Reeling In Time with Fish Tales. Brian E. Smith

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СКАЧАТЬ of the knapsack before slinging it across one shoulder. As he bent over to get the tackle box, I grabbed both fishing rods and the worm bucket.

      “Which way, Dad?” He struck out walking toward the point where the birds were. When we were still a good way off, some of the gulls began to call and screech. The ones lying on the ground got up. Strangely, some of the ones on top of the gazebo commenced to paint. When we were within a stone’s throw, the entire flock flew off. By the sound, they didn’t like us breaking up their party.

      I started running. “Champ! Don’t….” The bottom of the worm bucket fell out. “You can’t run with the worm bucket.”

      “I know, Dad, I forgot.” We scooped up the worms and soil, putting the bucket back whole.

      On the point where the gulls were, Dad set up camp on the picnic table, under the gazebo. He took the worm bucket from me and set it on the table, doing the same thing with the fishing rods. Next, he pulled the cricket cage from the knapsack setting it beside the worm bucket. The loaf of stale white bread, he put at the other end of the table over the top of a few sheets of old newspaper he brought. The next items were two cans of whole yellow corn and a hand turn can opener.

      “I hope that’s not our lunch, Dad.”

      “Just fish food, Champ, fish food.” I was watching intently, because Dad had an agenda of some sort.

      “Come on,” he said, grabbing the two cans of corn and the can opener and moving to the end of the table with the bread. He spread three sheets of newspaper out to form an eighteen by twenty-four-inch rectangle. He set the cans of corn on the windward corners to keep the slight breeze from blowing the papers. He took the top eight slices of bread, including the heel, and put them in the middle of the paper.

      “Son, get up on the table and help me do this.” I did as he asked.

      “When are we going to fish, Dad?”

      “Give me five minutes; we’re making a fish-call! Here’s what to do…” He took a slice of bread between both hands and began rubbing his hands back and forth. Mini-crumbs rained down like snow. “Rub it lightly so you won’t get big clumps,” he warned.

      Four minutes later, we had a pile of tiny breadcrumbs in the middle of the newspaper. Dad rolled the paper into a cone and folded over the pointed end several times.

      “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.

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