I could tell by his tone and action that this wasn’t going to be a long drawn out lesson. Dad had fishing fever.

      “Pull the cork, shake one of the critters down the funnel into the palm of your hand, then loosely close your hand around the cricket, turn the tube pointy end up, and replace the cork. Always replace