Fishing Story

Something made me think of fishing the other day, and I recalled a time when I was 10 years old that a friend of mine and I went fishing.

On this day, I was sitting in the shade of a cottonwood tree when my friend Ronnie walked up and said, "Whatcha doing?" I said, "Nothin, whatcha doing?" He said nothin, so I said, "Well if you aren't doing nothin why don't ya sit a spell?" Ronnie said OK and sat down.

We sat there for about 10 minutes watching the cotton from the cottonwood trees floating in the air then Ronnie said, "Whatcha wanna do?" I said, "I don't know, whatcha wanna do?"

We sat there another 10 minutes watching the cotton from the cottonwood trees floating in the air and then Ronnie said, "You want to go fishin?" I thought about it and said, "Sure, why not."

There was a lake about 2 miles down the road so Ronnie and I each got a can and off down the old dusty road we walked kicking our cans as we went.

After our 15 minute walk, we got to the lake and Ronnie said, "Where do you think we should fish?" I said, "That looks like a good spot right there." Ronnie said, "Then that's were we will fish."

So we sat down close as we could to the water and started fishing.

We had only been fishing about 18 minutes when a man walked up and said, "What are you boys doing?" We said fishing and he said, "How are you going to catch the fish?"

I said, "Well mister, my Dad said you can catch fish when they are biting so we take turns putting our toes in the water and when the fish bites our toes then the other one of us will grab and catch that fish."

The man just stood there shaking his head.

The man was carrying a long stick looking thing with a shinny thing on the end of it so I said, "What is that thing you are carrying?"

He said, "This is my brand new $50 fishing pole and $100 reel." I said, "What do you do with that?" The man said, "You throw it out on the water as far as you can and you will catch fish with it."

I said, "Really?" He said, "Yeah, really. Would you boys like to try it?" Well, it was Ronnie's turn to have his toe in the water so I said sure I would try it.

The man handed me his fishing pole and he told me to cast it as far out into the lake as I could.

I was brought up to always do what an adult told me to do so I took that fishing pole walked back about 20 feet, turned, ran towards the water and with all my might I threw that pole as far as I could out into the lake.

I knew I must have done a good job of throwing that pole a long way out into the lake because the man got real excited so much so he was using big words that Ronnie and I had not heard or learned in the fourth grade.

Later Ronnie and I figured we would go home and ask our Mom or Dad to explain those words so when our summer vacation was over and we started the fifth grade we would have a bigger vocabulary than the other kids.

Anyway, the man carried on like that for over 30 minutes, which we just figured he liked to talk while he was waiting for his pole to catch fish.

After he ran out of things to say he swam out into the lake and began diving under the water over and over for what must have been about an hour.

Ronnie hollered out to him and asked him what he was doing to which he hollered back he was trying to find his fishing pole.

Finally the man found his pole and swam back to where we were and drug himself out of the water and was standing there all wet looking at his fishing pole.

I said to the man, "Well, your fishing pole didn't catch any fish either so I guess the fish are just not biting."

Ronnie spoke up and said, "Yeah, my Dad says you can't make any noise in the water when you are fishin or you will scare the fish away. With all that splashing around you were doing out there you scared the fish and they left. Thanks a lot mister."

I said, "Yeah, they're not biting now so com'n Ron let's go home."

We said our good-bye's to the man and mixed in with his good bye were more words we would have to ask Mom and Dad the meaning of at the dinner table that night, and with that we walked on down the road home kicking our cans.