October 2011 The Great Outdoors

Top Angler

by Jack Spaulding
Outdoors Writer

Taking wife fishing is a lesson in humility

There is an old saying, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for life.” One thing I notice about the old saying, nothing is mentioned about the results of teaching a woman to fish.

Knowing cold weather would be here soon enough, I decided it was time for a fishing trip to put a few fillets away for the winter. When my wife, Chris, asked me what we were doing on the weekend, I said we’re going fishing.

The reply came back, “You go ahead without me. I think I have forgotten how to fish.”

“No … fishing is like riding a bicycle, you never forget. Come on, it will be fun. A mess of bluegills and yellow belly catfish will taste great. Your Grandma Hekter loved to fish. She would be proud of you. You’ll probably catch a fish.”

With some reluctance, she accompanied me to the pond on a recent Saturday morning.

As we were rigging the poles on the dock, I remembered when Chris caught her first fish 20 years ago on our first trip to Canada. It was a tiny walleye about 6 inches long. However, by the end of the trip, she had caught the largest walleye, the largest smallmouth, the largest lake trout, and landed a huge northern pike that looked like an alligator without legs. Not bad, considering all her prior experience with fishing tackle amounted to dusting my fishing poles in the den.

But, that was then and this is now.

Adjusting the bobber to about 3 feet and threading a wax worm on a tiny gold hook, I handed the pole to her and said, “Fish off the edge of the dock. Move your bait around a little now and again. When you bobber goes under, give a little jerk to set the hook and reel in the fish. I’m going to rig up my pole for catfish.”

Pulling off some line and picking up a suitable hook for catfish, I heard her say, “I got one.”

Putting down my pole, I quickly unhooked her fish, put it in the bucket, and returned to rigging my rod.
“I got another one.”

As I put down my pole once more, she swung her pole and had the fish dangling right in front of my nose.
“Gee … that one’s bigger,” she said.

A quick re-baiting of her hook, and I returned to rigging my rod.

As I pulled the knot tight on the hook … you guessed it. I heard, “This one is harder to pull in because it’s bigger than the others.”

Unhooking the bluegill and checking her bait, I adjusted her bobber and went back to my work getting my rod ready.
As I was cutting a hot dog into bait-size pieces, I heard her proclaim, “I got another one.”

She had five in the bucket, and I haven’t had a chance to bait my hook!

As I prepared to cast my rod, I heard, “I got another one.”

Putting down my rod, I picked up her flipping bluegill from the dock and stuck the hook in my finger.

I pitched the fish in the bucket and began to extract the hook from my finger as I heard her say, “Are you going to fish? I could stop a while and let you catch up?”

Gingerly pulling out the hook, I reminded her, the whole intent is to catch fish.

Finally, my hook was baited, and my bobber was lazily floating off the deep end of the dock. Opening up the bail on the reel, I laid the pole on the upside down row boat on the dock and reached for a bottle of water.
“I got another one,” she repeated.

As I unhooked the bluegill and baited her hook, I heard her say, “You need to watch your bobber. I think you got a bite … your bobber went under and I can’t see it anymore.”

Spinning around and stumbling toward the upside down row boat, I grabbed the pole, snapped the bail shut, swung the rod skyward and missed the fish.

Reeling up the slack line, I heard from behind me, “I got another one, and it is fighting a lot harder than the others. I think it’s a big one too.”

Baiting my rod first for a change, I cast my line out. I then unhooked her bluegill, dropped it in the bucket and baited her hook.

Just as I noticed a timid bite on the hunk of hot dog, Chris put another flopping bluegill on the dock. As I reached for her fish, my bobber took off. At that, I abandoned her catch and set the hook on my first catfish.
As I reeled in my first fish, I heard her say, “Don’t let mine get away!!”

Holding my rod high, I stepped over the tackle box and put my foot on her line to keep her bluegill from flipping off the dock.

By noontime, the contents of the bucket tallied up to my seven catfish and her 15 bluegills.

As we were packing up the gear and I was getting ready to clean the fish, she said, “This was fun! We don’t have anything planned for next Saturday. Let’s go fishing again!

“I thought I had forgotten how to fish. The last time I fished was when we were in Canada. Do you remember? Remember when I caught the biggest walleye?”

Oh, yeah! Do I ever remember!

till next time,

Jack Spaulding is a state outdoors writer and a consumer of RushShelby Energy from Milroy. Readers with questions or comments can write to him in care of Electric Consumer, P.O. Box 24517, Indianapolis, IN 46224; or e-mail jackspaulding@hughes.net.

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