Tales of world’s worst fisherman
I claim bragging rights as the world’s worst fisherman.
I once deemed someone the planet’s worst golfer, but he finally made contact with the ball on his 10th swing off the tee on the first hole. I can’t claim even that modest success with a fishing pole. I have trouble hitting the water.
Like many kids, I got a fishing pole as a gift before turning 10. I enthusiastically walked it to a lake and emulated what I’d seen on TV in that preYouTube era (which likely means I learned from Elmer Fudd). I reached the pole behind my baseball cap and hurled the line forward like my best fastball.
My pitch landed in the lake. Not just the hook, but the top half of the pole, which screwed together. One and out. I slunk back home and never fished in the lake again.
I didn’t pick up a pole again for another decade, when I spent an afternoon on a catamaran with two college friends. At least I kept the pole intact that time.
It would be another quarter century before my third try. While vacationing in Maine, I decided to pick up a fishing license at the local town hall. Turns out someone in the state shared my name, but was on the wanted list. I got my license. I like to think my namesake suffered the shame of being mistaken for the world’s worst fisherman in a state where it matters.
A year later I joined my young godson at the end of a dock in another part of Maine. He pulled in a fish pretty quickly and asked me to get the hook out. I’m no better at getting fish off the hook than I am getting one on it. My wife sauntered over and slipped it off. Some kind of magic trick.
“City boy,” she muttered yet again.
Eventually, my past caught up with me when a friend awarded my son a rod for Christmas in 2017. He tried a couple times, but the curse did not skip a generation.
The Kid and Mom gave me a fishing pole the following Father’s Day. I got a license ... and couldn’t talk him into fishing for the rest of the year.
You don’t need to be near a body of water to qualify as the world’s worst fisherman. When The Mood struck The Kid a week ago, I breathlessly retrieved my new pole from the closet. While checking
that we had everything, I managed to hook the ceiling fan in the kitchen. Twhipp, thwipp, thwipp.
This may have had something to do with The Kid demanding I let him fish alone.
“You just stay over there,” doesn’t exactly boost your esteem when it’s uttered by a 7yearold.
Being banished to the swamp made me realize another rotten fisherman may have been onto something. Thomas Edison reliably went fishing for an hour or so a day, with little success (yet somehow got a lake named after him). He eventually revealed his reasoning: “Because when you fish without bait, people don’t bother you and neither do the fish. It provides me my best time to think.”
The fish weren’t bothering me either, though they seemed to make mocking expressions.
While I was helping a stranger with his canoe, The Kid wandered off to join someone he clearly recognized as a superior fellow angler (aka, a member of the remainder of civilization). After the fisherman left, The Kid beckoned me over.
“I got a fish, I got a fish!” Indeed, there was a perch dancing in the dirt. I explained about catchandrelease and helped him return the fish back home.
I was dubious. As fate had it, I soon ran into the rodman again, who revealed that my guppy was telling fish tales.
Nevertheless, The Kid asked to return the next morning. He was disappointed at not being able to spot any fish near shore, so I suggested he try casting “like Mom showed you.” He sat crisscross applesauce and gracefully plunked his line about 20 feet away.
“I got something!” “You don’t have anything, the hook is barely wet ...”
And then he pulled in his first fish.
He set the smallmouth bass free as well, with the sendoff “Have a good life.”
After that, he got notions about fishing with a bucket, reasoning it would be more efficient than a silly pole (why didn’t Edison think of that?). And he stuck to his claim that he’d caught two fish.
To me, he was the world’s best fisherman.