Friday, April 20, 2012

Childhood Fishing

There were not a lot of places that were good for fishing where I grew up.  Nat's Creek was a small stream and did not harbor many edible fish.  The Levisa fork of the Big Sandy River was not too far off but my parents would never have allowed me to go fishing there.  When I was growing up, fishing was something one did but"catching' was not something to be expected.

Then, when my sister got married she and her husband lived near Dewy Dam at Jenny Wiley State Park and he would take me fishing there.  We fished with cane poles and not modern rods and reels.  My brother-in-law was the most patient fisherman I have ever known.  He could sit all day watching his bobber and if he got one good bite he caught a fish.

Me, on the other had, got really bored really quickly.  But it does bring to mind one weekend not long after my sister and he got married.  We went to Dewy Dam and parked at a wide place at the top of the hill just before the right turn to the dam.  We carried our bait and cane poles down past the park ranger boat dock and around the edge of the lake until we came to a  little shelf that ran out into the lake just before an inlet.  We fished there Friday through Sunday and we each caught thirty-two "keeper" blue gills.  They made some sensational fish fries

I think those were the most successful fishing days I had growing up.  In later years I moved to Florida and would go with my brother out to the Gulf Stream and fish with three hooks on each line.  We'd catch so many fish (two or three at a time) we'd get tired of reeling them in and just not put our lines back in the water.  But that was later.  In the early days there was nothing better than those early days at Dewy Dam with my brother-in-law.

No comments:

Post a Comment