Fishing at School

[TubeDude]

[cool][blue][size 1]In the OLDEN DAYS, when I was in the third grade in Idaho Falls, Idaho, I hated it when I had to quit spending my whole day fishing and had to go back to school in the fall. But, that year, I got lucky. The school I had been going to was overfull and several classes were moved to a small building down the street, in the park where my little creek ran through.[/size][/blue]

[#0000ff][size 1]One morning at recess, I walked over to the place where the creek ran under the street. When I looked back in the culvert, I saw a big rainbow laying there. The next day I came to school with a length of old fly line and a 6" snelled hook knotted on the end. When the bell rang for recess, I first ran to a vacant lot and grabbed a grasshopper. Then I ran to the culvert and hooked the hopper onto my handline. I flopped a short length of line into the water and fed it down into the culvert.[/size][/#0000ff]

[#0000ff][size 1]SPLASH. The trout took my hopper. After waiting a few seconds, I hauled back and hooked the big old rainbow. It was a real tug of war for a few seconds. The bell for the end of recess rang just as I dragged the fish up onto the grassy bank. I gathered up the fish and my tangled line and ran back to class...hoping to get a break from my teacher, Mrs. Moon.[/size][/#0000ff]

[#0000ff][size 1]What luck. She was a fisherman's wife and liked fishing herself. She got all excited when she saw the fish and helped me subdue it and put it in the refrigerator in the teachers' room. At lunch, she also called her husband, who met me when school was out and marveled at the fish. I proudly rode it home in the basket on my bicycle. However, I was asked politely by my teacher to not bring fishing tackle to class anymore.[/size][/#0000ff]

[#0000ff][size 1]How big was the trout? Of course they all get bigger as the years go by, but I am guessing it was about 18" and maybe a fat two pounds or so. Then again, it could have been 30" and ten pounds. That's how big it was to me at the time.[/size][/#0000ff]

[#0000ff][size 1]The bad news? That little creek (Willow Creek) once ran free from the mountains to its confluence with the Snake River in Idaho Falls. It has long since been dammed. It is now absorbed by a reservoir and no longer flows through town. [/size][/#0000ff]

[#0000ff][size 1]You can never go back...except in your memories.[/size][/#0000ff]
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[aquaman]

thanks for the story pat my memories keep taking me back to CA. fly lining live green backs for calico bass......ah the memories i'll make it back some day just to flip one mackeral sometime soon
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[TubeDude]

[cool][blue][size 1]Hey Chris, I can synthesize with those sentiments. I have fished the whole Pacific coast, from Cabo to southern Alaska. There's a lot of good fish and good fishing in the salt, but nothing better than a hot bite of big bull calicos right in the boilers or around a kelp jungle. Those things have it all. They crash both baits and artificials and they fight beyond their actual size. They are like smallies on steroids.[/size][/blue]

[#0000ff][size 1]I used to spend a lot of time fishing out of Ensenada, down in Mexico. It was sometimes funny when we would stop to make bait, which were good sized mackerel. Some of the "gringos" from midwest USA would be having a ball catching the mackerel and didn't want to pull up and go fish for yellowtail while the mack bite was still hot. Their eyes would bug out when they saw the big hooks and stout rods we rigged for the big yellows. And, the first time they hooked up to one of those freight trains it was laugh city. Amazing some of them didn't have heart attacks.[/size][/#0000ff]

[#0000ff][size 1]Yeah, I'm a real "son of the beach" my own self. I really do miss the salt action. Don't suppose the brine shrimp in Salt Lake have grown big enough to put up a fight, huh?[/size][/#0000ff]
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[aquaman]

lol no those brine shrimp aren't big enough to catch yet i tell you you i so miss the ocean i mean really just how exciting is it to catch planter trout when you used to use bait that was bigger !
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[davetclown]

Ah yes, those golden daze of our youth. every thing seemed so much grander than todays adventures. and that they were and still are today in the minds and hearts of all them 8-12 years of age anglers. nothing will ever be better or worse than the experiences of a youth of that age.

and if a man could tap in to that magical time in a childs life and hook them up with a fishing adventure he or she would for ever be emortalized in that childs mind. they probably wont remember a host of an event, but they shure would remember to their dieng day the person who spent time with them to explore the avenue of angling.

tubedude I can tell you as my self had become hooked on fishing at even an earlier time in our lives. judging from your enthusiasm for the hook and line I would say you were hooked at tha age maybe around 4-5,

can you remember your first fishing trip, or do you have an earliest memory of a fishing trip?

I remember my varry first fishing trip. I was 4 fishing on the bank of the huron river for catfish with a 5 cent bottle of coke. I didnt get a bite but I did get my vary first shiner, and I anint talking bait fish[shocked] The bank was slippery and my dad had just told me to sit down on the bank so I didnt fall in. As I squated to sit my feet sliped out from under me and I slid down the 3 foot bank and when I hit bottom my bottom kept right on a goin as did the rest of me. my pop bottle hit the top of my knee and my eyeball came down right over top the bottle and the result was I moddled the famous lucky strike Icon. incase I am predating many anglers who has not yet guessed,. that shiner I was speaking of was a black eye. I remember Ma givin me the third degree as to how I came home with the luck strike look on my face.

the camp fire was a nice touch. I was the only kid there, for that matter I was the only one who had a line in the water... LOL...

I wonder back to near that location from time to time, about a mile down the road from where I live now. the old willow tree I was sitting under is still standing, but the location is now some one's back yard. I still fish from the road once in a while, the cat fish are long been gone. there is still an ocational bull head pulled from that section of the river, yep that among a good twenty dozen of my favorite fishing holes are gone to the way side and can no longer be fished for some reason or another.

I agree we cant go back. so we will just have to find another hole to fish out of,,, I do relish those daze of bare foot fishing and the only wories was if there was yet another worm in the can for the next fish and was there still enough time for one more cast.
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[TubeDude]

[cool][blue][size 1]Yeah, Dave, I guess it is true what they say...that you can never go back. I have gone back to my early fishing grounds in Idaho and the creek of my fishing education has long since been filled in and covered by development. Gotta admit to a tear in the eye when I saw that for the first time...after being away for a whole lotta years.[/size][/blue]

[#0000ff][size 1]You are right. I started early. Two pics attached. First is a couple of large cutthroat trout, at age three.[/size][/#0000ff]



[#0000ff][size 1]Second is one of the many rainbows I caught from beneath the culverts in Idaho Falls, where my Willow Creek ran under the roads...in the olden days.[/size][/#0000ff]


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[DanielJRioux]

Good Story Tubedude, I was just in Idaho Falls last weekend. You can never go back home, but as you said the memories are fond.
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