Getting Ready - Summer Fishing

As the school year comes to a close and the winds begin to bring warm summer breezes up off the gulf I am reminded of the nostalgia of days past.

When I was a pre-pubesant living on Dr. Peppers and Cheetos. I had the first urge to catch big fish. These were the days of dead shrimp and Zebco 505s. We always had plenty of dead shrimp around because it was also the time when my father had developed the sickness of sport shrimping. Many a day was spent on the old Bayliner with the net in the water. A true torture for any child. Eight hours on a tiny boat going about 5 miles an hour trying to comprehend the "Mother Load". The "Mother Load" I would find out later was enough shrimp to feed all the sloppy drunk coaches that often came to the house for relief from the stresses of high school football in Texas . In those days I would sit at the end of the Steeland's pier with a box of shrimp and the prized Zebco waiting for the big one. I would often catch hundreds of croakers a day. The waiting would eventually pay off with the occasional sheep's head or Black drum. Less often I would reel in a Red Drum or a spec. On one day in particular, the day I lost my fishing virginity, the day of no return from the endless pursuit of the "big one", I caught a Red Fish that any true angler would be proud of.

As I sat on the edge of the pier casting my Zebco into the murky abyss and periodically checking the crab traps, it happened. The line went taut and I reacted with the systematic jerk.

"Shit" - (I cussed a lot when I was this age, but only when my mother was not around) "I am hung again".

I knew that I was hung and what I was hung on. A week earlier me and a couple of the neighborhood kids found a fun way to torment ourselves in the true Evil Knievel way kids do (Evil was really big). We would tie our BMX bikes to a long rope and set up a ramp at the end of the pier. We would "Haul Ass" down to the ramp, up and into the water. On one of the turns one kid jumped so far that the rope broke and we failed to retrieve the bike. So I knew at that moment that I was going to loose yet another sinker and treble hook to the watery graveyard of the BMX. Just as I began to cuss loud enough for my mother to hear from the house, I began to loose line. I watched as yard after yard of line fed out of the end of my prized Zebco. After the initial shock wore off, the fundamentals began to flood my head. "Keep your rod tip up stupid" , "Go slow or you will loose this monster", "Don't loose Control". Then I wondered if the Zebco would be enough. Had I been kidding myself about the abilities of such a fine piece of equipment. Then I decided that I had better focus.

I fought like no kid had ever fought. I had to walk this massive fish to the bulk head because he was too big to pull up on the pier. When I finally beached this aquatic fiend I was spent and elated. I drug him up onto the rocks and ran with him up to the house to show somebody, anybody. Everyone was impressed.

I have caught lots of fish since that day, and many of them where , I am sure, bigger. I don't use the same equipment as I did back then. The price of catching fish has gone up exponentially every year. No more dead shrimp, now I am a self proclaimed angler. With all the evolution that has taken place over the years I have never felt what I felt that day; independence, elation, accomplishment, pride and most of all pure joy. This only comes once or twice in a lifetime. Share this with a child. Buy them a Zebco this summer and teach them to fish.

Chad Cox Send pictures and stories to stories@blackchipfishing.com