First Baitcasting Outfit

My best guess is that I was 10 or 11 years old. That part I don't remember for sure. What I do remember was that I wanted a Daiwa Procaster SM-2A reel with a matching rod, which I believe also carried the Procaster name. That was what Bill Dance fished with at the time, and he sure caught a lot of fish, so if I had one like it...

Like many young anglers, I had started with a Zebco 404 and then progressed to a simple spinning outfit (I don't recall the specifics of that one), both presents from my grandpa, and had caught a lot of fish on both. I was ready to up my game, though, and knew that Procaster combo was key to doing so.

The rod and reel cost enough that only way such a thing could be an option would be to get one piece as a present for my birthday in October and the other for Christmas. I remember that the reel came first because my dad had fun with the rod. He knew I'd be scouring presents from the time they started showing up under the Christmas Tree and would be perplexed to find nothing remotely rod shaped. No such package ever showed up, leaving me wondering if I'd end up with my ideal baitcasting reel but no rod. The answer was in a fairly large, but obviously not rod-shaped package. Dad had played the old box in a box in a box in a box game, with the final box containing a note to go look in his closet, where, of course, the rod of my dreams was leaning in the corner.

With my dad not having been a fisherman, I learned to cast that first baitcaster by trial and error (with MUCH of the latter), first in the front yard and eventually from the banks of ponds. I don't know how many cumulative hours I spent casting a little rubber weight in the yard and picking out backlashes, but I was determined to fish for bass with my baitcaster so I practiced until my thumb just knew when to apply pressure to the spool and just how much pressure to apply.

I don't know what ever happened to my original baitcaster, but I wish I still had it, along with that first Zebco 404, first spinning combo and a few others. Memories will have to do!

Everything That Glimmers

I know that everything that glimmers is not gold, but all the shimmery stuff I've been finding on post-Christmas sale racks and even on the living room floor after presents were open has seemed like a goldmine to me.

Soon I suppose I'll be looking for brown, orange and black fur again and thinking about matching crawfish, sculpins and other dark-colored critters. For now I'm more excited about taking the shimmery stuff and creating minnow patterns and bright jigs for high water days.

Hard to beat half off $.77 for a box of tinsel. That is unless you count the free stuff off the floor!

Day After Christmas Pond Visit

The day after Christmas, like the day after Thanksgiving, is a good day to not be at a store of any kind. However, I found it also was a tough day to sit at my computer and write fish stories. While I did get some work done early, I found my mind wandering to other places (mostly rivers and lakes) as the day progressed and finally resolved that if my mind was on the water, I probably should join it.

Nathaniel seemed to think similarly because he was sort of walking around in circles and he didn't object when I suggested that we should go gather a little pond junk. We decided to keep it short and simple, grabbing only stuff for the middle of the pond and a vertical approach.

Turns out the stuff we brought was all we needed to catch some fish during a short afternoon outing. The fish were close to the bottom, near the pond dam, right where we expected them to be, and we caught them on ice jigs tipped with earthworm pieces and fished straight below the boat. A few were fairly nice bream. All were fun, and I got a few nice photos, which was more productive than sitting at home, gazing at my computer screen and daydreaming about fishing.

Break from Fish Stories

When the plane I'm on touches down in Atlanta, I'll be a couple of hours from home and happy to leave fish stories and other work stuff aside for a few days to enjoy celebrating Christmas with my family. Tonight I'll get to read our Advent story -- a job Nathaniel has done well while I've been traveling. I look forward to a Sunday service of Carols and Christmas passage readings from Scripture, a meal shared with our church family and a few different gatherings with various family members during Christmas week.
My favorite time, though, is early Christmas morning, when it's only my wife, my children and me in our own home, and we gather around the Advent Wreath to read the Christmas story and light the Christ Candle and around the tree to open presents from one another. With six children in our home there's much  excitement on Christmas morning, as we share in celebrating the greatest gift ever.