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Monday, August 31, 2015

The Frog and the Fly




It was time to take the grandkid fishing. He had been all over me to get on with it, quit reading, having tea and palavering about the economy. It was the usual nagging of a kid who has only one intention at that very moment. This particular child has focus and whether it is rock hounding, gathering pumpkins or fishing, he looks only in that direction and makes sure I am aware of it---particularly if it takes me getting off my butt to make it happen.


He had the entire outing all planned out, the site of action set, and his gear, lame as it is, ready for action. He knew of a pond in a park right in the middle of town where he had seen fish and had, on a few occasions, managed to land a couple of adequate pan fish. Fortunately, he doesn’t seem particularly intent on catching size but rather just wants action, be it a nondescript minnow or a gapped-mouth carp. It is just the journey, not the destination---apparently he had read Robert Louis Stevenson who said. “I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.”

Having developed that philosophy at a young age, is helpful to a grandparent, who in my age, has developed a certain amount of sloth. At the same time, it is my responsibility to introduce him to the greater pleasures of life and to facilitate the desires, which have developed, a result of my earlier encouragements. Simply put, I had to get off my posterior, put down the computer with it’s  never-ending sob stories of how lousy we as a species are treating the world, and take Jake to the pond.

In a fit of ambition and an exhaustion from being badgered by the kid with comments about my inability to catch fish, I tossed the angling swag in the car along with the chattering nine-year old and lit out for the water. From the back seat he, for reasons unknown, proclaimed he was one of the world’s best fishermen and wondered, aloud, if he was a professional. With eyes lifted in disbelief,  I was not able to imagine where he got this idea because I had told him numerous times I was the best fisherman in the universe. He fidgeted and carried on as we approached the rather stagnate, algae filled pond still confident he was about to set records with his prowess.

He bolted from the backseat and headed, Tom Sawyer-style, for the edge of the pond where he threw down his bait box, unraveled the tangled pole and began chucking the miserable looking lure into the depths. On my arrival, somewhat belated due to my noticeable inability to run, he pointed out the fish he could actually see in the water. Yup, there were some small fish there all right, not monsters, but fish. He threw a few more casts but didn’t attract any attention as his bait was, to some extent, bigger than the fish he was pursuing. While he was still confident of success, I noticed a shift in his patter in that he was now making note of the small crawdad-filled stream just to the north. He was beginning to conger up an option if fishing should not play out.

It was at that moment I decided to increase his angling possibilities and began drawing on my world’s reputation as grand master fisherman. It seems he had a rubber frog in his tackle box, one of those that floats, is weedless, and has enough weight for him to be able to really send it flying out in the small lake. The frog itself was not a suitable lure in that the pond probably didn’t have a single fish in it capable of devouring the plastic frog. This is where a little imagination had to come in. After showing him how to tie the fisherman’s knot, and laying out the strategy I was pursuing, we then attached a second line from the hook of the frog. The line being about twenty-four inches long and lighter in weight from the main line. We were being crafty and drawing on my fly fishing experience----I, of course, reminded the over-egoed kid about my skills not wanting him to think himself so superior when he was, in fact, in the presence of a fishing god.

I have to admit he was not very impressed with my bragging and did tell me I had an inflated eagle. At the end of the second line, I attached a fly, a wooly bugger if you will. We now had a real rig, one that would bring home the bacon. I even liked it because if there was a big bass in the pond, he might just have a chance, but in truth, we were after the pan fish.

On the first cast, he managed to hook an eight inch Green Sunfish and the afternoon was off to a great start. While a number of the bass-like sunfish tried to gobble up the frog, the wooly bugger carried the day and in the next hour he managed to haul in twenty flopping fish, which inflated his eagle but also made traveling for travels sake a reality.




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