Fishing in "the old days"

[A-Jay]

A-Jay

 

[Bankbeater]

Grew up in St. Louis so fishing spots were very limited.  We had either the Missouri River, Mississippi River, or the local conservation area, and Mom was scared to death I would fall in the river so the CA it was.

Weekends were special because that is when Dad got off work and we went fishing.  I used a sectional cane pole until I learned how to cast and then it was a UL rig after panfish. 

 

[12poundbass]

My dad isn’t into fishing, so it was my grandpa who took me bluegill fishing the first time when I was (guessing) 4-5 years old. My stepdad came along a few years later and he’s a big walleye guy so that’s what I did growing up. 
 

I didn’t really get in to bass fishing until I was 16 or so, now it’s all bass. Fast forward 20 years and I have a 9 year old son who’s in love with bass fishing. He’s like a sponge and soaks up everything Jacob Wheeler has to say. 

[BassNJake]

10 hours ago, BTSyndrome said:

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

 

I spent a week taking pics of pics so that we could save them on a hard drive.

Photo editing programs can sometimes work magic on old photos.

[MGF]

9 hours ago, A-Jay said:

A-Jay

 

Thanks A-Jay. I just read that thread.

 

My initial idea for this thread was more to do with the methods we used in "the old days" but I guess it all goes together.

[MGF]

 I've always been lousy about taking pictures and even worse about taking them to get developed. I was on the phone with my son this morning and we talked about a trip of many years ago. I got thinking about the pictures I took. I still have a bag of film in the fridge. I wonder how long it's good for.

 

So you have the old days and hopefully a few new one's to look forward to. I'm off work using a couple vacation days to get the rest of my teeth pulled. That happened yesterday afternoon and I knew I wouldn't feel like working today.

 

So my son called and wants to drive up to do some fishing. Right now it's blowing and snowing at 32 F. Like a cold from slam. The wind sounds like a freight train outside LOL. So I'm going to drive around today, check out some spots, get some water temps and try to talk to some folks to see if I can find some inspiration.

[RickB]

My dad and oldest uncle (Jackie) used to take me and my youngest uncle (Albert)to farm ponds fishing on weekends. Me and Albert were probably 5 or 6 and fished with bobbers and worms while dad and Jackie fished for bass using black crème worms with props on the front. If it was going to be a big fishing weekend we would lay chicken livers and shrimp on the porch in the sun while we were gone, so they would get rank and toughen up. When we got back and ate supper we would head down to the river with our livers and shrimp and catfish till wee hours of the morning. Our moms would fuss because they keep us out all night. Sure would love to live those days again.

[scaleface]

My earliest bass were   with a cane pole , bobber and worm , the ones in my avatar. Then I would catch them occasionally on the Mississippi river , mostly by walking riprap and jigging marabou jigs up and down . After I got my drivers license bass became an obsession . Caught multitudes of them in culverts . I had two milk runs one in Missouri and the other in Illinois. Stopping at culverts on gravel rds  that were actually  Mississippi  river  backwaters and  protected by levees . A lot of my largest bass ever were caught in those ditches .

 

 

An example of what I use to pull from those ditches . I caught dozens of them .

Theres my 1970 Impala with the giant trunk and my trusty Abu 4600c  leaning against it .

[Russ E]

In the 70's my grandfather had a farm in southern Iowa. it had seven ponds. 2 were old coal strip mines. My cousin and I were the only people that fished them.

we caught a lot of  bass on night crawlers and grasshoppers.

the first artificials we used were lazy ikes, beetlespins, and pre-rigged creme worms. That is about all the local hardware store had.

fishing was ridiculously easy, because there was nobody else fishing these ponds.

When I started fishing public lakes it was an eye opener.

[Bird]

Been fishing since a small child.

 

Had the river on one end of farm and very large farm pond, fished all summer for many years. 

BUT didn't become a true bass fisherman until I ran into a semi pro in the late 70's at the county fair, still remember his gold hydrosport.

 

We talked fishing all evening at the fair so next morning he came over and literally slayed the farm pond, I was speechless and the quantity and quality of fish he caught was unbelievable.

 

I was using beetle spins and nightcrawlers and he's throwing huge spooks and frogs with explosion after explosion. 

 

He looked at me and grinned and said " I'll get you there son " lol

He gave me one of his tackle boxes fully stocked and a shimano baitcaster. 

 

He's old now and battling diabetes but we still fish together occasionally and he still catches big bass.

 

 

[OCdockskipper]

Starting when I was 5 or so, my moms sister & her husband spent time with me on family vacations helping me catch bluegill & catfish.  Then as a preteen, I watched a neighbor kid throw a broken tail rapala in front of a laydown, retrieve it just below the surface and saw a 2lb bass hammer it.  From that moment, it was all about the bass.

 

I read everything I could about bass fishing and joined this fairly new organization called BASS.  Originally fished out of a bright yellow dingy that couldn't have been more than 8 feet long and barely had enough room for 2 people, but I saw that the pros used electric trolling motors, so I added one to that.  We would troll Mr. Twister worms through weedbeds during the summer, an extremely unorthodox method that somehow caught a few bass.

 

Moved up to a bright yellow canoe, again with the trolling motor attached.  From this boat we began to cast for bass instead of troll.  Jitterbugs, river runts & Rebel crankbaits caught most of the fish, the whole idea of slowly fishing plastic worms or jigs was still foreign to me.

 

For my 8th grade graduation, my parents bought me a 14 ft Sears Gamefisher with a small outboard.  I put the trolling motor on the front & gerry-rigged an on/off switch so I could again fish like the pros.  Not only did this boat allow me & my younger sister access to the other side of the lake, it let me stand up and attempt a new method of fishing that was sweeping the nation called Flippin'.

 

Since I joined BASS at a young age just as they were promoting catch & release and since I am not much of a fish eater (unless it is breaded & fried), catch & release was a perfect fit for me.  My aunt & uncle used to shake their head, they couldn't understand why I would let these perfectly good fish go.  Then they thought I really had lost it when I began tagging fish and tracking them if they were ever recaught.

[N Florida Mike]

5 hours ago, OCdockskipper said:

My aunt & uncle used to shake their head, they couldn't understand why I would let these perfectly good fish go. 

That was my dad. His idea of catch and release was - you caught it and released it into an ice chest!!

[Harold Scoggins]

8 hours ago, scaleface said:

My earliest bass were   with a cane pole , bobber and worm

I still have a cane pole I used when a was a little fart. It's old and brittle now. (60+ years) Landed my first bass with my dad using a Zebco 202 combo and a Crème worm, mid 60s. I wonder if you and I ever crossed paths on the Mississippi or Illinois river? We use to run up and down those rivers running trout lines in an old V bottom boat with a rag stuffed in a hole in the bow. I remember one time after checking a line, sitting in the channel, my dad went to pull the rope on the motor and it wouldn't start, with a huge ore barge coming around the a bend. Those were the days!

[scaleface]

4 minutes ago, Harold Scoggins said:

  I remember one time after checking a line, sitting in the channel, my dad went to pull the rope on the motor and it wouldn't start, with a huge ore barge coming around the a bend. Those were the days!

Ha . My uncle tells the story about my dad . Their boat stalled in the channel with a barge coming upstream . My uncle says dad put a rope between his teeth , dove off the front and towed the boat  to the bank . He said Dad looked like Tarzan swimming out there . 

[DitchPanda]

My dad claims I started fishing when I was between 2 and 3. He told me a story about a time we fished off a bridge when I was 4...I threw a piece of my bologna sandwich on my treble hook chucked it over the side and a nice catfish gobbled it and proceeded to try and drag me over the side of the bridge.As a kid we moved all over the country so I had the fortune of fishing a lot of different species and places at a young age so it kept my attention. I fished freshwater until age 11 and then spent the next 6 years fishing inshore saltwater in Texas focusing mostly for speckled trout, redfish and flounder. Moved again at 17 and ever since I've fished for everything swimming in Iowas freshwater...but I've always loved bass fishing the most. Now days we have so much knowledge and content at out fingers that a person can learn anything about a lure or technique they could ever care to know. However there is no way to learn those little nuances or intangibles from a computer. Some things have to be learned first hand from failure and success to gain that unspoken muscle memory that you do but don't even know.

[MGF]

On 3/6/2020 at 10:58 AM, scaleface said:

My earliest bass were   with a cane pole , bobber and worm , the ones in my avatar. Then I would catch them occasionally on the Mississippi river , mostly by walking riprap and jigging marabou jigs up and down . After I got my drivers license bass became an obsession . Caught multitudes of them in culverts . I had two milk runs one in Missouri and the other in Illinois. Stopping at culverts on gravel rds  that were actually  Mississippi  river  backwaters and  protected by levees . A lot of my largest bass ever were caught in those ditches .

 

 

An example of what I use to pull from those ditches . I caught dozens of them .

Theres my 1970 Impala with the giant trunk and my trusty Abu 4600c  leaning against it .

30 years ago...I used to do a lot of fishing on the backwaters of Mississippi river pool 13. I had some FANTASTIC bass fishing there. I need to make a trip back one of these days.

[scaleface]

3 minutes ago, MGF said:

30 years ago...I used to do a lot of fishing on the backwaters of Mississippi river pool 13. I had some FANTASTIC bass fishing there. I need to make a trip back one of these days.

I use to be able to balance myself on concrete  culverts . They were steep and narrow . I would slowly walk down and fish . Never fell in . I could not do that now .

[WRB]

Bass fishing methods I learned from observing bass anglers at Big Bear lake where I grew up working on a boat landing could be boiled down to pluggers and trollers.

Pluggers cast wooden lures called plugs like top water and floater divers working visual weed lines along the shore from a row boat or walking the bank.

Trollers used diving wooden lurres, a few molded plastic lures, spoons and inline feathered spinners. Trollers worked more open water areas as near shore weed lines as possible to keep the lures free of weeds. Most trollers rented boats with small outboard engines or had their own motor and rented a row boat.

Bass tackle was limited to baitcasting reels, spinning reels were rare and used by a few trout anglers back in the 50's. Tackle boxes were small shoe size that held maybe a dozen plugs. Anglers with larger size tackle boxes didn't rent boats they owned them.

The 60's started the modern bass fishing era with introduction of free spool casting reels like Abu Ambassador 500 red reel followed by the 5000 red reels with star drags like small size ocean reels. These reels were game changers for bass anglers because they were easy to cast a wider range of lures availble on the market. The first recreational sonar units were introduced allowing anglers to determine the depth of the water and find fish. At the end of the 60's the electric trolling motors became popular....sonar units and trolling motors plus better reels and tournament bass derbies.

The 70's bass clubs started up everywhere with local tournaments and B.A.S.S. pro anglers using "bass boats" with sonar units, trolling motors and the beginning of livewells as Catch & Release becomes popular in the mid 70's. Sonar units brought the topo lake maps into popularity. The modern bass fishing era is now in full swing.

Soft plastic worms invented by Nick Creme were now common with Tom Manns Jelly worms offering more flavors (colors) and in the west coast the start of hand pour worms. Spinnerbaits were also popular in the 70's and possibly the most popular with tournament pro's during that time period.

The 80's introduced finesse bass fishing and light tackle including spinning reels for bass fishing.

The 90's through today not much has changed, improved equipment, broader knowledge base, super braids and a fluorocarbon line, highly developed reels and lighter weight rods and swimbaits.

Tom

 

[MGF]

I just got some Creme worms. I started fishing in the 60's. My first reel was a Mitchel...probably a 300. I still have several 300's, a 410 and a 310?...the smaller one with the round body. I also have an old Pflueger bait caster with no free spool that my grandfather gave me.

 

The first fishing I remember (age 5 or 6) was following my dad around the banks of a local lake casting those Creme worms for bass. Well, I was often just working to get untangled, LOL. My dad used to tie 2 or three hooks into the worm. We worked them unweighted and caught a lot of fish on them. I'm going to tie mine up the same way.

[scaleface]

3 hours ago, WRB said:

At the end of the 60's the electric trolling motors became popular..

My first elec motor was a two speed Plueger . I also had a Lowrance Green box and several  Abassadeur 5000's .Fiberglass Lews speed stick . That was the good stuff .My boat was 14 foot Ouichita semi v and a 2 HP Johnson .

[TnRiver46]

I still use ambassadeur 4600s, and 5000s. I have several of each, one is from the 60s I think. Caught a 43” gar with it last summer that was peeling drag (65lb braid) and jumping like a marlin. I checked the drag after the fight and i could barely pull line with my hand.

[haggard]

On 3/5/2020 at 4:33 PM, 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.

 

"Hold my beer."

 

[imbatman]

My dad got me started as soon as I was able to go.  It was awesome as we would fish for bass until I got a little board then then dad would take me near the bank and catch a few bream then move back out.

 

This is him.  He grew up in a coal mining town in WVa and poor as dirt.  He and his buddy had a great day but pictures back then were very very rare.  They could only afford one so they had to cut it in half to keep.  Look at that little wooden boat...  As best he can remember this was about 1948 or 1949.

 

My ears are almost as big!!!!!

[Columbia Craw]

I started fishing "Borrow pits" when I was nine years old with a Zebco 202 combo and grasshoppers or night crawlers.  We caught hundreds of bluegill and crappie.   I threw a Red Devil spoon and caught my first bass shortly there after.  Mountain Dew wasn't on the market yet.  Simple times.

[billmac]

The first fish we would target after ice out was silver redhorse (although we always called them redfin mullet).  We would go out at dusk with kerosene lanterns.  I remember you had to let them really take it.  (worms) You couldn't set the hook too early.  We'd get some eels occasionally too.