A Fishin' We Will Go

I went through some great memories yesterday. I've been cleaning up a boat that was passed down to me when my grandpa passed away. Given progress has been slowed up since my back surgery. I have been feeling really good the last couple of days and decided to get some of my fishing tackle together. Arrange the mess in my tackle box, throw away old stuff, make room for new stuff.

I ran across the tackle box that I got out of the boat last year. It was a mess to say the least. Most of the stuff was rusted or melted because it had been in a boat for years without use. I ran across, though, about 200 of those little artificial jigs that my grandpa used to catch crappie.

Rearranging them all I thought about how many times my grandpa had tied on one of these to a long fly rod and put us on a crappie bed to catch crappie after crappie. That was single-handily my favorite thing to do in the world.

After my grandpa retired he fished at least 4 times a week (never ever on Sunday no matter how much I begged). In fact, if he had any aches or a cold he would laugh and say that he just needed to go fishing to get to feeling better. That was all that made him not feel well...fishing deprivation.

From the time I was about 5 to 6 I tried to go as much as I could with him until I got a little older (we only lived a mile down the road). But cars, work, friends...they all packed alot into my life as a teenager. Time I don't regret. I was growing up. But now...looking at those jigs I am thankful for those times as a kid. That broken, old, ratty tackle box isn't worth a dime, but it's one of those things that mean the world to me. It reminds me of a person who smiled at me every time I saw him. It smells like a day on the lake with my papaw. Not just a grandpa, but fishing buddy and best friend.