Why I love fishin: Whats your stories?

[66KingFisher]

My stepdad was a real stick in the mud, and would'nt give you fifty cents for a semi load of fishing equipment. But my grandad was different, and every summer my brother and I would spend a couple of weeks on their farm in Osage Oklahoma. They always had ponds on their land, and every evening when he'd come in from working the fields, he'd take us for a ride on his tractor down to one of the ponds, for a bit of fishing with cane poles....assuming little brother and I had filled our Prince Albert cans with grasshoppers caught earlier in the day...and done all our chores of course...lol. Those early bream fishing experiences stuck with me much more so then my brother, even though some of my favorite memories are of him catching fish, not me.

Jump forward to pre-teen years, and we find ourselves fishing on Baron Fork creek in NW Oklahoma during a family reunion weekend camping trip. My brother and I are now fishin high tech Zebco 202's with Fiberglass rods, and wading up and down the creek, always staying within earshod of the campgrounds, when suddenly someone musta dropped a car battery into the water near my brother....Well, it seemed that way at the time...lol, but it was actually about 2.5lb largemouth that blew up on the Creme worms we were fishin, but it might as well been a twelve pounder to me...lol The way it was fighting and jumping outta the water was stuff i'd only seen on Wide World of Sports....lol. With big brothers help we managed to land the fish and run back to camp without dropping it, too show off our trophy. From that moment forward I was hooked on the Largemouth bass, and 40 someodd years later I still get that same feeling inside everytime I hook into onna them rascals. I can't explain why it affected me for life, but not my brother and it was his catch that got me hooked....Go figure.