My first recollection of fishing was when Roger and I went with dad about 1946 when we were three on the long trip (40 miles) on Highway 29 through Dead Man's Curve and all the way to Lake Wissota, the largest lake we had seen up until that time. When we arrived that morning, our uncle and grandfather had stayed overnight to fish for catfish.

Using chalk lines, large hooks, and doughballs (bread wrapped tightly around the hook so that it could be swallowed without the hook being sensed) they showed us two very large catfish on a stringer to keep them alive at the water's edge. The largest fish we had ever seen!

Fishing over for the night, we drove over to Jim Falls on the Chippewa River just below the dam. A recent video from Jim Falls.

Periodically, water was let out of the dam to flow over the rocks below and allow fish to swim up the rapids and into the reservoir and river above. No one was allowed within a thousand feet of the dam and there was a loud siren whenever it would open to give people time to get off the rocks below. We arrived just after the dam had been closed after being open for some time. Fish had swum up into the rocks and were trapped in the pools that were left after the water quickly went down when the dam closed.

I remember dad and my uncle taking spears and climbing over the rocks to find pools where there might be fish. They ended up spearing two more huge catfish. Sometime later, we got in the picture  with dad, grandpa and our uncle with four catfish all about the same size. I don't remember eating them, but I do remember that grandpa loved eating catfish and told a story about catching a shovelhead that weighed 32 pounds--8 of those pounds just in the head. The smaller one with my grandpa on the left.

In the story I already told you in the Accident Tales, when we were 6 or 7, we went fishing on another uncle's farm. First, we went to the garden and dug up worms and grubs, and then, walked down through the pasture to the small creek that ran through the lower portion of the farm. With our two cousins about our age, Roger and I indulged in catching many shiners and chubs with simple tree sapling switches about 5 feet long and an equal amount of fishing line and hook. I believe we caught about 30. They were basically inedible because they had black spots on them that were either parasite eggs or the worms themselves. What happened when I ran back to show off what we had caught I already wrote about in Accidents.

When we were about 11 or 12, our uncle treated our family to a week at Yellow Lake in Northwestern Wisconsin. That was before we got our rods and reels and only dad and our uncle went fishing. Our uncle bragged about spending $100 on minnows. I do believe they caught some northern pike, but that was an awful lot to spend in the early 1950s just on live bait.

In a slough off the lake, with our much younger cousin in a rowboat, we discovered mud turtles in profusion. Their heads would pop up everywhere amid the lily pads. Our cousin got the idea to catch them. So, Roger and I rowed the boat towards a popped up head, and our cousin on the bow of the rowboat would catch them. As soon as a turtle saw us coming, it would dive and swim away, but the water was clear to a sandy bottom 2 feet below, so it was easy for our cousin to grab them. Soon, we had a boat full of scrambling turtles.

We rowed back to the cottage and our cousin told his mother that he wanted to, "Take these turtles home with us and sell them to other kids." An entrepreneur like his father already.

Our aunt into scolded him him, "Return those filthy turtles to the lake immediately!" We complied.

In the early spring of our 13th year, Mom and dad took one of their yearly trips alone to Milwaukee. While there, they took in the sports and recreation show. When they got back, we were surprised to each receive a brand-new Century spin cast rod and reel. It was one of the best presents I ever got. I couldn't wait to go fishing.

The year before in our 6th grade class we signed up for the local television station quiz show, Quick on the Draw. Staged as Girl Scouts against Boy Scouts, we participated by drawing one line at a time by each of us in a form of charades to have puzzles solved by the girls and vice versa. For our participation, each of us Boy Scouts got a fly tying kit. I recall tying a few flies during the winter, but without a fly rod, I didn't have much chance to use them. They didn't work well with the spin cast rod. So we acquired some standard lures, including a daredevil, to use instead.

Our first opportunity to use our new fishing gear came at the opening of fishing season in May when we visited our grandparents who were then renting a farmhouse across the road from their old homestead. By then, gone except for the old abandoned farmhouse. The day was blustery, windy and cold, but we were eager to go anyway. The Black River was just a short walk through the homestead that backed on the river and we were fishing.

I walked along the river with the daredevil and cast in every open area of water, but got no strikes. Roger followed behind me and cast into some of the same pools. After a couple of hours I came within sight of the railroad trestle where there was a large pool of water below the trestle. I made a cast out into the middle, but the wind caught the daredevil and blew it way to the right of where I wanted it to go into shallow weeds close to the bank.

Disgusted with my lack of success, I reeled in as fast as I could so that I could try again to get the lure where I wanted. But suddenly, my fast reeling came up short--a snag. I pulled as hard as I could, and the stick or branch that I was caught on gradually came my way. I kept pulling until I saw first, a dorsal fin, and then a tail fin the size of my hand, and I knew I had a musky on the line. I started yelling for Roger as I worked the huge fish slowly in.

Roger said later that he thought I was being chased by a bear, but when he finally got to me I had the fish close to the bank. We didn't have a net or a gaffe and I could easily see that the clip on the end of the leader to the daredevil was open, while the treble hook was firmly in the corner of the musky's mouth. I didn't want to lose him. Luckily, the fish did not seem to have any fight in him, or I would have lost him.

Roger got a piece of wood about 3 feet long and we pinned the fish to the bank. And then, we dangled our stringer’s metal end down through the gaping sharp-toothed mouth of the fish and out the gills. Grabbing the end and bringing it through the ring, we pulled the musky from the river onto the bank. Knowing that the fish would be hard to carry, we got a branch about 6 feet long, tied the stringer to it, and put the pole on our shoulders. Walked along the railroad tracks out to the road and then walked up the road to the farmhouse, very excited. The musky weighed 7.5 pounds and was 31.5 inches, just over the legal length of 30. And he was mighty good eating.

Catching that fish on my first outing with my new fishing gear hooked me for life as a fisherman. In those days, we ate everything we caught except for the very small fish. Catch and release hadn't caught on yet, but I would've been one of the first to do it. When I could no longer fish, I spent a lot of time watching others on many fishing trips.

Later that year, our dad went with us and we weren't having much luck except he told us that he lost a large bass in the rapids. Finally, I saw a bunch of buffalo spawning at one set of rapids and I used a large treble hook to snag one. It was filled with a lot of roe that spilled out when I brought the 22 inch female fish on shore. I didn't know that it was good to eat—caviar.

A year or two later, when I was 14 or 15, our parents rented a cottage for a week on Pelican Lake near Antigo. It was a large lake and there weren't any weed beds or other natural underwater places where one would look to find fish. We fished from a boat in the middle of the lake. We tried casting with no luck and were told at the local bait shop that the best way to catch fish was minnows. We used small minnows for crappies and perch and larger minnows for northern and walleye. Fishing for large northern or musky generally required a small sucker up to 20 inches long. There were no muskies in Pelican Lake that I know of.

I remember that Roger and I were hired at our resort to clear out glass and clamshells from the sand beach area after one of us cut our foot. We fished all week with literally no success, except one day, when I pulled up my line, there was something on it that didn't fight at all, and it was a 25 inch walleye. We took it to the bait shop. The walleye was the largest caught in the lake up until that time, that year, Memorial Day. The owner gave me a free Cisco casting lure that I never caught any fish with.

Our hometown, Marshfield, had a pond by the power plant for cooling. The first time we fished there one spring we caught large blue gills. But they may have been planted because after that all we caught was small ones indicating over populating in the warm powerplant fed water that often occurred in ponds and even in lakes where there weren't enough predatory fish to keep the pan fish population from exploding.

In the years between 14 and 16, Roger and I would often ride our bikes 5 miles north of our home to the Little Eau Plaine River. The best time to go there was after a flood, because after the water went back down to normal larger fish like northern and smallmouth bass would get trapped in the ponds and strike at anything that you threw in. Unfortunately, northern pike would have a way of turning quickly and snap the line.

Sometimes, we would ride east and then north about 7 miles to a place downriver where there were deeper ponds and we could catch a perch with a worm or a grasshopper and then set the perch out for northern to take… A slower way of fishing than casting, but sometimes yielding larger fish. A couple of times a young guy in a brand-new red convertible with his girlfriend would come fishing there. I often wondered what it would be like to have a girlfriend who would like to go fishing with me. It never happened.

We had better luck on occasional trips back to the Black River when visiting our grandparents. I remember one time I was standing on a high bank and made a cast between two tufts of grass about 4 feet apart where water fed into a shallow rapid. I was reeling as fast as I could when a massive strike occurred between the tufts and I had a very large, perhaps, 37 inch, musky on.

As I started to pull the fish toward me from my high perch, it came upon the shallow rapids and literally rolled down them with me hoping that the line would not get caught on a scale or the lure come out of its mouth. When the musky reached water deep enough to swim, it took off toward me as I reeled in the line and then dove down under a submerged tree below me and I had visions of the line breaking or tangling as it pulled hard on the end of my rod making me think I should jump off the bank into the river to save my line and the fish. But there wasn't time for me to do that because suddenly, the line went limp and the fish was gone. It took with it one of the treble hooks on the daredevil. So, all I had was this fish story. 

We never struck out on the Black River. One time in one day, I caught a northern, a bass and a walleye. Another time when the walleye were spawning, we caught several. They are the best freshwater fish there is to eat.

There was one time behind a bar on the small river that ran by our place south of town, I was casting my favorite lure, my jitterbug, on a lily pad choked pond, when I got a massive strike, twice, but no fish. It may have been a large smallmouth bass or a northern, but I didn't catch it, so will never know. Just another fish story.

When we went off to college, there wasn't much time to fish. And after I got paralyzed, I could no longer hold the rod and reel a fish in. One time, with my girlfriend at her family home with a pond in Kentucky, I did cast out angle worms and hooked two small largemouth bass, but she had to put the worms on the the hook for me and reeled them in because I couldn't.

The greatest fishing I ever saw was when I took my younger brothers on a canoe trip to the boundary waters between Minnesota and Canada. We were about 50 miles into Canada and on a little isolated lake called Lily Pad Lake. We camped on an island in the middle of the lake and I encouraged my younger brother, Tim to cast off the large rock we were on with a daredevil. He immediately caught a 27 inch northern. Before we left in the morning, my younger brothers both caught five northern between 27 inches and 32 inches. We kept two to eat, the rest we returned to grow bigger. I have no pictures, but the northern were similar to this 30 inch one caught in the same area on a 16 year earlier trip I made with Roger, with a bass he caught on that trip.

Our parents bought a cottage on Musser Flowage after Roger and I had gone off to college and work after. The lake was a natural breeding ground for muskies and the man who lived in the cottage next door had caught over 50, including showing us a picture of one 41 inch and another 42, that he got on the same day.

One day while on vacation, my gear was still there in the boathouse. I hadn't used it in years. Tim wanted to fish off the dock with his cheap Zebco spin cast rod and reel but didn't have a lure. I told him to use my trusty jitterbug that had caught many bass and northern.

Tim made a wild cast way off to the right over a weed bed in very shallow water, and when he reeled it back fast so that he could cast again, he got a massive strike and had a huge musky that I estimated to be over 4 feet long and weighing, perhaps 30 to 40 pounds. With only a 6 lbs. test line, Tim constantly reeled against the drag as the fish jumped 7 times and kept making runs for 20 minutes. Our uncle was there and got the largest net from the boathouse. He thought he would get in the boat and try to net the fish, but he didn't think the net was big enough. Eventually, the musky rolled over on the line and cut it. Oh, how I wish I had had a video of that fight!

This video with proper fish releases, will give you an idea of the excitement of catching a musky of this size. And why, after catching a musky at 13, I was hooked on fishing for the rest of my life.

There are more fish tales but mostly of ones that got away. That's why they call it fishing and not catching.

Copyright 2019 © Ronald W. Hull

12/12/19