But Dave Barry disagrees: “Fishing is boring, unless you catch an actual fish, and then it is disgusting.”

Let’s look at our cartoonists’ viewpoints.

from January/February 1994

From April 8, 1961

"You catch me, you throw me back.
You catch me, you throw me back.
Dude, get a life!"
from September/October 2005

"…Hmmm—quite a few fishermen.
Now raise your hand if you’re a golfer."
from July/August 1998

"The doctor put you on a fishing diet?
Are you sure he didn't say fish diet?"
from September/October 1999

"Darn, another boot!"
from March/April 2004

Cartoons: Fishing Fun The Saturday Evening Post

If I’d known as a 9-year-old that those delicious, bite-sized berries were actually good for me, I probably would have refused to eat them. Today blueberries are hailed as a kind of super food. Chock full of antioxidants, dietary fiber, potassium, and other nutrients, blueberries are purported to improve brain function and lower the risk of Alzheimer’s, diabetes, dementia, heart disease, and even cancer—all for just 80 calories per cup.

Fish and blueberries. Both are delicious on their own, but can they work together in a single dish? Certainly they can, says Marc Meyer, chef and proprietor of three New York City restaurants, Five Points, Cookshop, and Hundred Acres. “In many cases we labor under the tacit rule that fruit is a sweet, not to be mixed with savory,” says Meyer. “But in this recipe, the mild flavor of the trout calls for something like blueberries with their off-sweet tart and rich flavors. The bitterness of the arugula, the enriching of the olive oil, and the aromatic quality of the mint rounds out the entire dish.”

Blueberry and Grilled Trout Arugula Salad

(Makes 4 servings)

Photo Courtesy U.S. Highbush Blueberry Council.

Ingredients

• 4 4-ounce trout fillets
• 6 ounces (11 cups) arugula
• 1 ½ cups fresh blueberries
• 6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 3 tablespoons white balsamic vinegar
• 1 tablespoon coarsely chopped fresh mint leaves
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ⅟₄ teaspoon ground black pepper

Directions

1. Grill trout fillets skin-side-up over medium heat until lightly brown, about 1 ½ minutes. Turn over and grill another 2 minutes or until fully cooked. Remove fillets from heat, skin, and break into medium-sized pieces.

2. In bowl, combine arugula, trout, and blueberries.

3. In small cup, combine oil, vinegar, mint, salt, and pepper.

4. Divide salad onto 4 chilled plates; drizzle each serving with dressing.

Nutrition Facts

Nutrition analysis per serving (including dressing)

Calories: 363

Total Fat: 26 g

Saturated Fat: 3.8 g

Sodium: 352 mg

Carbohydrate: 14 g

Fiber: 2.4 g

Protein: 19.45 g

Diabetic Exchanges:

1 Carbohydrate

3 Lean Meat

5 Fat Exchanges

Angling for Blueberries The Saturday Evening Post

Woman With Basketball by Carol Aus

Woman with BasketballCarol AusNovember 20, 1909

Dr. James Naismith is credited with inventing basketball in 1891, and apparently it didn’t take long for the ladies to try their hand at the sport. A Norwegian artist named Carol Aus (1868-1934), about whom little is known, painted this young player for a 1909 Post cover.

Woman Playing Tennis by George Brehm

Woman Playing TennisGeorge BrehmAugust 3, 1907

We have plenty of cover art showing a pretty lady posing with a tennis racket or other sports equipment, but an action shot like this tennis player makes a person wonder how the artist did it. A person might also wonder how the lady was so active in a long skirt. This is from 1907.

Lady Fishing by Harrison Fisher

Lady FishingHarrison FisherAugust 16, 1902

We have dozens of covers depicting the art of fishing, the first of which was Grover Cleveland fishing in 1901. The second, in 1902, was of a lady reeling one in! Harrison Fisher was a big name in Post covers, doing nearly 80 between 1900 and 1915.

The Finals and Alice Gray by Pete Fountain

The Finals and Alice GrayPete FountainMarch 21, 1903

We have numerous depictions of the great game of golf, also. This is one of the earliest, from 1903. Maybe they couldn’t vote, but women could certainly golf…and fish, hunt, play tennis, basketball and baseball.

Woman Archer by J.J. Gould

Woman ArcherJJ GouldJune 1, 1907

This is another action painting. Early Post artist J.J. Gould went for verisimilitude in this one from 1907. The lady looks like she knows what she’s doing.

Woman on Horseback by Philip R. Goodwin

Woman on HorsebackPhilip R. GoodwinJune 9, 1906

Hundreds of covers depict a lady reading, holding flowers or a fan, or simply looking lovely in a beautiful gown. This 1906 cover shows many of the fair sex were made of sterner stuff.

Classic Covers: Women in Sports in the 1900s The Saturday Evening Post

Maybe the distinction of appearing on two separate coins will make President 22 and 24 a little more memorable. He’s already known among historians as one our most honest presidents. He was the only president to be married in the White House. He was an avid hunter and fisher, and he wrote for the Saturday Evening Post—distinction enough for anyone.

In 1901, the Post printed his “Defense of Fishermen,” in which Cleveland rose to protect the honor of the American angler. Critics, he claimed, were unjustly accusing fishermen (there is no mention of fishing women) of  “certain shortcomings and faults”: laziness, profanity, and dishonesty.

What sense is there in the charge of laziness sometimes made against true fishermen? Laziness has no place in the constitution of a man who starts at sunrise and tramps all day with only a sandwich to eat, floundering through bushes and briers and stumbling over rocks or wading streams in pursuit of elusive trout. Neither can a fisherman who, with rod in hand, sits in a boat or on a bank all day be called lazy—provided he attends to his fishing and is physically and mentally alert at his occupation.

What about all that swearing and rough language? Oh, the President replies, you mean

the sudden ejaculations, outwardly resembling profanity, which are occasionally wrung from fishermen in trying crises and moments of soul-straining unkindness by Fate.

I like that “outwardly resembling.”

Fishing imposes a self-restraint and patient forbearance upon its advanced devotees which tend to prevent sudden outbursts of feeling. It must be admitted, however, that when the largest trout of the day winds the leader about a snag and escapes after a long struggle, or when a large salmon or bass, suddenly, by an unexpected and vicious leap, frees himself from the hook, the fisherman’s code of morals will not condemn the holder of the straightened rod if he impulsively, but with all the gentility at his command [italics added], exclaims: ” Damn that fish!”

It is probably better not to speak at all; but if strong words are to be used perhaps these will serve as well as any that can do justice to the occasion.

And then, of course, there’s the matter of… well, lying to put it bluntly.

It must, of course, be admitted that large stories of fishing adventure are sometimes told by fishermen—and why should this not be so? There is no sphere of human activity so full of strange and wonderful incidents as theirs. Fish are constantly doing the most mysterious and startling things; and no one has yet been wise enough to explain their ways or account for their conduct.

The best fishermen do not attempt it; they move and strive in the atmosphere of mystery and uncertainty. In these circumstances fishermen necessarily see and do wonderful things.

If non-fishers can’t assimilate the recital of these wonders, it is because their believing apparatus has not been properly regulated and stimulated.

Take, for example, those incredible stories of “the one that got away”—that one enormous fish that somehow, miraculously, elude the angler. What of it? Cleveland would reply.

It is perfectly plain that large fish are more apt to escape than small ones. Their weight and activity, combined with the increased trickiness and resourcefulness of age and experience, greatly increase their ability to tear out the hook, or expose a fatal weakness in hook, leader, line or rod.

In many cases the encounter with a large fish causes such excitement, and such distraction or perversion of judgment, as leads the fisherman to do the wrong thing at the critical instant—thus contributing to an escape.

Beyond these presumptions, we have the deliberate and simple story of the fisherman himself, giving with the utmost sincerity all the details of his misfortune, and indicating the length of the fish he has lost, or giving in pounds his exact weight. Now why should this statement he discredited?

I think the ex-president is having fun with us. Hard to say. Certainly he is being serious when he writes—

the real worth and genuineness of the human heart are measured by its readiness to submit to the influences of Nature, and to appreciate the goodness of the Supreme Power.In this domain those who fish are led to a quiet but distinct recognition of a power greater than man’s, and a goodness far above human standards.

Amid such surroundings, no true fisherman can fail to receive impressions which so elevate the soul and soften the heart as to make him a better man.

Cleveland’s conclusion: Fishing is good for the soul and good for the country.

The President wrote this article for the Post in 1901.

In these sad and ominous days of mad fortune-chasing, every patriotic, thoughtful citizen, whether he fishes or not, should lament that we have not among our countrymen more fishermen.

Grover Cleveland Wants More American Fishermen The Saturday Evening Post

But Americans were also living and working in quiet towns and peaceable cities, never hearing an air-raid siren, spotting an enemy bomber in the sky, or even seeing an enemy soldier. And, unless they had the bad luck to be born to Japanese parents on the west coast, they never saw a military operation.

Yet their lives were hardly tranquil. They lived in gnawing uncertainty about the war’s progress, the fate of a loved one in combat, and even the possibility that America could still lose the war. They also lived with food shortages, gas rationing, and the impossibility of buying automobile tires or even a new pair of shoes. For many, the 1940s looked a lot like the grim 1930s.

The future, though, was another matter. It easily accommodated any wish for a better life. The thought of peace and prosperity must have been dizzying, particularly for the young men, who would only have vague memories of life before the Depression and war.

Now, with all the new technology generated by the war effort, life was going to be better than ever. Anything was possible.

This spirit of post-war predicting is captured in a Post article from August of that year: “The Coming Boom in Vacations.” According to its authors, America wouldn’t just beat its swords into plowshares, but into fishing rods and camping trailers.

If having fun ever needed any justification, it has that justification overwhelmingly now… Our great responsibility for the future is to create peacetime work in a volume at least comparable with what we have been doing for war.

An important item helping to keep our economy in blooming good health can be the activities engendered in keeping ourselves individually healthy, mentally and physically, by getting a larger share of the out-of-doors.

A considerable part of what we mean when we say “the American standard of living” involves our power to rove and play.

And a considerable part of the new recreation industry the author anticipated would involve camping and hunting. He quoted the head of nation’s Fish and Wildlife Service:

“Right after World War I, there was a thirty-per-cent increase in the number of hunting and fishing licenses in the United States. Much of that increase was due to the fact that a lot of city boys had newly learned to live out-of-doors during their military service and had likewise learned to use firearms skillfully.  This time almost every able-bodied young man has been drawn into military service. When these men are restored to civil life, their wives and children will certainly share to a considerable extent in their newly won proprietorship of the American woods and fields and streams.”

Ironically, American industry would enable its citizens to get back to nature. The end of gas rationing, the resumption of auto manufacturing, and the growth of passenger air service would give families new access to America’s 13 million acres of National Parks.

The automobile did much to further both the use and the preservation of the parks. Among the guardians of the Yellowstone, 1922 stands as a kind of frontier year. One per cent of the visitors arrived in automobiles then. But thereafter the change was sensational. In the five years between 1922 and 1927, thanks to automobiles, more visitors came to the park than had come in the previous half century.

By saving travel time en route, vacationers are going to gain time to play. Whether you work in Hollywood or Brooklyn, if your vacation begins on a Friday night, on Saturday you can begin spending your vacation period at your goal, whether it be the slopes of Mt. McKinley, the Great Smoky Mountains, Lake Placid… etc.

The author also expected that military equipment would soon appear on the shelves of sporting-goods stores.

Will this G.I. hammock, watertight and insectproof, become standard vacation gear?

A major part of war production has been concerned with the making of new things to enable Americans to live out of doors in health and reasonable comfort.

Probably the most popular single appliance, if the soldiers were asked to vote on it, would be a companionable little stove intended to be a kind of supplement to any motor vehicle, jeep, truck, reconnaissance car, tank or your car. Its fuel is the same gasoline. When taken out of its neatly fitting cylindrical container, that container becomes a stew pan. When the folded top of the stove is opened, it looks and functions just like the burner on your gas stove. Since one of these stoves, complete, weighs only a pound, you could easily and habitually carry in your car one stove for each passenger.

There will be a companion piece to that stove. It is a six-pound item… in which a soldier can have a night’s rest in a jungle, no matter though the ground beneath him be ankle-deep mud. No tent is necessary; this is a tent. The tent part is simply a cloth roof, which is a part of a hammock with a zippered envelope of mosquito netting. As used by the military in the jungles, this little fabric home is simply tied between any two trees conveniently spaced. The soldier inside sleeps as dry as if in a cocoon.

The rubber boat, because it is not merely a portable but a packaged boat, represents, potentially, a geometrical expansion of fishing and hunting opportunities. This package, in combination with airplane, automobile or jeep, means that any trip can become, at will, an expedition.

Some of these products, with modification, became staples for modern campers. Others, like the following, never got farther than being a war-time fantasy:

Recently the sales manager of a New York sporting-goods store received a letter which confirmed exciting conjectures about out-of-doors life after the war. This letter was probably the first civilian order for an amphibious tank. It is wanted by a Maryland duck hunter, and he is ready to pay $2000 for it.

The order was accompanied by a cutting from a newspaper, a picture of the amphibious vehicle being used by the United States marines wherever they are making landings on hostile beaches.

And the amphibious tank is, of course, but one more item in a catalogue of relatively new and wonderful inventions being produced in America because of the war, all of which lead the entrepreneurs of outdoor sports to believe a boom in their business waits only for peace and demobilization.

Next: Raising a Family on a War-Time Budget

Life in the Shadow of a Distant War The Saturday Evening Post

Cousin Reginald Goes to the Country – August 25, 1917

Cousin Reginald Goes to the Country
Norman Rockwell
The Country Gentleman
August 25, 1917

The country cousins pick up Reginald for his first visit in August 1917. These were characters Rockwell developed for Country Gentleman magazine. Cousin Rusty Doolittle seems to be driving the horses harder than necessary. Reginald is having second thoughts about these guys. So is the dog. Oh, Reginald, this is only the beginning.

Cousin Reginald Goes Fishing – October 6, 1917

Cousin Reginald Goes Fishing
Norman Rockwell
The Country Gentleman
October 6, 1917

His citified attire is not the only thing that shows us Cousin Reginald is no fisherman. The only thing he caught was the dog, Spot. Much to his cousins’ amusement, of course. In 1917, Rockwell was 23 – not much more than a lad himself. But he certainly had the knack for depicting boys.

Cousin Reginald Goes Swimming – September 8, 1917

Cousin Reginald Goes Swimming
Norman Rockwell
The Country Gentleman
September 8, 1917

Okay, the country cousins can be jerks, but really, how can you not make sport of a guy who wears a swimsuit like this? And who is leery of even dipping his toe in the water? And Rockwell’s full name for the character was “Master Reginald Claude Fitzhugh.” We’re just saying.

Cousin Reginald Plays Tickly Bender – January 19, 1918

Cousin Reginald Plays Tickly Bender
Norman Rockwell
The Country Gentleman
January 19, 1918

“Tickly Bender” was an early version of “chicken.” The leader, the no-good rat, would find the weakest spot in the ice and dare the others to skate over it. We think Cousin Reginald is showing some sense in this situation – he’s getting the heck out of there (as is the dog). A word of advice: Don’t listen to your country cousins, Reginald.

Cousin Reginald Plays Pirates – November 3, 1917

Cousin Reginald Plays Pirates
Norman Rockwell
The Country Gentleman
November 3, 1917

The boys decide to play pirates on this November 1917 cover. Let’s guess now, who got trussed up and sent to walk the plank? We’re REALLY starting to dislike these cousins.

Cousin Reginald Catches the Thanksgiving Turkey – December 1, 1917

Cousin Reginald Catches the Turkey
Norman Rockwell
The Country Gentleman
December 1, 1917

This 1917 cover is called “Cousin Reginald Catches Thanksgiving Turkey,” but it looks the other way around. No doubt the country boys told Reginald that turkeys are docile creatures that just sit and wait for you to cut their stupid heads off. He’s a slow learner, that boy. Do not, repeat, do NOT listen to your cousins.

Cousin Reginald is the Hero – April 6, 1918

Cousin Reginald is the Hero
Norman Rockwell
The Country Gentleman
April 6, 1918

But one time, one time, Reginald is the hero. The kids are putting on a play, and the dastardly villain (one of the country cousins, staying in character) is making life unbearable for the damsel in distress. But Cousin Reginald comes through in the nick of time, brandishing sword and the deed to the house! We knew he had it in him.

Like Saturday Evening Post covers, Country Gentleman cover reprints (which look great framed) are available at www.curtispublishing.com.

Norman Rockwell’s Cousin Reginald The Saturday Evening Post

Why else would people dedicate so much time learning how to cast a fly rod or tie a fly? Only something that is truly enjoyable would justify going to the effort of studying the life cycle of insects or the diet patterns of fish.

Fly-fishing requires mastering arcane skills and plenty of patience. But, it also offers the chance to embrace nature in a way unlike any other.

Neophyte fly-fishers face the basic challenges of learning the equipment and prey. But what begins as a pastime soon becomes a cause, as these men and women pursue their new passion with large amounts of time, effort, and resources. They are, in fact, starting an endless quest.

In the midst of learning new tactics, they often discover a rare sense of accomplishment. The pursuit is so intriguing that even days of little or no success on the water can be filled with enthusiasm and an eagerness to return.

In a 1958 Post article, Corey Ford describes the peculiar pleasures he found in fly-fishing.

“His satisfaction lies in dropping cocked at the head of run, and watching it ride back down the swift current, bobbing lightly over a riffle, gliding around a boulder; reversing its course and halting poised for an instant in a back eddy under the bank. If a trout happens to share his enthusiasm for the fly, well and good. The angler plays his adversary on a taut line until the fish is exhausted, and leads it carefully to shore. Then he kneels beside it and grips it firmly around the body—first wetting his hands so he will not damage its protective oily coating—and removes the barb from its upper lip. He holds the trout facing upstream a moment longer, until its gills begin to move regularly, and then he spreads his hand and watches it dart back into the current with a farewell flick of its tail.

“…the dry-fly angler does not come home empty-handed. His creel may be barren at the end of the day, but be brings back other things; the sound of running water and smell of wet rocks, the memory of a grouse drumming on a log, a beaver’s v-shaped wake as it crossed the pool, the sudden skirl of a kingfisher, like a winding reel. They will last longer than a fish curling in a pan.

“A friend of mine, an ardent purist, was challenged once by a golfing acquaintance as he turned loose a large trout he had just netted. ‘Why go to all that trouble to catch a fish,” the exasperated golfer demanded, ‘if you don’t want to eat it?’

“‘Do you eat golf balls?’ my friend inquired pleasantly.”

Fly-fishing is best known as a method for catching trout and salmon, but it can also be used for catching a wide variety of species: freshwater fish such as pike, bass, panfish, and carp, and marine species such as snook, tarpon, bone fish, and striped bass. A growing number of fly-fishers are broadening the number of species they pursue, using cold- and warm-water techniques.

Whether you are an amateur or an expert, the goal is not to catch the most fish. It is to gather rich memories and sharpen skills that apply to everyday life, like thought, planning, and dexterity.

Read “The World’s Fussiest Sport” by Corey Ford [PDF].

Fishing for a Better Self The Saturday Evening Post

Wife to husband: “One of those trout you were fishing for last weekend called and left her phone number.”

Karen S. Chilos

Hook, Line, and Stinker The Saturday Evening Post

Finding Fish

Thirty years ago and more, locating fish required ingenuity and luck. Jerry Hayenga, a 74-year-old Minnesota fisherman, remembers how his teen buddies hooked a headlight to a car battery and rowed it out in a boat at night. “They shoved it under, with a funnel over the headlight to direct the beam, to spot walleyes in the shallows.”

Jerry Carlson’s grandfather found fish by “reading the wind.” The freelance writer and fishing columnist recalls that wind direction and the number of consecutive days blowing informed his grandfather where to set his line. “Rarely did we not have good success that way,” he says.

But today, the 59-year-old former fishing guide says you don’t even drop a line down unless you “see” fish. “You cruise the area first, watching the electronics — the fish finders, or sonars, as we prefer to call them — to determine if fish are there and how deep.”

Electronic fishing aids have become increasingly sophisticated. Sonars now include GPS (Global Positioning System). “When you find a good spot, punch a button, and you can save the location accurately within 3 feet,” Carlson says. In addition to boat location, sonars indicate water columns, bottom terrain, and water temperature; suggest trolling speed; provide views of fish around the boat; and offer weather threat matrix, a feature that allows sportsmen to fish longer with its “angler-friendly interpretation of weather conditions in your area.”

The electronics do pretty much everything except put the hook in the fish’s mouth. “It used to be that we might catch a couple of fish here and there,” Carlson says, “but with the new sonars, over a period of a few hours, we can pick up our limit of fish. [Yesterday] I watched my electronics and saw that the fish were at 15 to 17 feet near the weed line, which usually means they’re more aggressive. We caught our limit early and went home. The sonar makes one huge difference.” Only the fish don’t approve.

Poles, Rods, and Reels

Bamboo poles were the old rods of choice, cheap and long enough to allow anglers to toss a bobber out 15 to 18 feet from shore. Early manufactured fishing rods were merely 4-foot-long pieces of thin steel, recalls Ned Kehde, columnist for In-Fisherman magazine. “Those early rods and reels were not very castable. It took a lot of dexterity, and when you’re 8 years old, you aren’t very deft. My mother and father spent a lot of time taking backlashes [tangled lines due to spool run over] out of my reel.” Bait often was flung free of the hook, soaring far out into the lake.

“The rod was just stiff steel with no sensitivity at all,” Hayenga recalls. “Fighting a big fish was tricky, and you could get busted up or bloodied knuckles.” In comparison, modern rods and reels are ultra light with hugely improved casting ability.

Today’s rods are mostly made of graphite and designed to take tension off the line. Rods come in differing lengths and strengths: short and stout for trolling big-game fish; short and flexible for areas with limited casting (under trees); and long (up to 12 feet) for casting greater distances.

Reels come in spincast, enclosed to prevent backlash (one turn of the handle brings in several feet of line quickly); spinning, excellent for casting light lures and bait; and baitcast, used when heavy cover is targeted. The reels have centrifugal or magnetic drags to prevent backlash. Some are equipped with line counters so you know how much line is out.

What’s Your Line?

“In the old days, all we had was heavy, black, braided line the fish could see,” Hayenga says. “But you still caught fish.”

“You could catch big fish with it, but you couldn’t lift them out of the water,” Carlson says. Today, with the right line, you could reel in a 100-pound fish, and the choice of line can get complicated. Monofilament — clear or green — is the most common line and can be used anywhere. Super lines, fusion, and braided types are smaller strands put together to make one stronger line. Thin super lines are much stronger than monofilaments of the same thickness, and they have little stretch. Fluorocarbons look like monofilaments, but are all but invisible underwater. With very little stretch, they lead to better hook sets (lingo for hooking a fish).

“Fish have microscopic vision,” Jerry Carlson says, “so you can never entirely hide what you’re doing. But the less you show them, generally, the better success you’re going to have.”

Taking the Bait

“Fishing is the sport of drowning worms,” an unknown author once penned. That might have been true in the strictly-live-bait era.

“Bait was basically worms or minnows, but mainly worms,” Hayenga recalls. “You got worms or grub worms from manure piles and any kind of little minnow you could get, often little perch.”

“We seined minnows — just about as much fun as fishing — always found a few frogs, and went fishing,” Carlson says. Nightcrawlers were always good bait, and, in the 1970s, leeches made huge inroads. Still-popular baits include crickets, grasshoppers, salmon eggs, fish pieces, corn kernels, hot dog pieces, cheese, and dough balls. Meanwhile, artificial baits designed both to trick fish and to lure fishermen to buy them have proliferated. Among the hottest are scented bait, with lure manufacturers vying to produce the smelliest concoction.

“The scented baits are very innovative,” Carlson says. “Plastic worms or spinner rigs impregnated with a little scent are wonderful for attracting walleyes. When I took kids fishing at the lake, I gave them each a bottle of Gulp! which has 400 times the scent of PowerBait. I think it works better than the real thing.” Gulp! advertises several delicious (to fish, at least) flavors, including crab, squid, sandworm, shad, shrimp, mullet, grub, and leech.

And then there is Eurolarvae, an exotic term for colored maggots. “It’s wonderful bait, and cheap,” Carlson says. “Fish love them because they smell like food and move and wiggle. They are propagated in chicken guts, and when the chickens are fed certain dyes, they come out red, green, or yellow.”

Changeless

Though most aspects of fishing have changed over the years, the essential core has not: the art of stalking the fish and the desire (some say obsession) to nab the finny devils.

In Fisherman’s Luck, Henry Van Dyke wrote, “No amount of preparation in the matter of rods and lines and hooks and lures and nets and creels can change its essential character. … There are a thousand points at which fortune may intervene. The state of the weather, the height of the water, the appetite of the fish, the presence or absence of other anglers — all these indeterminable elements enter into the reckoning of your success. … When you go a-fishing, you just take your chances. … You try your luck.”

Fishing is a love affair, Kehde says, like falling in love with your wife. “It’s all the mysteries of life combined, an uncontrollable passion.”

“Fishing may have changed,” Hayenga adds, “but it still is wonderful. Any day on the water is great.”

The New Fishing: Hook, Line, and Sonar The Saturday Evening Post

One of the dozen or so passengers was a well-equipped angler intent on fishing the Wisconsin River. He seemed to have everything in hand: two rods, a large tackle box, creel, a vest, and a hat festooned with small lures.

As we all walked up the dock toward shore, a young man of 11 or 12 sat on the opposite side of the dock from the boat, holding a piece of cord that disappeared into the water. Setting next to him was a box of ice cream cones.

We stopped and asked the angler, “What are you doing?”

“Fishing,” the boy replied.

“For what?”

“Channel cat.”

“What are you using for bait?”

“These cones.”

“Cones,” the older fisherman said skeptically. “Catching anything?”

With that, the young man reached over to a piling and pulled on a piece of cord tied there. As the stringer came out of the water, everyone gasped when three large channel catfish emerged.

The wide-eyed angler stammered, “You caught those on a hook, line, and ice cream cones?”

“Yep,” came the reply.

“Can I have a couple of cones?” the man asked.

“No,” said the youth. “You’re the third guy who’s wanted some today. I’m almost out.”

“Can I buy some from you? I’ll give you a dime each,” the man said.

“The other guys offered a quarter, but I got a half dollar,” said the young entrepreneur. “I’m getting so low now, I’ll need 75 cents.”

“For a cone!” the man shouted.

“I’ll sell you fish for $3.”

“No, no. Here’s a buck and a half. Give me two.”

After the transaction was complete, everyone proceeded up the dock with the surprised angler leading the way. “I can’t believe I spent over $100 for all of this gear and could have caught those fish for a buck,” he muttered, prompting a good laugh by all of us—fisherman included.

Do you have a “reel” fishing tale to share? Write your stories in the comments!

A Fish Tale The Saturday Evening Post