Fishin'

It sure is dusty in here, I wonder who is responsible for this space.....

We camped out at Horseshoe Bend during July 4th and the week after. Thank you Martha and Larry for letting us stay in your RV.

One of the activities during the week or so at the lake was fishing. When it was first proposed I was a bit hesitant. The last time I had gone fishing was when I was 8 and 9 years old and it really hadn't been that positive of an experience.

I had been taken fishing during that time by a step-father and it would be vastly understating things to call him a jerk. My fishing with him consisted of being placed on the bank of a creek or stream, close to an eddy. I used worms as the bait and a pole with a bobber on it. Instruction consisted of being told to not move, not talk, and watch for the bobber to move. I'm not sure why any adult would ever think that a 8 year old, small town, Arkansas boy could ever sit on a creek bank without moving or talking, watching a red and white piece of plastic sit in the water. I never remember catching a single fish.

After the first episode of this, the only reason I ever asked to go back was because I discovered that if I endured this unnatural torture for 30 to 45 minutes, I could quietly slip off and explore further up or down stream, out of eye sight. Sitting through the nonsense of watching the bobber gave me access to new stream banks to explore... one of my more favorite activities.

Thankfully, I was often left to my own devices on the stream that ran behind our house in Cave Springs. I was allowed to go as far as the upstream edge of the pond and for two cow pastures downstream...a bit less than 1/2 mile of stream bank to explore.

My fishing style during these solo expeditions was much more exciting. My favorite technique was to belly crawl along the bank until I found a spot on the outer edge of a bend where the water was deep enough I couldn't see the bottom. My reasoning was that if I couldn't see the bottom to verify there was no fish there then there was a distinct possibility there was a fish there. I would then ease myself up to crouching on all fours and launch out over the stream like some large, hairless jungle cat to plunge feet and hands first into the stream. All such launches from the creek bank were accompanied by a top of the lungs scream of "Geronimo." I'm not entirely sure why, but it was a practice I revived many years later during the 12 parachuting jumps I made...much to the chagrin of the jumpmasters.

My operational theory for this method of fishing was that I would seize any fish that my hands happened to contact or at the very least the shock wave of my body hitting the water would stun any fish in the eddy and they would float to the top. Although I never caught any fish using this method either, at least my version of fishing had the benefit of plunging into a cool stream after belly crawling through itchy grass on an oppressively muggy August afternoon.

In thinking back at these times, it occurs to me that I must have had a very flat learning curve as a child. Often the thing I took away from these attempts was pain and another wound I was reluctant to explain to my mother when I returned to the house at dusk. While it is doubtful that those eddies ever actually concealed any fish for me to stun into submission, they often did conceal tree branches or rocks which I would come into full speed contact with. The resulting gouges, scrapes, and punctures never lessened my enthusiasm for airborne angling, it was much less painful than sitting and watching a bobber bob.

My foray into the world of fishing 40 years later was much more enjoyable..but that's a tale for another day.