Tall Fishing Tales: Learning to Fish With Mom

By Jerry Schleicher
Published on June 8, 2012
article image
Flickr/Paulo Philippidis

Lazy summer days are best spent with a rod and reel, as the author discovered after learning to fish from his mother.

I’d no sooner baited my hook with a fat worm and let it drift with the current than I felt a tug on my line. Oblivious to proper fishing techniques (hey, I was only 6), I jerked my cottonwood branch pole as hard as I could and landed my very first fish. Flopping in the grass was a tiny 3-inch chub, approximately the same size as the worm it was trying to swallow.

Some 55 years later, I’m still one of the 30 million or so Americans who enjoy matching intellect with a creature that may or may not have one. If horse racing is the sport of kings, then fishing must surely be the sport of the common man.

Fishing: America’s Practical Pastime

Stripped to its basics — a fishing rod and reel, a can of worms or a few lures, a lawn chair, and a cooler with cold drinks — fishing offers an inexpensive and relaxing way to spend any summer day. Even better, you don’t need a fancy bass boat, and you don’t have to live near the coast or own a cabin on a lake to enjoy this wonderful pastime.

Fact is, there are few better places to take the family fishing than in rural America, where millions of farm ponds, creeks and lakes offer a perfect setting for children and adults alike to wet a line. Nearly every state in the nation contains streams and ponds teeming with bass, crappie, trout, catfish, sunfish or bluegill; some of them record size. According to state fish and game departments, there are about 150,000 farm ponds in Kansas alone, another 80,000 in Iowa, and more than a million in Texas.

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