When I was a kid, one of my favorite ways to get out of the house was to go fishing.  When I was too young to go by myself, my mother and I would go fishing on Saturday afternoons.  My mother was a bookkeeper for a local oil company, and worked 5 1/2 days a week.  Looking back on those times, I realize that in some ways it was major concession to me for her to spend her precious Saturday afternoon with me; in another way, it was time for her to get out of the house as well.

We usually collected up our gear right after lunch.  We would walk about a quarter of a mile up through the fields to the “guv’mint” pond.  This pond was supposed to have some extra special features–like a barrel in the middle with a pipe that encouraged the excess water to run off through that instead of up, over the bank where it would erode it away.  The arrangement had gone awry several years before our fishing expeditions, so one side of the pond was always swampy.

On the way, we would stop and catch a batch of grass-hoppers to use for bait.  Sometimes, I would have dug worms before Mommy would get home; sometimes we used plastic worms.  (My mother didn’t ever refuse to bait a hook, but it really wasn’t her favorite thing to do.)  The pond was stocked with perch, so lively grasshoppers were the absolutely best bait.

We would usually get to the pond around two in the afternoon.  The sun would be hot, and the fish liked to congregate in the shade along the northwest bank where some scrubby persimmon trees were growing.  If they weren’t biting very well, we would put the fishing poles away, and swim for a bit.  That is, my mother would swim, and I would float on the edge of a blow-up raft.  After we had gotten cooled off (and stirred up the fish a bit), we would go back to fishing. 

It was a fine balance–the moments between when the fish would begin to bite, and when the mosquitoes would begin to rise out of the mini-swamp at the edge of the pond and begin to bite us!

Mother was firm about the size of fish we could keep.  The pond was stocked, and re-stocking it would probably be out of the question; so all the “lil fellers” went back into the water.  There was one enterprising little guy that was so hungry he had a good row of holes around his lip where he had gotten hooked over and over.  We would usually come home with 6-8 “keepers”.

Mother taught me how to scale and gut the fish, but she was clueless when it came to fileting.  We rolled the lil guys in cornmeal, and fried them in lard.  Since they were fried with their bones in, we had to be really careful when eating them.  But I’ve not tasted any fish since that match the way those tasted.

When I got older, and my mother was too busy and too tired to go fishing, I went by myself.  I still caught fish, but it was more of an excuse to get away from my family than hope of catching my supper.  I would prop the pole, put a bare foot on it, and settle down in the shade with my newest book.

A few weeks ago, browsing over the packages in the meat department, I was appalled by the prices.  I’d already started my garden; but it takes quite a bit of space to grow protein bearing vegetables in any quantity.  I decided that this summer, I was going fishing!  I marched across the store and bought two fishing rods, some hooks, and bobbers.

I’m a long way from the “guv’mint” pond these days; but I’ve priced fishing licences, and there’s several public access sites nearby my current home.  The weather is getting warmer, and summer vacation getting closer.  There’s a used book store not far from here, and I don’t think I’ve forgotten what a “bite” feels like to a bare foot braced on a fishing rod.  Wonder if the fish will taste as good as I remember?