fishing

It was a miserably hot Saturday when all of us kids and our chaperones loaded up for our first annual church youth group fishing trip. Of course we could not have known the weather would be so inhospitable when we scheduled our outing. Hot, sun baked, and dripping with sweat, we all sat for hours waiting for just one bite, even a nibble, on our fishing lines. After what seemed like days not hours, my Papaw finally said, “Well, I reckon it’s time to try something different”.

He reeled in his fishing line and I saw him fiddling about with his tackle; I had no idea what he was doing but whatever it was, I thought, couldn’t produce anything less than we already had. While he changed over to whatever his new idea was my cousin and I went back to our futile attempt to catch something, anything!

A few minutes past and I heard Papaw begin to chuckle as his real began to spool in line. Whatever he had changed in his fishing set up seemed to have made a difference; Papaw had the first bite of the day! All of us kids and the adults, too, that were near him began to gather around to see what he had on his line. After a few minutes of fighting the fish who had taken his bait, Papaw had indeed landed the first catch of the day. But in reality he had out done us all even more than we realized; there was not one fish on the end of his line but two fair sized catfish!

When we asked what he had done he explained, as he laughed so hard tears streamed down his cheeks, what his new setup was. He had split his line and put on two hooks about 12″ apart. Each hook was baited with something no one would have guessed to try as by bait: bubblegum! He explained that with the water conditions he had a hunch that the bright pink, floating odd-shaped bait would be too tempting for the fish to not bite at; his hunch was spot on. The sly old fisherman had outwitted not only us but the fish as well.