Fishing in "the old days"

[MGF]

Inspired by the thread "Learning to fish on the internet" where/how did you start?

 

Living in the far west suburbs of Chicago...My earliest fishing memories are of following my father around through the brush/woods on the bank of a local lake trying to get my tackle untangled while my father filled a stringer with bass he caught on his home tied unweighted rubber worm. I eventually learned to use my gear and caught a few fish too.

 

We used to go to northern Wisconsin every year to musky fish. My dad had a 14 ft aluminum car top boat (I still have it) and a 6 hp Johnson motor (I have that too). No trolling motor or electronics. My dad would drive back and forth while I lay over the bow calling out the weeds I saw. In some cases we bumped the anchor around to see what was down there. 

 

 I still do most of my fishing in a 14 ft flat bottom boat in the local river. I sometimes use a "NED rig" instead of a lead head and grub...I have my spinning reel spooled with braid and a fluorocarbon leader but it's really not that much different.

 

I was watching a video the other day. I don't remember who but I remember it because I had to replay it for my wife. The guy made a special point out of the fact that his power poles saved the day...they would have been in trouble without them. I was thinking that I would have dropped an anchor...two of them if needed. I'm sure that power poles are great but there's still a few of us that probably won't ever have them...or the bass boat to put them on or the truck to pull it all with. LOL

[scaleface]

I was just a toddler and dad set me up with a worm and a bobber on the bank of some Mississippi river back-water . I caught a sunfish . I remember seeing the bright orange color and thought it was a part of the sun . I still visit that place frequently and every once in a while will fish it . 

[BassNJake]

My dad is who got me started

He'd take me to the sandpits or down to the river 

most times I was just messing around while he fished

But somehow the itch was born

 

As I got older I would tape my 2 piece rod to my BMX bike and ride down to the sandpits myself

Sometimes I'd stop at the river first, catch crayfish and or hellgrammites and use them for bait

 

Later in my late teens and early twenties I'd take the canoe out on a local lake 

There I got convinced to fish in my first tourney

That was all it took to get me hooked as a die hard basshead

 

My dad was my partner for the first few years before I started fishing BFL's

I'll never forget that time on the water with him and now I make sure we have at least 1 trip a year together

[Tizi]

My best friend got me started at age 5.  He had a 12 foot jon boat.  We fished out of that thing so many times, dawn until dusk.  His mom would take us in her station wagon, drop us off, and pick us up after dark.  We had a blast catching bass out of that jon boat.  We used that boat until we were both in our 20s.

[scaleface]

28 minutes ago, BassNJake said:

As I got older I would tape my 2 piece rod to my BMX bike and ride down to the sandpits myself

I rode my bike for miles just to catch bullheads . Then throw them in a wet gunny sack and head home , stopping twice to place the sack of fish in water to keep them alive . When I got home I dumped them on the lawn and they would still be alive . I supplied many bullhead suppers that way . 

 

I'm going to retrace my tracks just to see how many miles that trip was .

[WRB]

Believe or not I am not the most elderly BR member! 

I started fishing in the late 40's over 7 decades ago when crankbaits were wooden plugs. Outboard motors were a luxury, oars powered our fishing boats. Spinning reels were rare French made and baitcasters were American made knuckle busters...I am your grandfather!

Growing up in a rural mountain area without electricity or running water and fishing as the modern bass era evolved was a special time period with fading memories. I miss it!

Tom

[Tennessee Boy]

I started out catfishing with my grandfather.  I got my hands on an old cork popin bug when I was about 10 years old and on my very first cast with it a bream hit it.  I was too shocked to set the hook but a few cast later I caught one and I've been hooked on fishing with artificial lures ever since.  I slowly transitioned from bream to bass over the next five years.

[billmac]

My family was a camping / hunting / fishing family, so I grew up fishing.  I don't really have a memory of beginning fishing.  Having said that, I took to it with far more zeal than my father or really anyone I knew.  I don't know if I joined BASS because I was getting crazy about fishing, or vice versa.

[Spankey]

I don’t remember how old I was when I first started fishing. Was at the river park. Zebco closed face, sunfish, bluegill, bullheads, small channels. My people really didn’t fish per say. I’ve always have been the black sheep. 
 

When I was about 10-11 years old up until I was 14-15 I’d work for this farmer During the summer, he was a retired guy from the electric company. He taught me the ins and outs of trout fishing. I loved it. Still do to this day I love it. Trout fishing always brings good thoughts and memories to me. It’s sort of my Own life’s version of “a river runs through it”. I fished with some decent stuff as a kid for trouts. Farmer Walt used to like to stop at the bait shop. Place is long gone. Was like a gas station and a general store wrapped up in one. I still have some of my stuff that I used as a kid. 
 

When I was about 16 yrs. old I remember my buds and I went trout fishing on a Sunday morning. I remember driving there to one of my favorite holes. Plenty of room for as to sprawl out. I remember having a few trout on the stringer. Then switching over to some brand new Mepps Spinners. Had never thrown one until then. They were sized slightly larger than the Rtails and panther Martian’s I’d been using for years. I started hooking into smallmouth bass in that stream. One after another. My buddies were watching me throw them back and thought I was releasing trouts. They came up to where I was. At a small spillway the width of the creek. I showed them what I was catching. 
 

I lined them guys up across that spill way. I stood back and watch them pitch everything they had and watched them catch them. Worms, minnows and CP swings. I was hooked on bass from that day. My school buddies never got into fishing as we got older. At my last class reunion they brought it up. One wants me to take his grandson. I sure will. 
 

I’m not a great fisherman. It’s just a big part of my life. I’m passing it on to my grandsons now. Can only hope they have a little of “a river runs through it”.

[newriverfisherman1953]

Fished a little river with a pole and twine. Used worms dug from the pigpen. I caught bluegills and suckers. Sometime I would sell them to folks in the nearby coal camp. They would pay with coal mining script, enough to get me a pop and a candy bar. Fist time I fished Cherokee Lake with my stepfather I thought I had hit it big. Come to think about it, I had hit it big. He and I had some great times on the water. This past Christmas I gave my two 11 year old grandsons some fishing plugs (lures) that he gave me. Still have a big old clunky Zebco 89  he gave me for my first rod and reel. 

[Fishingmickey]

    I started fishing at the early age of five or so. Our family used to race small sailboats (I still do). The place was Lake Opecka in one of the suburbs of Chicago. I would have to wear my life jacket (long before the term PFD was coined). I would use a hand line and popcorn to catch Bluegills that were hiding under the docks. If I was lucky I had some nightcrawlers or red wigglers to use for bait.

    My older brothers have brought it up later in life that mom used to comment that a nickle bag of popcorn would keep me going for hours.

Fishingmickey

 

[scaleface]

2 hours ago, scaleface said:

I rode my bike for miles just to catch bullheads . Then throw them in a wet gunny sack and head home , stopping twice to place the sack of fish in water to keep them alive . When I got home I dumped them on the lawn and they would still be alive . I supplied many bullhead suppers that way . 

 

I'm going to retrace my tracks just to see how many miles that trip was .

Just retraced the trip 8.4 one way, 16.8 miles round trip , carrying all my fishing gear on a 20 inch single speed Stingray bike . The kind with the banana seat  .

[Koz]

From the time I was 8 or 9 years old we would go camping at Bantam Lake in CT and Lake Bomoseen in VT and my dad introduced my brother and I to fishing. My dad also introduced me to the phrase, "Just one more cast."

 

Back home we would ride bikes and hit a few ponds. One was Taunton Pond that had some decent bass in it, but it also had a lot of homes around it. There was another pond where we used to go fish at that had an old pump house there and a few giant boulders to fish from. It was isolated and there were no houses around it. I can't remember where it was located in our town, but I remember we caught a lot of bluegill and yellow perch there.

 

 

[MIbassyaker]

I've been fishing since I was seven, and I remember the first time vividly: Dad took me down to the river to fish nightcrawlers under a bobber.  He caught a little channel cat, and I hooked a bigger one that got away right at the shoreline.  It was still very exciting, and I was hooked. From then on I fished the river many times every summer growing up. We didn't fish for bass, but caught almost everything else swimming around in there: channel cats, rock bass, walleye, sauger, goldeye, suckers, drum, and occasionally pike on live frogs. 

 

[kayaking_kev]

I never had a Dad or stepdad to teach or take me fishing, but my grandpa did take me a couple of times with a bobber and worm, but never really taught me anything. I went a couple of times growing up with a spincast zebco and a bobber and worm, mostly trying to catch bluegill because that's the only fish I knew of back then. As a teenager and young adult I also went a few times with friends, but mostly just to party on the bank and never really caught anything and still fished with a bobber and a worm. I fished very few times between then and 2018 when I really started fishing and only caught a couple of fish. In 2017, I bought my first kayak after always renting them several times a year for paddling trips and when I had my own and was able to go whenever I wanted, I kept seeing fish swimming all over the place, so I decided to get my fishing license for 2018. I started catching fish on a Zebco 202 combo that I got for $10 from Walmart and a $1.50 Ozark Trail Minnow lure and I've been hooked ever since. I stepped up to an Ugly Stik GX2 and a Abu Garcia Black Max by the end of that first year. When I first started in 2018 I was catching plenty of Smallmouth and Rock Bass and some Largemouth, but I didn't even know how to tell them apart for awhile. I pretty much just used that cheap Ozark Trail lure and bought a Rapala floating lure once in a awhile, but that was all I threw and it worked great for the small rivers I kayaked. But, whenever I would kayak a lake or reservoir or bank fish one of them, I would pretty much get skunked every time. This past season I discovered the plastic worm and was able to catch a ton of fish on lakes and reservoirs, and caught over 500 fish recorded on video, most of them still using the Ugly Stik GX2 and Black Max. I expanded my bait selection a little this past season and caught fish on the few jigs, chatterbaits, spinnerbaits, and jerkbaits that I had, but I was mostly using the Whopper Plopper on the rivers and a plastic worm every where else. This Winter, I started to upgrade my gear and put a lot of money into rods, reels, and baits. I wanted to skip over gradually building up my arsenal and having to upgrade to better and better stuff so I just went straight to a lot of high end stuff like a couple of Dobyns Xtasys, an Extreme HP, a couple of Champion XP Glass rods, and 3 more Dobyns rods, plus some other decent rods like a St.Croix Panfish rod, Lew's TP-1 spinning rods and a 13 Defy Black Crankbait rod. The only thing I'm needing now is more storage boxes for all the baits I've been buying, but I think I'm hooked for life.

 

I guess I should also mention another reason as to why I got into fishing. I used to pretty athletic, played all the sports, but in 2011 I had a brain surgery that left my left foot handicapped and I can no longer run and have to wear a plastic brace that comes up almost to my knee. I was no longer able to play all the sports and do a lot of the old activities that I enjoyed doing, which put me into a pretty deep depression for awhile, until I discovered fishing and it has helped me tremendously. 

[the reel ess]

My dad took me when i was a wee little lad. My mom used to make him because, like me, he liked to fish more than bait others' hooks. But I caught on fast. We mostly used live bait for crappie on cane poles and had good success. All of my dad's friends used to comment on how serious I was about fishing, even as a little kid. So, while I was still a young'un, I went with crappie fishing my dad and his buddy in his buddy's boat. To keep me occupied, they gave me a white curly tail grub on an 1/8 oz. jighead to throw on my Zebco 33. I wore them out and they didn't have another jig in the boat, or even another rod and reel. They stopped off at a store on the way home and bought them out of curly tail grubs and it was on. I saw my dad's buddy a couple years ago and he asked me if I still like to fish that much and I said "yessir, maybe more".

 

Thus began my love for chunking and winding. I guess it's what eventually led me to want to fish for bass. 

[DanielG]

When I was just old enough to remember, barely, around 1960 my family would put worms on a hook, and at sundown the white perch would start to bite. They'd catch a 5 gallon bucket of them and we'd eventually clean and eat them. After dark we'd put a kerosene lantern on the dock and a ball of worms on a hook on the bottom and begin catching hornpout, a small catfish type thing about 6 inches long. We're of Canadian French heritage (in Maine) and we'd call them budabout. That's phonetical spelling I have no idea how it's spelled. Pronounced bud-a-boot.

 

When I was about 12, my neighbor and I each had 8 ft boats and electric and 3 hp motors and we'd travel the lake fishing and snorkeling. We did an awful lot of it. My parents would just let us go and say, be back before dark.

Bass and pickerel back then. Not awfully big though. We had a Red devil spoon, a mooselook warbler, hooks and worms, and I had a red and white jitterbug for shallow cove lilly pad areas. On days we really wanted bass we'd stop along the edge and pick up small crayfish, hook them in the tail and watch the bass go crazy over them.

 

Today, I'm 65,  living in the same place on the lake (see my thumbnail) and fishing the same areas that I know from fishing the past times and the bottom from snorkeling. I consider it 'my' lake. 4.5 miles long and 1/4-1/2 mile wide. mostly clearish water, no cover and up to 90 ft deep. Today I'm on an electric converted sailing catamaran (lower thumbnail).

 

At 5 am, when the water is like glass, the boat travels silently, and the sun is coming up, and hardly anyone's around, there's nothing quite like it. Sometimes I even catch a fish.

[WVU-SCPA]

My dad had an electric worm shocker that I would spend hours with prepping for fishing trips (mostly trout).  There was also a small pond by the house that I would often shock up a pocket full of worms and catch a load of sunfish and maybe a bass.

 

The one we had wasn't as insulated as the one below and was always good for a jolt.  Also learned several times over that wet ground, bare feet, and electricity leads to some unpleasant moments.  The moments are very fond memories.

 

[scaleface]

35 minutes ago, WVU-SCPA said:

My dad had an electric worm shocker that I would spend hours with prepping for fishing trips (mostly trout).  There was also a small pond by the house that I would often shock up a pocket full of worms and catch a load of sunfish and maybe a bass.

 

The one we had wasn't as insulated as the one below and was always good for a jolt.  Also learned several times over that wet ground, bare feet, and electricity leads to some unpleasant moments.  The moments are very fond memories.

 

Touch a toad on the nose with one and it gets stiff as a board for a few minutes .

[MGF]

I'm about to turn 61 so I don't know if Tom is quit old enough to be my grandfather. My first baitcaster was one of those "knuckle busters" an old Pflueger that my grandfather gave me. I caught a lot of northern pike with that reel fishing in northern Wisconsin.

 

Now I have the urge to go digging through old boxes to see how many of the old lures I still have that I got from my dad...jitterbug, lazy-Ike and river-runt are a few names that come to mind...oh and a fly box of real small stuff..."super duper and some ancient flies.

 

Some mentioned riding bikes to fishing spots. Me too. I used to ride to several quarries. The one I fished the most wass only about 3 miles. I'd ride on overcast mornings. Catch a couple of bass for my mother. She always said they were the only fish she wanted to eat. We didn't release them all back then. After Mom's were secured I used to dig up a worm or use that little super-duper to catch a few bluegills. I'd make a quick meal of them and ride back.

[MGF]

We used to get rubber worms that looked about like a real night crawler. My dad used to use a needle to run a line through it and tie in 3 hooks. We used a swivel which keep the line twist under control and added a little weight to the nose. That's what caught most of my quarry bass back then.

 

But...I remember inventing the float-n-fly. That's a joke, of course, but I caught bass using the basic technique long before I knew it had a name. We got the idea from the little pinkie jigs under a float that we used to catch crappie on.

 

Last year my dad (81) started fishing again so I bought an Ill license and fished some of those same quarries again...those lakes sure look different.

[scaleface]

15 minutes ago, MGF said:

I remember inventing the float-n-fly.

Nope , my Dad invented it . LOL  Tie a marabou jig under a bobber , cast it out in the swift water below Lock and Dam 21 . Let the turbulence and current do the work and catch white bass all day long .

[Way north bass guy]

My dad used to take us kids out in the boat, probably started drowning worms for panfish at around 3 or 4 yrs old. My mom used to take us as well to a few local shore spots where we could cast for bass some evenings when dad was busy.  When I was about 8 or so, I started going to work with my dad in the summer. He was a stonemason ( now I am too), and worked on a bunch of different cottages on the Muskoka Lakes , so I’d fish off the owners dock all day while his crew worked, only to stop when they did for lunch/ breaks etc. Once I was 12, my old man told me to put down the rod and pick up a trowel ?, but I still fished constantly on weekends. Mainly biking to fishing spots and sometimes on the boat with my parents. At about 13 or so it pretty well took over my life, and I haven’t slowed since. 

[lo n slo]

good thread. i’ve enjoyed reading every post so far.

[BTSyndrome]

Grew up walking farm pond banks with dad with only mepps and beetlespins, the rare time I got to use the scout....

(yes, pic of a pic...cell phones and computers were imaginary) lol