Monday, April 15, 2013

Teach a Man(Woman) to Fish.........

Blue Gill

Largemouth Bass


How does that go? Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime.

I never really cared to fish in my lifetime, and never knew it was something that you needed to be taught. I thought you just put the worm on the hook and wait till one bites, then you reel him in. I found out last night that it's a little more complicated than that. I didn't mind worming my own hook, although Pop thought I needed to let him do it for me,and I guess I shouldn't have been so independent and let him do it. Men do better when you act helpless. It makes them feel needed,but I never was much at pretending to be a wimpy needy woman.

We set up our chairs on the bank of the pond, and proceeded to load our hooks and cast out our lines. That casting was a bit tricky. I think I finally got the hang of it, although I need a bit more practice before I say I know what I'm doing. That little trigger button on the reel, you know. It takes a few tries to get the hang of pressing and releasing it at just the right moment. We took two small cane poles with us, but thank goodness Pop had the ones with the reels in his truck, too. If we'd had to use those cane poles, we might still be out there trying to catch a few fish. We ended up with about a dozen small blue gill and one small bass. It's much more fun catching them and knowing you'll be throwing them back in the water at our home, then it would have been trying to scale and clean those tiny things. I hate the cleaning process. That is another job I never cared to learn. It seems, around here anyway, once you learn a job, it's yours for life. I say, "No Thanks! I don't need another job."

It'll be iffy as to whether the fish survive. Sometimes they die from the trauma of being hooked, but many times, they go on to live normal lives, although it may be a short life. Especially, once the grand kids learn there are fish in our pond. Pop says they will multiply fairly quickly, but I haven't done any research on the gestation period for fish yet. I'll be putting that on my "Need To Do" list.

The picture of the blue gill is from the Outdoor Alabama site.

The picture of the bass is from http://fish.dnr.cornell.edu/nyfish/Centrarchidae/largemouth_bass.html.

2 comments:

  1. fishing is not for me,but jessica kids loves fishing, they go fishing in a pond by them every change they get.This is on the bottom of my firgurine of Jesus and the children, give a child a fish, you feed him for a day, teach a child to fish, you feed him for life. I bet your grands will like to fish also.

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  2. I'm with you on the cleaning part Sue, yuk.
    Nathan and I used to fish in out pond, we always threw them back.

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