How and Why????

[Deacon]

On another thread I was reading about how some people got into fishing. I was wondering how/why you guys got into fishing...Thought this would be a cool thread to start just to read about your adventures.......

I fished a bit when I was young in the salt water(barracuda, bonito and mackrel off the jetties in So Cal. I fished a bit on camping trips to some of the lakes down there to. I mainly fished for trout and catfish. I had yet to discover bass fishing. My dad lived in so cal and mom in las vegas. So i moved to moms and forgot about all about fishing for about 4 yrs. I went back to dads for a summer vacation and he had discovered that a little 6 inch purple worm with a split shot caught these fat green fish in freshwater. We would go to the lakes we used to trout fish and walk the banks fishing for bass. I was fully "hooked" the first one I caught. I cant actually remember the size of the fish but I do remeber it was trout rods/reels/line. This fish fought so hard I thought I was gonna break the rod. Ever since that day It has been a life long progression passion and learning expierence.

How about you guys.....How'd you get into it.

[JB]

I got into fishing through my uncle who lived near cape cod mass.
We used to go up to Massachusetts each July for vacation, and he had a wood Lineman boat that we would take out to the bay and go mackeral and flounder fishing and anything else that would bite sandworms .
After a 10 year absence from fishing a guy that I work with started taking me to the lake here and go bluegill fishing and bass fishing in 1980 or 81.
Picked up bass fishing and have been at it about 25+ years now. Still learning too!

[Sluggo]

1959 I was six, my Dad started me then. he had big boat with two evinrude twin 50's hp. and we fished Table Rock and the Mississipp River. My was a small mouth fanatic and large mouth was not to important to him and he was a top flight fisherman he also used spinning gear I still have those old Quick reels the chatter like an old typewriter. He did me big favor he saw I was not to interested in flyfishing or spinning and bought two old baitcasters at an estate sale, an he told me "you know you gotta be a real good fisherman to use these". I started in the backyard and sure I got very very good at and thats it.

[pig n jig]

In a nutshell, the law started me bass fishing. The judge's sentence required me to quit fighting and quit drinking alcohol + spend 12 weekends in Jail with a conditional 10 year probation period + all the various fines and court fees,mandatory alcohol and substance abuse classes,or else I was going to spend the 4-7 yrs in Attica Prison here in lovely upstate NY. After I agreed to the plead guilty to the conditional sentence which basically kept me from going to prison,any violation of my probation period was an automatic 7 year sentence at Attica when I agreed to the conditional sentence.Basically my so called life was turned upside down.Life sucked as I knew it, I was having a tough time of not being able to be what I thought was normal. I just completed my weekends in jail bit, a friend of my family called me and invited me to fish a team bass tournament with him.I told him, I don't know anything about bass fishing, but I would like to get out of the house.After that, he took the time to call me every weekend to go fishing, or had other club members call me to fish with them.If it weren't for the people who took the time to get me started in bass fishing, I doubt I would have made it through the probation period let alone go as many years beyond it as I have.I still laugh at the thought that I unknowingly traded a 4-7 year prison sentence for a life sentence of bass fishing. P N J

[HulaPopr]

About two years ago, my little brother and his friends were brim fishing down on a public dock. I went down there for a minute cause they needed help with sometihng and thats where I met a kid who was bass fishing on the dock. He went to the same high school and was a year older than me so we got to talking. He asked if I wanted to go fishing the next day and so we got out and the lake and he taugh me a few things for about the first three times we went fishing and I took it from there. Once lacrosse season ended I fished about six days a week and was able te rapidly increase my skills within just a few short months and I've been addicted ever since.

[flippin4it]

I'm pretty shocked to here PNJ's story, seeing how his experience is very close to mine. At least the first half. I found that riding around on a Harley, trying to grab the devil by the tail and brawlin' was a ticket to nowhere.....I had already had a serious run in with the law when I was younger. I found that bassin' was my outlet. The more I went, the better I did in my personal life and my work. Parked the bike, found a woman that understands me and fed the bait monkey. I'm doing great now, good job, great wife, 2 little girls, work for a lure making company part time and I'm happy. Need I sat more?

[islandbass]

Wow, those are great stories!

Come the end of April I will have been fishing for two years. Wanting to try fishing had always been on my mind even as a kid but I was too busy with a lot of other activities. Then one day, I told myself I was going to take up fishing. I was so green about fishing that if you asked me what a bail was, I would have replied that it was something you paid to avoid jail.

The other side of me is embarrassingly geeky, in that I always want to be as prepared as possible in whatever I do to ensure victory and success. I read Fishing for Dummies, The Idiot's Guide to fishing and Arthur Cone's book before I even bought a rod. Talk about being geeky.

Anyway, I decided I'd try to catch trout and heade out to a local lake. It was a blustery, overcast day and I tied on a size 5 rapala minnow. The wind was making casts nearly impossible with such a light bait so I pulled out a 3-way swivel, tied the main line to one end, a leader with the minnow on the opposite end and a 1/4 oz bass casting weight to the bottom end.

I had unknowingly devised what was in essence a Carolina rig but heck I didn't know!

I made a cast off the dock hoping to catch one of the recently planted trout. On about the 5th retrieve, the rod started to feel heavy and I thought it was probably grass. I didn't even know I had a fish on until the minnow was about 10 ft away.

Low and behold, a small bass, maybe only 3 times the size of the minnow and had a lipful of treble. Despite being so tiny (what I now know is a dink - hee hee) I was totally stoked and hooked. I said, "Screw trout! The bass is where it's at!!" I released her quickly released her I couldn't take the grin off my face. It was the first fish I had ever caught in a natural environment setting.

From that point I focused all of my attention to bass until last summer where I decided to expanded pursuit of salmon and steelhead. They fight hard and good and can give you the ten minute fight of your life. However, they are not as wiley as the bass. Bass are special. I cannot count the times I could coax them out of cover, stare at my presentation for what seems like an eternity, move around and about it and swim away with the frustrating aloofness of cold hearted princess.

I think I wrote too much. Sorry!

[Zach_BassFisherman]

Well it's simple it looked exciting and fun!

[crankybait]

well, i went camping somewhere in pennsylvania when i was like 6. i saw a guy fishing and he caught a sunfish on the first cast. i was totaly amazed, so i ran screaming to my dad and he bought me a spincast combo. then i figured out how to work it, and caught some sunfish. in about 4 years, that got boring so i stopped for a bit. then, i went to my cousins grandmas house. she had a pond, so i just sat in the gazebo and noticed the fish swarming around the dock. i took fishing back up, got some spinning gear, and decided to try bass. theres my story

[zooker]

flip
nothing will shock me to much about pnj...

started fishing with my uncle and dad. they are trout fisherman i spent most of my youth knee deep in the western ny streams catching trout. we would just go fishing if we ended up catching a bass it was like you caught a trash fish and we just threw it back.moved down into nc in 95 started working at prnc 10 years ago met a guy called bossman who interduced me to the bait monkey. showed me how to bass fish north carolina style. it has been a long down hill slide for me..
i am still learnin as we all are..

zooker

[bassguy2004]

My dad first took me fishing when I was around 5 years old. He liked to go to Clear Lake here in California to catch catfish. Since he was from Arkansas he missed the catfishing. We used to fish the Russian River and that's where I caught my first smallie when I was around 9.
There were no special "lures" or any of that sort of thing, nightcrawlers was the ticket. He would wet down the lawn during the day and in the evening he would hook up a extention cord to two screwdrivers and jab them in to the ground and plug the cord in, well you should have seen the crawlers zoom to the surface. Unplug the cord and scoop up the bait.
Later on I would go fishing by myself when I was older. I still didn't have much an assortment of items to use but I continued to fish. One trip to the State Park at Clear Lake, I took a glob of nightcrawlers and dropped them right next to some reeds that flanked the edges of the slough where we fished and I stuck a largemouth around 2 lbs. At that time we kept most everything we caught except for the very small fish.
After I had grown up I didn't fish with my father all that much, which I still regret.
In a nutshell, went in to the Air Force, went to college, went to trade school, got married, then in 1980 my wife, told me, the husband of a friend of hers wanted to start a bass club. I told here I didn't know squat about bass fishing but she insisted I go to the first meeting. So I guess I have to blame my wife.
So, is it a problem, obbsession, hinderance, no, I call it fun, no matter what is happening on the lake at any given moment. Like on my sig "Show me the water, I will fish".

[NCYankee]

Great stories guys. I have always enjoyed fishing but didn't really know what I was doing until about a year ago. I grew up fairly poor, and my dad is a dead beat. From age 10 to 16, I probably saw my dad less than ten times. I've always loved the outdoors, but as a kid I couldn't really do anything because of lack of money. Anyway, my good friend's dad often invited me to go with his family when they went fishing (only a few times each summer). Unfortunately, he never taught me or my friend how to fish. He just let us do our own thing.

Well about a year ago, my wife surprised me and told me she was leaving me (yes, there was another man). Unfortunately, we had recently moved about 500 miles away from our friends and family. So, what's a guy to do. I started fishing. Like Islandbass, I'm a geek. I read every bass book the library had, read the info on this site, and read info on bassresource.com.

Last Thanksgiving was the first Thanksgiving I've spent alone. I wasn't able to visit my family 500 miles away. I decided I wasn't going to spend the day feeling down, so I went fishing. To say the least, what started as one of my worst days became one of my best. I caught my personal best that day. Fortunately, there was a guy and his kids fishing not too far away. I ran over to them and showed them my hawg. They were about as excited as I was.

[zooker]

nc yankee
remember this phrase "a man has to do what a man has to do" look around this forum most of the older guys are life long loners -inculding my self- or have gone thru a simalar experiance. some of us have no kids to teach or hand down the skills or the tricks to todays younger generation.. we use such places as this forum to do just that..

i know this for a FACT as i have spoken to better than half of the older members on this forum. on my own dime i basicly heat up a cell phone during weekends if i anit fishing.why ? because i can.. and will continue to do so.. because we are trading advanced ideas among our selves-which we both know are very diffacult to do over this board style medium..

zooker

[skeeter944]

in march,2005, a friend invited me for a day of fishing.i had been fishing 1 time before,and had caught 12 bluegill.they said we were going bass fishing. we got in the jon boat and my rods started to mess up ,so his dad gives me a zebco 33 with a weightless plastic worm on it.i made a cast near a tree in the water,and felt a few taps.he said to let the bass run with,so i let him run with it.i set the hook 2 times,and she fought pretty well.she was 2.5lbs. i got another friend going bassin,in fact he is a member on this site,and we have been going fishing up to 3 times a week since august.

[flfireman]

Started fishing with my uncle on Lake Erie when I was 5. Always enjoyed being out there with him. Hopefully he's got a lifetime supply of fishing gear in heaven. Continued w/ my dad and brothers, mostly bluegill on my little Zebco w/ a bobber. Took 2 or 3 trips to Rice Lake in Canada w/ my other uncle. Caught some big musky and walleye. Moved to Fl and the only thing I had in common w/ most of the beach bums was my ability to fish. Would go to the indian river and dock fish or wade. Caught catfish, trout, sheepshead, drum, snook. Then started hitting the local lakes and small golf course lakes for bass. Thats when I fell in love w/ bassfishing. Still occasionally hit the inshore and offshore, but freshwater is my true love.

[1FASTLASER]

Fishing always intrigued me even when I was a youngun. Then my life went like PNJ's and flipin4its did. Thought alcohole and dope was cool. You'all know the story. You gotta run with the big dogs. Even when pop was alive I fished and fished hard but always had a buzz going so it didnt matter much. After pop passed on I woke up one morning after doing some bad dope and looked in the mirror. SCARED THE HELL OUTTA ME and of course anyone else around at the time. Decided I better get back on track and since I was already into fishing somewhat I went to it. Read watched talked and slept bass. Still do and learn something new each and every time I go out whether or not I catch anything. The best thing is like PNJ stated "It taught me to rely on myself and deal with things beyond my control"

[NCYankee]

The day my wife left me, I told her she should credit herself if someday she sees me on TV fishing a bass tournament. She is my inspiration. Behind every good man, there's a woman. LOL! (as stated in my previous post, I started bass fishing as sort of a release when she told me she was divorcing me and that she had been seeing someone else.)

[Bender]

I fished ith my dad as a kid in the strip mine ponds of eastern Ohio. My parents were split up and a lot of the time we spent together was fishing, usually at least once a week. We stopped going when I got to be about 13 or so. I just fished once a year or less for a long time. I hadn't thought about it but I did start fishing again at about the same time my ex-wife and I split up. She had a long affair and called me when I was in Europe to tell me.
Last summer it really started to pick up for me since I got to go a lot with my now father-in-law who fishes 5 times a week. Then I bought a boat last fall and this year it is going to be good.

[flbassman]

Well, I'd always fished with m dad, but never seriously for bass. In my old neighborhood, there was a creek where we fished for bluegill, and one time, my friend, my dad and I were there and my dad saw a bass. All we had was cane poles and bread, so he caught a lizard and dropped it down. He hooked that bass and passed it to me, and I was amazed. Then, I pretty much forgot about bass, but that incident was in the back of my head. One day, my friend and I were catching bream in the pond across the street, and we saw huge explosions. Turns out they were carp. after a month or so of hard fishing, I caught my first carp. I then signed up for carp.com, a forum like this, and I'm sad to say, became a hardcore carp fisherman. Then two things happened. I found an old crankbait, and got lucky and caught a 5 pound bass. This was cool, but not enough to really get me rolling. The other thing was, I was out carpin', and my friend and I saw a bedding 6 pound bass.Recalling the lizard incident, I hooked a live lizard, and pulled that bass in. Now that was amazing. I was hooked. That night I googled "bass", ordered a BPS catalog, registered here, and spent a few hours on bassressource.com. I learned a lot quickly, and over the course of two years, a lot of mistakes, some big bass, some luck and some good friends, I'm here now.

[bassnman30]

When I was a kid I saw some guys in a square nosed bass boat (the popular kind at that time) fishing under a bridge at a lake that we fished . These guys were catching big bass not the 2-3 lbers but 5 lbs and up.
I told my father that I was going to do that one day. When I was 14 I got a jon boat. When I was 20 I got a 16' bassboat, when I turned 25 I got a 17'6" bass boat. Now I've got a 18' Ranger and I fish appx. 150-200 days per year.
My next boat may be a 20' Ranger. As they say, once you go Ranger, you never go back. The bigger, the better!

[lizardsrule]

I've been fishing as long as I can remember. When I was a kid, it was mainly bluegill, or crappie. As time went on I moved to catfishing, and bigger fish. I seriously became a bassaholic probably 5 years ago, when a gentleman who had a place on the coal pit I used to go, invited me to go bassin. He caught a lot more than I did, but it got me forever hooked. I think about bassin all the time, and if I can, I go fishing. I would fish 7 days a week if I could LOL. I was lucky enough to have a father and familiy who were outdoorsman. All of my family is from the midwest, and most of my uncles and relatives grew up feeding themselves, with farming, hunting and raising livestock. Mostly fisng and hunting, since the other stuff actually got them money, and the fishing and bullets were cheap. I am extremely greatful everyday for the times I get outside, either fishing or hunting. I enjoy it like it's Christmas for a kid. I've met a lot of great people fishing, some of them from this site. I fish because I'm a fisherman at heart, and hope they pull my carcass off my boat with my rod in my hand when I pass away. Cremate me and throw my ashes back into the water.

Lizards

[1FASTLASER]

Originally Posted by flbassman

Well, I'd always fished with m dad, but never seriously for bass. In my old neighborhood, there was a creek where we fished for bluegill, and one time, my friend, my dad and I were there and my dad saw a bass. All we had was cane poles and bread, so he caught a lizard and dropped it down. He hooked that bass and passed it to me, and I was amazed. Then, I pretty much forgot about bass, but that incident was in the back of my head. One day, my friend and I were catching bream in the pond across the street, and we saw huge explosions. Turns out they were carp. after a month or so of hard fishing, I caught my first carp. I then signed up for carp.com, a forum like this, and I'm sad to say, became a hardcore carp fisherman. Then two things happened. I found an old crankbait, and got lucky and caught a 5 pound bass. This was cool, but not enough to really get me rolling. The other thing was, I was out carpin', and my friend and I saw a bedding 6 pound bass.Recalling the lizard incident, I hooked a live lizard, and pulled that bass in. Now that was amazing. I was hooked. That night I googled "bass", ordered a BPS catalog, registered here, and spent a few hours on bassressource.com. I learned a lot quickly, and over the course of two years, a lot of mistakes, some big bass, some luck and some good friends, I'm here now.

LOL Man you shoulda been Lizards then but ...........There is only one LIZZY.

[Fish On]

I would say my father. He made it to the New Jersey Finals for bass fishing and I wanted to do the same in New York. My grandfather use to make fishing rods which we now have.

[flamez]

well i use to fish for dear but theyd always wrap me and brake me off on them damn trees then i hear about using the same tackle but for these fish called bass and that was it