Catching Fish On Unconventional Baits

Last year on Mother's Day I received a gift I had wanted for three years. It was a new rod and reel with 15-pound test line. I could not wait to try it out.

You see, I did not plan to love fishing. I had no intention of putting anything on a hook and waiting for hours to catch a slimy thing with more bones than meat.

Three years ago we acquired a place on the Walnut River. My husband, Alan, was going to go exploring. My daughters, Michelle and Dyan, were in our trailer watching TV. I had nothing to do. Alan suggested I fish. "Don't you have to have a worm or something?" I said. I looked in the refrigerator and found some ham we had saved from sandwiches. "This might work. What do fish know!"

I headed down to the river. It was 14 feet straight down, or a quarter of a mile by the road. I chose the road. I found a spot in front of the trailer on a rock bar. I wrapped the ham around the hook and let the line out a little into the water. I did not want to get too deep for fear the hook might snag on something. If it did, I would have to cut the line, because I don't like to go in the water where I can't see the bottom. Not being prepared, I would just have to walk back to the trailer for another hook. This was before I believed in tackle boxes. I waited a short time when the hook caught on something, or something caught on the hook. "Ok, now what do I do?" I knew enough to reel in the line, but then what. I had not planned on catching a fish. "Maybe it will just go away. Maybe I can wait until Alan comes home to deal with it."

I yelled to my daughters, "I think I caught a fish! What should I do?"

"Pull it in."

Since my line was only about five feet out, I did not have to work too hard to bring it in. There was a big flathead on the other end. It just kind of slid up onto the bank and laid there.

I yelled to my daughters to bring me something. Having as much knowledge about fishing as I did, they brought me a cardboard box.

We were quite a sight walking up the road. I was carrying the box with the fish in it and one of the girls had the pole. Not knowing how to take the hook out, the line remained attached to the hook, which was still in the fish!

The girls were very worried about the fish dying, so we cleaned out a big cooler, filled it with water, and put the fish, still on the line, inside.

When Alan got back, I proudly showed him my catch. He showed me how to clean it so I would not get a lot of bones. "I can do that," I thought. "It's a lot like dissecting, and I had taught biology!"

Well, we fried it up, ate it up, and from that time on, I was hooked.

The next time we went fishing, I took a leftover hamburger in foil as bait. I figured if the ham worked, why not hamburger! I put a small piece on the hook very carefully and cast it out. Well, the hamburger came off in mid air, the hook got caught on the bottom, and our dog, who had followed me down to the river, ate the rest of the hamburger from the foil. Not wanting to give up, I pulled on the line until the snag came loose, then proceeded to fashion a small fish-like shape out of foil. I stuck that on my hook and cast it out. Within a minute I had caught a fish. Just dumb luck, I guess.

A few weeks later we again had time to go to the river and fish. I was a bit more prepared with a dozen guaranteed worms. At least that's what a bait man told me. Our daughters had brought friends along, and I was going to treat them to a fish dinner. I prepared to catch fish and tried for three hours before giving up and fixing hot dogs. The next day I was up early fishing. I caught two good-sized catfish and held them up for the family to see at the trailer. Dyan was so impressed that pretty soon she and her friend went down to look at the fish up close. I had them on a stringer and it was secured, I thought, by a big rock. I continued to fish and turned around long enough to see the two fish still attached to the stringer swimming away! For lunch that day we again had hot dogs.

We had been bragging to our friends Leslie and Delbert about our river spot with "great fishing", so we invited them to come along. I soon found out that Leslie was just as crazy about fishing as I had become. We fished for two days and caught two small fish, which we threw back, hoping they would take pity on us and tell the bigger fish to swim our way. It must have worked. The next day we started catching fish at eight in the morning and finished at four in the afternoon, with twenty good fish. We were worn out. Every time I would cast, I would catch a fish. Every time Leslie would cast, she would catch a fish. We were pretty busy taking hooks out, one of us with pliers on the fish's lip, and one with pliers removing the hook.

After fishing from the rock bar, Leslie and I decided to try our hand at fishing from a boat. Our husbands said we could use the boat if we carried it to the river by ourselves. So we headed to the river, with rods, tackle boxes, pillows for the hard boat seats, life jackets, bait, a net, pop, munchies and romance novels!

We carried the boat to the river and paddled up river, then tied off to a tree branch. We kept telling ourselves that today was our day to catch the Big One. After many nibbles and no commitments, it finally happened! I had a Big One on my line. I carefully reeled in the fish to get it close to the boat when the line broke.

We realized our problem too late. I was on the downstream end of the boat with the rod, and Leslie was upstream with the net. Next time we'll have a new strategy - the downstream person gets the net and the upstream person gets the pole! We'll both take credit for the catch.

Because of our love of fishing Leslie and I have gotten ourselves in some pretty unusual circumstances. Over Christmas vacation we took a day away from our families to go fishing. The river was way up so we decided to go to a small pond on the back of the property our trailer was on. We had to enter from another road that we had not tried before. We ended up getting stuck in the mud in my husband's truck!. By the time we got on our way we had a dirty truck, no fish, and no time left to go fishing. I did manage to get the truck washed before Alan saw it. He thought we were being nice since he took care of the kids all day!

Another time we told our husbands we were going on a women's retreat. We retreated, alright. Right to the river to fish!

If anyone is ever looking for me, just look at the river. Most likely I'll be fishing.

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