Evenings on dock take angler back in time

Billie fished with homemade tackle. Her line was a twine string; her sinker, a metal washer. I was that tomboy. I’m also the old woman who doesn’t care whether the fish are striking.

Billie was born in the bent-pin era but had real, store-bought hooks. She carried extra hooks, twine and a couple of washers in the chest pocket of her overalls. As she walked through the woods, she’d hunt a dry stick and break off a stub that would float well enough to resist the tug of a 10-inch mud cat or a hand-size creek perch. She’d use two half hitches to tie that stick on her line for a bobber about 2 feet above the washer. Her dad taught her that two half hitches will hold the devil.

Billie used a straight green branch for a pole and stripped off its side twigs. She’d cut a notch around the pole tip and tie the line in the notch so it wouldn’t slip off. A Prince Albert tobacco can in the rear pocket of her overalls held barnyard fishing worms and a little moist earth. Sometimes, she took an empty can for crickets or grasshoppers she’d catch on the way.

In Grindstone Creek south of her farm, only a few holes were deep enough for fish. She knew that on hot summer days, perch hid around big rocks and mudcats hid under the roots of trees.

When Billie was 10, she’d ride her bike two miles down Fulton Gravel Road to fish with her friend Elizabeth. They threaded long, fat barnyard worms onto their hook, spit on the worms for good luck and tossed the lines out, ready for a fish to bite.

The girls didn’t know whether the spit actually worked, but Elizabeth said, "It can’t hurt, and some say it attracts fish."

The first to catch a fish would cut a small Y-shaped branch, strip off the bark, cut one leg of the Y short and leave the other one long. She’d thread the fish on to this "stringer" by putting the long end through the fish’s gill and out its mouth. Then she’d put the fish in shallow water and keep it in place with a big rock. The next fish would go on the stringer the same way.

The girls dressed six or eight little fish up near the well pump in the backyard. Then, Elizabeth’s mom finished the cleaning while the girls built a small fire between two rocks in the backyard. They’d fry their catch in lard in an iron skillet and eat them with homemade bread, mealtime or not.

It’s hard for Billie to realize she’s an old woman with two hearing aids, walking slowly, slightly bent forward. She loves to fish from a lawn chair on the dock, reviewing treasured memories at dusk.

She places a tiny fly, gentle-like, where willow roots grow down into the water from shore. Nothing happens. She winds in the line and stops on the way to the house to marvel at the quiet beauty of first stars, the call of the whippoorwill, fading willow reflections in the water.

Who needs fish? Each tomorrow is another wonderful day.


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