Fishing for a smile
The ordinary objects of resin, fiberglass thread, and bits of steel when combined can be used as an extraordinary tool to provide food for a family or it can transform a life through incommensurable ways.
The origin of the fishing pole dates back about as far as history itself, first depicted in stone inscriptions found in Egypt, China, and Medieval England. Made from cane growing beside the river, a line was fashioned to the tip with a hook fabricated out of bone and tied to the end. Small worms, insects, minnows and frogs from the river were used as bait. Cane poles are as flexible as a gymnast and strong as an ox and can be made very long to reach farther out into the river with the bait. They were so productive at catching fish they are still sold at your local Walmart.
Technology chugs along like a locomotive through time and brings about a more useful method of pursuing our quarry. Hard to strap a reel onto, cane poles were replaced with a metal fishing rod later down the road and they worked about as good as you might imagine. They were eventually replaced with fiberglass which now offered the angler the opportunity the sense of the smallest vibration through the rod for the first time. Now the angler could feel the fish bite the lure better than any other time in history.
When used as a tool for providing sustenance, the fishing pole is quite useful and has proven its worth since its creation. But just standing the test of time feeding families isn’t enough for the fishing pole to prove it is an extraordinary object, it has much more up its sleeve.
Today’s fishing poles are made from all kinds of exotic and extraordinary materials. The manufacturers’ engineers that have been on a non-stop quest at scrubbing off every ounce of weight possible to create the lightest and strongest rods every made. The power to weight ratios are outrageous, something that weighs just a few pounds can manage to successfully convince a corpulent choleric 1-ton fish to come to its demise at the surface. But this miraculous show of strength still isn’t enough for the fishing pole, it wants more to prove itself extraordinary.
When I think about a fishing pole, I think about the magic it truly possesses inside.
I think about the way it is a doorway to another world, to a place of peace and tranquility, to a copious amount of smiles, and a cornucopia of memories that last a lifetime. Sometimes, it’s used to work out deep thoughts, while other times it is the companionship with friends and family it creates. Just some string, some fancy resin, and a few metal bits all combined have given me some of my best memories in life.
Late June, Shell Knob, Missouri, the temperatures are almost unbearable with the humidity added in, sweat drops off your brow in buckets by noon. My son, Tommy, was still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes when I cranked the big 200 hp Mercury outboard, a few tantalizing seconds later it roars to life and belches 2 stroke exhaust into the air. Slightly stinging our eyes in the early mornings’ thick air, the smell instantly reminds me of what is about to come.
Gracefully we ease out of the slip and idle into the main channel, I bring up the RPM’s of the motor, the boat jumps up on plane, and we rocket down the lake at 60 mph in the dawns early light. With our eyes watering from the wind, a slight chill touches our bones as the cool morning air seeps past our clothes and reaches bare skin, then a decrescendo of the melodious rhythm of the 200 horses as we near the hot spot.
The boat comes off plane and slows to a stop, close too, but not on the hot spot itself, and I quickly get us set up with our rods and the fun begins.
Smallmouth bass, spotted bass, and largemouth bass graced our presence when a clamorous, gaudy topwater bait that tricked them into thinking an easy meal of a doomed shad was overhead.
A permanent smile was welded to our faces after I broke out the live worms.
I would put a wiggler on Tommy’s hook and he would drop it down to the hot spot, which happened to be straight beneath the boat. Meanwhile, I would attempt to put one on my own hook but rarely had time before he was hooked up with a football-shaped heavy-weight spotted bass who had troubles pushing away from the dinner table.
We spent hours that day catching fish, it was literally every cast there for a while that we caught something. That day ended up being his best ever day of fishing in his life. He broke three of his records, one for the most fish caught, the biggest fish he has ever caught, and with the toothy walleye critter added to the bunch, the weirdest fish record for him.
The time we spent that majestic day was just one day together in a week at being at the lake during the family reunion. There were several other days on vacation that involved him whizzing at hyperspeed on jetski’s around the lake like a crazed madman, being pulled near terminal velocity behind the family ski boat, and spun into a dizzying stupor at Silver Dollar City, but the picture that is hanging on the wall is of him holding a giant bass.
Have you ever seen a child catch their first fish? It truly is magical. The smiles, the giggles, and the screams either of terror or joy, hard to decipher sometimes. That parallel moment in time that the parent and child get to enjoy and cherish for their lifetime.
Those special moments, those smiles and laughs we got to share, are memories that he and I will cherish for the rest of our lives and makes the fishing rod an extraordinary tool to me.