Reliving the Past

WARNING: The following post contains small fish, worms, and a little bit of sentimentality. Please read at your own risk. 

- Joseph

My earliest memories of fishing are all very similar. Unless it was surf fishing at the beach, fishing when I was young involved trips with Dad, ponds of some variety, and worms and bobbers. Often the quarry we were after were bream (bluegill), and they were usually more than willing to hit live bait. There were several places that we would go, but we had two or three ponds that we fished on a regular basis together. One of the places that we used to fish together was a fairly large pond located in a state park about twenty minutes or so down the road from our house.

Dad with a Trophy

After my trip to check out a new spot on the river the other day, I wasn't quite ready to put the fishing gear away for the day. On a whim, I called my Dad to see if he would be interested in going and fishing one of our old spots from my younger days. It had been a while since we had gone fishing together, and as I've gotten older I tend to fish a lot more rivers and streams with a fly rod. Dad's never been much of a fly fisherman, although I have talked him into going with me a few times. After talking it over, we decided that since it was a hot, bright sunny day we maybe ought to hedge our bets and pick up a container of red worms on the way to fish. I had planned on fishing spinners and small jigs on my ultralight spinning rod, but I figured having a Plan B was never a bad idea.

Little Bream

Once we got out to the lake, I started out fishing a small curly tailed grub on a jighead, while Dad went ahead and rigged up with a worm under a bobber. We saw a few small bass swimming around, but nothing I tried seemed to interest them. Meanwhile, Dad was getting bites on every cast, and seemed to be catching a fish on every other one. All the fish he was catching were small bream, but after a few minutes of trying to tempt bass that wouldn't even look at my lure, I decided that he was having too much fun not to join in. So for the first time in quite a while, I rigged up with a snelled #8 hook, attached a bobber about two feet above the hook, and put on a red worm. From that point on, it was more or less nonstop action.

View of the Lake

We worked our way around the lake, looking for bigger bream or maybe a bass that would be willing to bite, but it was more of the same small bream everywhere we tried. I'm not going to try to guess how many of the little guys we caught between us in a few hours of fishing, but I do know that catching so many little fish has never been so much fun. I couldn't help but think of the memories from my childhood of doing this exact thing with Dad, and how it got me hooked on fishing for a lifetime. Many of those trips were to this very place, catching bream on worms. I don't plan on trading my fly rods in anytime soon, but if Dad were to take a notion to go catch a few bream again I wouldn't hesitate to go. It wasn't about the fish this day, or even the style of fishing. It was all about having a chance to spend a few hours with the man who has been the biggest influence in my life, both on and off the water. Thank you Dad, for introducing me to the outdoors, and for everything else you've taught me in my 32 years on this earth. Let's do it again soon!

- Joseph