All the fishing tackle needed was a hook and small sinker tied to a length of string. Wrap the string around a stick and then stick the barbed hook in the end of it. Put this in your pocket along with your pocket knife and you’re ready to fish the ditches and creeks around Bloomfield. Don’t worry about bait; this can be found along the banks under stones or logs, in the grass, or sacrifice the first little fish for cut bait. No pole is needed. This also is provided naturally: cut a limb the desired length or if lucky you might find a stand of cane and get a real fishing pole.
I started practicing this process very young. I don’t remember anybody showing it or telling it to me, seems I just put it together out of necessity. I didn’t have access to much in the way of anything when a kid but made do okay. Luckily I was the type who could entertain myself and needed very little to do it—just a hook, sinker and string for starts. I certainly needed nobody else to tag along just to slow me down and alter my decision making, but I came by just such an obstacle pretty naturally, too, a little sister!
As soon as she was old enough to get around she was underfoot, more like a shadow. As soon as she could talk I either did pretty much as she wanted or she told Mom some untruth, usually untrue tale, to get me in trouble. Sweet little girls can be the ruin of free spirited boys. This one decided her brother needed company on his walks to the fishing hole.
I agreed thinking one trip would be all she need experience to give this endeavor up forever. The walk was about 2 miles one way and about half of it required making your way through the briars, sprouts and vines along the ditch bank and the occasional wading through water. She made it through this all right but I was the one who got tired. I found myself constantly helping her, fanning mosquitoes away, showing her what to avoid and trying to share my self-taught knowledge of nature. When the fishing hole was reached, I cut a limb for a pole and attached the line. All the bait I could come up with was a grasshopper, one grasshopper, so I divided it into three pieces. No need to feed a fish the whole thing! Sis went along with the whole process. Even the grasshopper dissection was okay and she asked to perform the next one—not such a sweet little thing after all. I baited the hook and handed her the pole. I showed her where to drop the hook and advised her to be still and patient and as soon as she felt a tug on the line, to jerk the pole upward. In seconds she had caught a little four or five-inch goggle eye and was through fishing and ready to go home. Of course she wanted to take the fish to show Mom. I couldn’t talk her out of it, but tried, knowing that goggle eyes never live long out of water and would not survive the 2-mile hike back to the house. I tried playing on her little girl sensitivity but it didn’t work—little girls can be tough! I had to give in to avoid her telling Mom God only knows what kind of horrible story.
We made it home with the dead fish; it seemed even smaller dead than when first caught. She showed it to Mom who was not happy with me for taking her but wasn’t so upset that she felt the need to send me after a switch. My little sister lost all interest in the fish she had caught and killed and disposal of it was left up to me. My cat, Caesar, had fish for suppe,r and my little sister gave up my style of fishing. Everything worked out all right. It was all sort of fun and I had witnessed another of the many facets of a little girl’s way of thinking. It seemed some normalcy had returned to my life.

Michael I. Hobbs lives in Dexter, Missouri, and is completing a collection of essays. His essays have appeared in earlier issues of Sweetgum Notes. (See also Authors, this site.)



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