Fishing

May 19, 2019, 6:47 PM

Ladies and Gentlemen: It's been many years since I hung out my "GONE FISHING" sign. Spud and some of the other posters have been showing pics of their catches, and some were pretty good sized fish. That got me to wondering. Are those fish some I almost caught many years ago? Very well, could be, but that's just speculation and I'll leave speculation to our Gamecock friends in Columbia.

Somewhere in my current abode is my old tackle box, filled with antique lures and some other old stuff. It's probably in the attic above my garage. Some of those lures go back to my high school days so that would make them over 80 years old. Most of the newer ones I got in the late 1940's.

After WW2, I needed a new reel and spent a fortune (almost $10.) on one I thought would be an answer to all of my fishing problems. How wrong I was, I had more snags, tangled lines, back lashes and more problems than a shade tree mechanic, but I was having fun and catching a fish now and then between my reel problems.

During my high school years, a family friend, Uncle Barney, asked me if I liked to fish and if I would go with him regularly and operate the kicker, a "powerful" 5 HP job. One of his sons, "Sunny Boy", also liked to fish and he made a similar deal with one of my buddies. We fished many of the lakes in and around Gainesville & Ocala, FL., one of our favorites being Orange Lake. Orange Lake was a large lake with floating islands of water lilies, trees and snakes. Water lilies were all around the lake and depending on how the wind was blowing, they were solid for as much as 300 - 500 yards.

We left the boat dock in mid afternoon and were quite a distance from the boat dock. Dark clouds came up and it began to rain. The wind blew the water lilies toward the boat dock. Our alley toward the boat dock was completely blocked and no way was our 5 HP kicker powerful enough to make a dent with the lilies. So, we spent the night in the two boats on the lake.

The next morning, the employees at the boat dock cleared a path through the lilies and we were able to get back to the dock, get our boats on the trailers and head for home, a tired group of fishermen with not one fish in our creels.