My parents made a serious error raising me. I was their firstborn, so I suppose I can cut them a little slack. They were still trying to figure out the whole parenting thing.
One of their most critical mistakes, notwithstanding the one they made nine months before I was born, was taking me fishing at a young age. Neither my mom nor my dad are particularly big anglers, but my grandma has a cabin on a lake just 10 miles down the road from where I grew up, so it was only natural that I be introduced to fishing. Introducing me to fishing would not only shape my life; it created a lot of running around for my parents!
The fishing mania consumed all my young thoughts. In grade school, my friends called me “Fish Man” or just “Fish” for short. In second grade, I got a T-shirt that boasted I was the “World’s Greatest Fisherman.” Never mind the fact that my classmate Matt Simon had gotten the same shirt before me, and to this day I’m sure is still a much better angler.
My first fish was a bluegill, caught on a popper the week after my 4th birthday. That’s all it took. I wanted more.
I checked out fishing books from the library. Babe Winkelman was my hero. By the time I was 10, I was subscribing to outdoor magazines with my birthday money. I had most of the Wisconsin state record fish memorized. I was a virtual encyclopedia of fishing info. I could regurgitate everything I read, even if I didn’t have the ability to put it to practice on the water.
In third grade art class, we made windsocks out of rolled-up construction paper with crepe paper streamers. While the girls drew tulips and robins on theirs, I drew a guy fishing out of a boat and wrote, “Minn Kota” across the top. Sheesh, and people say tobacco companies are hooking children at a young age!
In fourth grade, we learned about goal setting and had to write down a goal we wanted to accomplish. My goal was to break the state record northern pike. It still is.
In the spring, my parents would take my brother Jim and I to the Fox River for the white bass run. We would cast from shore using minnows on a three-way rig with a piece of red yarn as an attractor, and we caught fish. But after only a couple years of white bass fishing, I turned my nose up at it.
One spring Mom offered to take Jim and I white bassin’. I told her I was done with white bass. I wanted gamefish. Pike, bass, walleyes – real fish.
With some convincing, we did end up going white bass fishing, which was better than nothing, but it paled in comparison to the walleyes and muskies I saw guys catching on TV. But my point had been made and my tantrum had laid the groundwork for the 1987 Wisconsin fishing opener.
Just a few days before the opener, Dad announced that we were going fishing for northern pike on opening day. It was a good thing he hadn’t told me earlier. I was so jacked up, I couldn’t have lasted more than a couple days anticipating our fishing trip. It was all I could think about. This was it, the big time! Northern pike! Full of teeth and with sheer rod-bending power. No little snot rockets. We’d be tackling 40-inchers!
Joe and Jim with more real fish – Lake Michigan salmon.
I had gone around my bedroom and put up a sign where each species of mounted fish would go after I caught it. I just hoped the spot I had picked out for my pike was big enough to hold that lunker!
People compare opening day of fishing season or deer season to Christmas morning. I have never been as excited for Christmas morning as I was for fishing opener that year. In Sunday school our teacher taught us that at any time, Jesus could come back and take all believers to heaven. That week, I prayed that He at least wait until after fishing opener to do so.
After a long, grueling couple days of anticipation, Saturday morning finally arrived. For every ounce of excitement pulsing through my body, Jim had an equal amount of trepidation. He had seen pictures of monster pike. At only 6 years old, he was convinced that if he hooked one of those giant gators, it would yank him right into the water, and he wailed in protest with big wet tears running down his cheeks. He did not want to go northern fishing!
Against Jim’s will and to my delight, we loaded up Dad’s leaky olive green rowboat outfitted with a 9.9 Merc and headed for the local millpond. Like any millpond, this one is shallow, weedy and loaded with hammer-handle pike.
Dad outfitted us with Dardevles – good old red-and-white Dardevles – not that kid stuff we were used to casting. My grandpa’s old fiberglass rod bent nearly double as it catapulted the giant spoon out over the pond and my trusty Zebco faithfully retrieved it through pike-infested waters. It was a real trick to begin your retrieve before the big spoon sank into the weeds, and I can assure you plenty of vegetation was uprooted that day, but I must have made good on a couple casts because …
Suddenly a pike crushed my spoon! This was it! No weed this time; this was a northern! The green rocket gave me everything he had, bending the old fiberglass rod double and tangling himself in the weeds. I held fast, cranking him in the best I could and screaming for the net.
Dad, however, was oblivious to my pleas because unbeknownst to me, Jim had hooked up too, and Dad was making sure Jim’s fears of being pulled into the water didn’t become reality.
My wily old pike was no spring chicken. He hadn’t made it to the lofty length of 18 inches by being dumb. He wrapped himself around the anchor line at the bow of the boat, using every trick he knew to evade his captor. Through sheer skill or absolute dumb luck, I managed to untangle the fish from the anchor rope, and it was a fair fight again.
It was the age-old battle of man against beast. Well, this beast had met his match. This 8-year-old had read enough fishing articles and watched enough fishing shows to know what he was doing. At last, I subdued the spotted giant and guided it to the net.
At that moment, I was the king of the world. The spotlight was on me and my glistening 18-inch beauty. Dad and Jim surely would be shouting and praising me for my great accomplishment.
But it wasn’t to be, for when I turned toward the rear of the boat, there was Jim, positively beaming over the 21-inch behemoth he had landed just moments before I brought in my own fish. He had no tears of fear; no worry about a fish pulling him in – just sheer elation. Jim had completely taken the wind out of my sails.
Dad ended up catching a couple pike that day, but that was all Jim and I caught. And I can tell you this: I have never been so jealous of a 21-inch northern in all my life. It wasn’t a competition, but Jim had bested me. However, we had both succeeded in something that day. We’d caught gamefish. No more kid stuff. It was a real milestone for two young fishermen.
Nowadays, when bass or pike fishing, we often grumble when we hook a snake, slimer, snot rocket, hammer-handle or whatever negative terminology one can use to refer to a small pike. But every once in a while, I think back to the sheer joy that a couple of little pike brought to a couple of young anglers and I can’t help but smile.