When I was a kid, my mom, dad and I liked to eat fish alot. My Aunt Skip and Uncle Everette Elmquist from Des Moines, Iowa--used to fish ‘sunnies,’ bluegills, mostly, and catch them by the dozens. Everette would clean ‘em and freeze ‘em in water in waxed half-gallon paper milk cartons in their deep freeze, stocking up for those long Iowa winter months. They’d give the folks a few cartons too, for Mom to thaw out and fry up in a little Crisco oil, rolled in flour, salt and pepper. We’d squeeze on a squirt or two of fresh lemon juice, and eat them, slowly picking out the fine bones. There was never any hurry eating fish. They existed just to satisfy your palate.
Know anybody who goes fishing obsessively? I'll bet they’ve got a huge tacklebox or two, plus wildly expensive rods and reels for each type of fish they’re after, each combination specialized with particular hooks, lures, line, and backup reels. They probably have specialized fishing boats costing hundreds of thousands of dollars with wild glittering colors inlaid with exotic fish scales from their fishing trips all over the world, on-line fishing apps on their on-board computers with large TV-sized monitors, plus hard copy waterproof, maps of each lake its depths, shallows, contours, shoals, and currents as well as information about underwater structures, natural and manmade, in addition to fish within their vicinity and in some models, approaching the bait or lure.
These individuals have special scent-free clothing, wear special scent-free gloves and boots. They paint their faces to look like scales with big dark, oversize eyes, their cheeks to look like gills, and their mouths like they are sporting either little tiny sharp teeth or fangs like those of a musky, northern pike, or walleye.
Well, I’m not one of them. It took months to get that face paint off and until then I was shunned by everyone who thought I had some kind of strange, scaly, wide-eyed affliction or an adult addiction to Halloween.
Few people these days realize it, but when I was but a kid, I was taught to fish by cousins who, although they were the forerunners of the full time/year around fishing craze that hit the country thirty years later, they never seemed to have their act together when it came to the big day. They had tackle boxes with lots of different lures in it, some they salvaged off river debris when the water was low, with old fishing line still attached, and some of the lures with the paint worn off or rusty. And they had some little wooden ones, and some gigantic hooks they said were for whales. I didn’t believe that. And they had some lures that were as big as small fish, long skinny wood ones, they said were for ‘dark houses’ that they used during the winter when they said they’d cut big square holes in the ice and spear fish that came to them. I didn’t believe that either until I read about that kind of fishing years later. And they didn’t have just one fishing pole, they had dozens and they’d get tangled up together and you had to be careful you didn’t get a hook in your finger because some of the hooks had old dried-up worms or minnows on them and you could get an infection.
My cousins were the guys whose boat motor wasn’t checked out prior to the fishing trip so after all the equipment was loaded, all the groceries purchased, all the sleep lost on the road the night before the morning we drifted down the river heading for the rocks, one of them would have to pull the starter rope repeatedly trying to get the little engine started--while the other swore it was such a good starting motor ‘last year,’ and he didn’t know what could be wrong with gasoline that smelled like varnish, and why none of these old sparkplugs would work, and weren’t all the same size, then muttered he must have used them tryin’ to fix the lawnmower, and oh yeah, he meant to fix that big ol' primer bulb on the fuel line, and remembered he had forgotten the outboard toolbox on the tailgate of the truck--at home, and how it would’ve been alot better if we had two oars aboard instead of one short canoe paddle ... and how it looked like it was goin’ to storm...
“No, you were supposed to load the life jackets!”
I didn’t want to be like those guys even though I loved them dearly and so admired their True North Minnesota outdoorsmen lifestyle up here. When I grew up, I wanted to be prepared for fishing trips down wilderness rivers. I wanted my fishing boat and motor ready to go before we got away from the dock or our lines in the water. I’d have enough tackle to outfit a family if necessary, because, as a boy, I was always losing tackle in the weeds or rocks along the shore, or in trees, or powerlines overhead, or my line would break and I’d waste minnows or worms.
I’d get bored--or sick to my stomach--bobbing around in a boat on the lake. I much preferred walking a riverbank, even if I’d slip and plunge into the water accidently. I’ve been stung by bees after disturbing their nests, and jumped into the river to get away from them even though I couldn’t swim very well. I’ve been bit by millions of mosquitoes and smelled like ‘Off’ repellent long after summer was gone.
I’ve waded into off-river currents below dams and cast with water at my chest, and sometimes even caught fish as a result. I relished fishing after the sun went down and walking back to my car with a few northerns stuck through the gills with a forked stick. Can’t say I’ve caught many bass. Walleyes are fun to catch, but I don’t care if I ever eat another one. I don’t see the specialness in them, (although I did buy two orders of deep-fried walleye fingers at the Outpost Bar & Grill in Deer River last year. Those were great!)
Pan fried northerns are much tastier to me than walleyes, despite the bones. I was never in much hurry to eat that I couldn’t take the time to watch out for bones. I like smoked or pickled fish on occasion, or burbots in beer batter too. I’ve cleaned my share of fish, especially smelt, but would win no races against a guide, Native or even a kid anymore.
Then I could imagine all that boat and equipment maintenance, I’d have, and on top of that, the fancy truck and 5th wheel camper payments. I knew I would have to have ceramic brake pads all the way around on all of my wheels to keep corrosive brake dust from messing up my fancy rims, and then of course I would have to invest in tire and wire cosmetic/UV protectorant sprays requiring microfiber pads and towels. Then every six months I would have to upgrade my fishing map apps, and soon my OS would be obsolete, so I could see I’d need more money.
My young friend, Gander Tofferson, was my go-to guy at the toy factory, for everything about fishing. He went fishing almost everyday, and always every weekend, all year long, every year. He even married a woman who had her own boat and who divorced her first husband because he didn’t go fishing enough. I’d say some marriages were made in heaven. Well, the extremely rare ones, anyway. I never had to worry about asking too many dumb questions of Gander because he had all the answers---and all the pictures.
Every weekend there were more stringers of fish and more fishing stories. But you gotta bevery no, extremely in love with fishing not to get a little bit tired of seeing stringers of fish every Monday or Tuesday on somebody’s iPhone/smartphone. I mean, they’re not like kids. Every fish, especially walleyes, look exactly alike, the only difference being their respective size, maybe. But I got real good at ooooing and ahhing during his presentations,
“And these here, were at Five Mile.... and the-e-e-se .... at Sixteen, and these at Clementson. Look at these sturgeon on the Rainy! Sweet, huh? Huh? Huh?”
Gander did answer my questions without laughing, and he was always ready to talk fishing no matter how busy he should have been. He could always complain to the boss he was falling behind because of his increased work load, ‘yadayadayada,’ and somebody would be sent to help him. (It’d end up being me...)
So when I finally retired, so did my interest in fishing. Everybody was astonished. “What are you going to do with yourself?” they’d gasp. “You know, old guys like you who have thrown their whole off-life into their addictive past-times like fishing or farming or gambling or searching for Big Foot along power line rightaways south of Faunce--and then quit when they retire, kick the bucket before anyone even knew they did. “‘He retired??’” For dumb! Can’t say I’m surprised, though.”
But I ain’t dead yet.
It’s too late for me to fish obsessively now, even after learning all I did from Gander. My digital dexterity is failing, tying line onto hooks and swivels frustrates me to no end. My fingers and thumbs seemed bigger than I recognized them to be, either that or I hadn’t tied such fine objects together for quite sometime and am grossly out of practice.
My grandson, ‘O’ went fishing at Hayes Lake State Park with his Gramma and I, in recent days. He looked disapprovingly at our huge Zebco 808 reels and monster musky fishing rods, as big around as your thumb, making faces of sheer contempt that only an eight-year old boy can do, acting as though we had offered him a meatball for a reel and a long wet noodle to use for a rod, instead. He described his older brother’s lightweight rod and spinning reel with its bale and roller mechanism, and as he demonstrated it, told us how it’s all in the wrist and said, almost in tears,
“Grampa, what’s this?? I can’t use this! This is dumb!”
I knew exactly how he felt, except for the opposite, because I was a pretty good caster using the old Zebco reels of the day and when I was encouraged to buy one of them new-fangled open bale and roller spinning wheels that everybody, including God and all His friends, were using on the lakes then--and did, plus buying a new Ugly-Stik rod (which I loved, until I lost it in an involuntary rod exchange years ago) and then spent a day on the Lake of the Woods swearing and fuming about having to relearn how to cast--and failing miserably-- I almost didn’t go fishing ever again. I felt humiliated that I couldn’t cast accurately with the damn thing, and that I didn’t think to bring another reel along. For stupid! And now whole generations of fisherpeople use them like they’re the bestest spinning reels on earth. Geesh. They may beat out bait casting reels that used to always knot up, I’ll give them that, but nothing in my estimation beats the old tried and true Zebco push button reel.
Know anybody who goes fishing obsessively? I'll bet they’ve got a huge tacklebox or two, plus wildly expensive rods and reels for each type of fish they’re after, each combination specialized with particular hooks, lures, line, and backup reels. They probably have specialized fishing boats costing hundreds of thousands of dollars with wild glittering colors inlaid with exotic fish scales from their fishing trips all over the world, on-line fishing apps on their on-board computers with large TV-sized monitors, plus hard copy waterproof, maps of each lake its depths, shallows, contours, shoals, and currents as well as information about underwater structures, natural and manmade, in addition to fish within their vicinity and in some models, approaching the bait or lure.
These individuals have special scent-free clothing, wear special scent-free gloves and boots. They paint their faces to look like scales with big dark, oversize eyes, their cheeks to look like gills, and their mouths like they are sporting either little tiny sharp teeth or fangs like those of a musky, northern pike, or walleye.
Well, I’m not one of them. It took months to get that face paint off and until then I was shunned by everyone who thought I had some kind of strange, scaly, wide-eyed affliction or an adult addiction to Halloween.
Few people these days realize it, but when I was but a kid, I was taught to fish by cousins who, although they were the forerunners of the full time/year around fishing craze that hit the country thirty years later, they never seemed to have their act together when it came to the big day. They had tackle boxes with lots of different lures in it, some they salvaged off river debris when the water was low, with old fishing line still attached, and some of the lures with the paint worn off or rusty. And they had some little wooden ones, and some gigantic hooks they said were for whales. I didn’t believe that. And they had some lures that were as big as small fish, long skinny wood ones, they said were for ‘dark houses’ that they used during the winter when they said they’d cut big square holes in the ice and spear fish that came to them. I didn’t believe that either until I read about that kind of fishing years later. And they didn’t have just one fishing pole, they had dozens and they’d get tangled up together and you had to be careful you didn’t get a hook in your finger because some of the hooks had old dried-up worms or minnows on them and you could get an infection.
My cousins were the guys whose boat motor wasn’t checked out prior to the fishing trip so after all the equipment was loaded, all the groceries purchased, all the sleep lost on the road the night before the morning we drifted down the river heading for the rocks, one of them would have to pull the starter rope repeatedly trying to get the little engine started--while the other swore it was such a good starting motor ‘last year,’ and he didn’t know what could be wrong with gasoline that smelled like varnish, and why none of these old sparkplugs would work, and weren’t all the same size, then muttered he must have used them tryin’ to fix the lawnmower, and oh yeah, he meant to fix that big ol' primer bulb on the fuel line, and remembered he had forgotten the outboard toolbox on the tailgate of the truck--at home, and how it would’ve been alot better if we had two oars aboard instead of one short canoe paddle ... and how it looked like it was goin’ to storm...
“No, you were supposed to load the life jackets!”
I didn’t want to be like those guys even though I loved them dearly and so admired their True North Minnesota outdoorsmen lifestyle up here. When I grew up, I wanted to be prepared for fishing trips down wilderness rivers. I wanted my fishing boat and motor ready to go before we got away from the dock or our lines in the water. I’d have enough tackle to outfit a family if necessary, because, as a boy, I was always losing tackle in the weeds or rocks along the shore, or in trees, or powerlines overhead, or my line would break and I’d waste minnows or worms.
I’d get bored--or sick to my stomach--bobbing around in a boat on the lake. I much preferred walking a riverbank, even if I’d slip and plunge into the water accidently. I’ve been stung by bees after disturbing their nests, and jumped into the river to get away from them even though I couldn’t swim very well. I’ve been bit by millions of mosquitoes and smelled like ‘Off’ repellent long after summer was gone.
I’ve waded into off-river currents below dams and cast with water at my chest, and sometimes even caught fish as a result. I relished fishing after the sun went down and walking back to my car with a few northerns stuck through the gills with a forked stick. Can’t say I’ve caught many bass. Walleyes are fun to catch, but I don’t care if I ever eat another one. I don’t see the specialness in them, (although I did buy two orders of deep-fried walleye fingers at the Outpost Bar & Grill in Deer River last year. Those were great!)
Pan fried northerns are much tastier to me than walleyes, despite the bones. I was never in much hurry to eat that I couldn’t take the time to watch out for bones. I like smoked or pickled fish on occasion, or burbots in beer batter too. I’ve cleaned my share of fish, especially smelt, but would win no races against a guide, Native or even a kid anymore.
Then I could imagine all that boat and equipment maintenance, I’d have, and on top of that, the fancy truck and 5th wheel camper payments. I knew I would have to have ceramic brake pads all the way around on all of my wheels to keep corrosive brake dust from messing up my fancy rims, and then of course I would have to invest in tire and wire cosmetic/UV protectorant sprays requiring microfiber pads and towels. Then every six months I would have to upgrade my fishing map apps, and soon my OS would be obsolete, so I could see I’d need more money.
My young friend, Gander Tofferson, was my go-to guy at the toy factory, for everything about fishing. He went fishing almost everyday, and always every weekend, all year long, every year. He even married a woman who had her own boat and who divorced her first husband because he didn’t go fishing enough. I’d say some marriages were made in heaven. Well, the extremely rare ones, anyway. I never had to worry about asking too many dumb questions of Gander because he had all the answers---and all the pictures.
Every weekend there were more stringers of fish and more fishing stories. But you gotta be
“And these here, were at Five Mile.... and the-e-e-se .... at Sixteen, and these at Clementson. Look at these sturgeon on the Rainy! Sweet, huh? Huh? Huh?”
Gander did answer my questions without laughing, and he was always ready to talk fishing no matter how busy he should have been. He could always complain to the boss he was falling behind because of his increased work load, ‘yadayadayada,’ and somebody would be sent to help him. (It’d end up being me...)
So when I finally retired, so did my interest in fishing. Everybody was astonished. “What are you going to do with yourself?” they’d gasp. “You know, old guys like you who have thrown their whole off-life into their addictive past-times like fishing or farming or gambling or searching for Big Foot along power line rightaways south of Faunce--and then quit when they retire, kick the bucket before anyone even knew they did. “‘He retired??’” For dumb! Can’t say I’m surprised, though.”
But I ain’t dead yet.
It’s too late for me to fish obsessively now, even after learning all I did from Gander. My digital dexterity is failing, tying line onto hooks and swivels frustrates me to no end. My fingers and thumbs seemed bigger than I recognized them to be, either that or I hadn’t tied such fine objects together for quite sometime and am grossly out of practice.
My grandson, ‘O’ went fishing at Hayes Lake State Park with his Gramma and I, in recent days. He looked disapprovingly at our huge Zebco 808 reels and monster musky fishing rods, as big around as your thumb, making faces of sheer contempt that only an eight-year old boy can do, acting as though we had offered him a meatball for a reel and a long wet noodle to use for a rod, instead. He described his older brother’s lightweight rod and spinning reel with its bale and roller mechanism, and as he demonstrated it, told us how it’s all in the wrist and said, almost in tears,
“Grampa, what’s this?? I can’t use this! This is dumb!”
I knew exactly how he felt, except for the opposite, because I was a pretty good caster using the old Zebco reels of the day and when I was encouraged to buy one of them new-fangled open bale and roller spinning wheels that everybody, including God and all His friends, were using on the lakes then--and did, plus buying a new Ugly-Stik rod (which I loved, until I lost it in an involuntary rod exchange years ago) and then spent a day on the Lake of the Woods swearing and fuming about having to relearn how to cast--and failing miserably-- I almost didn’t go fishing ever again. I felt humiliated that I couldn’t cast accurately with the damn thing, and that I didn’t think to bring another reel along. For stupid! And now whole generations of fisherpeople use them like they’re the bestest spinning reels on earth. Geesh. They may beat out bait casting reels that used to always knot up, I’ll give them that, but nothing in my estimation beats the old tried and true Zebco push button reel.
Hall of Fame writing.
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