Where to start? It's seems like I've fished all my life, starting with pulling bullheads out of a WI inlet stream and perch out of an old town millpond for my maternal grandmother to fry up (when I was little, there was no fish of mine too small for her to clean and cook; catch-and-release aside, sure made me feel like I had accomplished something). Those were my cane pole and crude levelwind days (although I fished a Shakespeare Wonderrod for more than a decade and UglyStiks are still a good value)
Got into reading about fishing and spinning when I was in school. Stream fishing for smallmouth in northern WI when I was working there; personal best was a 5#3oz smallie on a purple FuzzyGrub and 2# test line (which I went swimming to land). A big baked walleye stuffed with baby bay shrimp has co-starred with roast venison and my wild rice and grouse stew at several Holiday game dinners.
The fishing library gets hit and has additions this time of year and now shows the need of annexing another bookshelf. "The Curtis Creek Manifesto" is to be highly recommended if your favorite haunts include streams. Gets the juices going for breakup. I've ice fished successfully, but it's just not the same (and besides, I've got a pretty good homelife
) I'm mostly catch-and-release these days, but fresh fish out of clean water is still pretty hard to beat for lunch or supper. Just don't fry mine anymore.
Party boat fishing in FL, PEI, and AL while on vacation; everything in salt water fights. I'll always remember how impressed my folks were when I came back from an FL day trip and took them to a local restaurant which broiled up my catch for all (and there was more than enough that day). But being out on a stream or in a boat on the water with nature, good weather or bad, that's always a joy. Never known anybody who stayed in fishing or small game hunting for a couple of seasons and didn't become something of a naturalist.
Both the Spaniels' Spring Vacation and the Spaniels' Fall Vacation have fishing elements as well each year, whether it's pulling smallies off their beds in the Spring or trolling for walleyes under the Hunter's Moon in the Fall. Built my own rods for twenty years; couldn't buy exactly what I wanted at that time and though I knew better than the craft rodmakers. Live and learn. Fishing is also where you get to see that you can always still learn. And you get to meet a whole host of characters, some of whom are fishing guides.
Get to see folks at their best and worst; it's been a real slice.
This winter, I'm finally getting started on fly fishing. Fly casting lessons start next week and I'm pretty excited. I'll be the 3rd generation in my family to flyfish the spring streams in SW MN. My mom's dad used to come up in the summer to Chatfield, MN to fish with his uncle, who was the town jeweler. My folks honeymooned flyfishing on the Gunnison in Colorado. I guess tha's where the family tradition of going swimming for your catch started; my father took a dip to complete landing a big brown (which wound up being big fish of the week at the lodge). And then there's fly tying . . . those lessons start in March.
This is a great sport for kit, as well
I've had canoes, boats, float tubes, and kayaks. Rods, reels, new flourocarbon line, knots, leaders, sonar, and lures, lures,lures! Got into buying spinning reels from Japan; their USA importers do not bring over the good stuff. What's not to love?
. Anyone else here into fishing?
