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How Old were you
How old were you when you first started fishing?
My mom went into labor with me while red fishing in the Escambia Bay. Dad drove her back home (around 100 miles) to our own doctor. So I guess I was fishing about as early as you can get. I also fell off a fishing pier in Escambia Bay when I was about 6 months old, I was in one of those jumping chairs and jumped right off the end of the pier, Dad tells the story that if his foot had not got tangled in the chair I would have drown the water was moving so fast.
How about you?
PS I do not remember any of this....
Harold
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I was 5 years old. our town of Summit, NJ was having a fishing derby for parents and kids. My dad brought me and set me up with a little rod with a little daredevil on the end. About 3 casts later I impaled my thumb with a hook. I had to be dragged kicking and screaming out of there to go to the hospital ER and get the hook removed. In fact, only a ride in a police car with the siren was good enough for me! After the hook was removed I begged long and hard to be able to go back fishing so we made an entry with me riding on my dad's shoulders and two friends who were cops on either side. They stuck around to cheer me on and encourage a few other kids before getting back to the streets. I was hooked, literally and figuratively.
Diane
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Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming-WOW---What A Ride!
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Probably 5 or 6 when I first fished with my brother and father froma dock and sometimes a rowboat in Ballston Lake. First for trout probably 7 or 8 in a small meandering brook we called Jonesville creek (Dwaas Kill) when we would visit my Grandfathers farm. Worms of course with a bait casting rod and South Bend silver casting reel. Saw my cousin tie a fly around 1948 or 49 and was facinated and began saving feathers in canning jars. Got a FT kit that Christmas. A pretty poor example of a kit by todays standards. My fly fishing back then consisted of a wet fly tied on a snelled hook and fished with that same bait casting rod and reel. I would drift the fly down into undercut banks and under moss covered half submerged logs often times adding a piece of worm to the fly. I tied flies for many years but I never fly fished for real until I took a winter fly fishing course which included a membership to a new group called Trout Unlimited. Now, intermixed with family, it is my life.
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Three years old. First fish was a drum (yep, ole thunderthumper), in a East Kansas River that everyone said had no fish. First trout on a fly rod was in Left Hand Creek (Northwest of Boulder, Colo) at five years old; it was a Greenback Cuttthroat.
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I was 6 when my Dad took me to Edgewater at Lake Erie to fish for perch, sheepshead, & whatever. I caught 1 small perch, but what I really remember is that a guy drowned that night & they were dredging the area near us. They didn't come up with a body while we were there & I figure now that was a good thing for me. That could have been a pretty traumatic experience for a boy that young.
Mike
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This site's about sharing!
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It was 1942 and I was four years old when my Dad took me fishing for the first time. I had a 3 or 4 piece cane rod with a couple of guides on each section and a grip that I think was wrapped with rattan. Of the six brook trout I caught that morning the largest was probably all of eight inches but they sure looked big at the time. I got bitten by the Trout bug that day and I have never recovered.
GFF
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Dick
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Time spent FLY fishing is not deducted from one's life
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You learn something new every single day of your life. If you don't, you weren't paying attention.
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I was 7 years old, when my father took me to Mongomery Wards to get a "Free" bamboo pole outfit, that they were offering, for me to go fishing off of the end of the dock. My own fishing pole, I was so thrilled.
I did not catch many fish, as I can recall, but I did enjoy solitude, while watching the bobber, moving up and down in the water's waves. Enjoying the endless Summer, barefeet dangling in the water, each day an extention of the previous day. Not a worry or care in the world, what some of us would now be willing to pay for some of that in our life ....
[This message has been edited by Steven H. McGarthwaite (edited 08 November 2005).]
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I was about 4 - 5 when I started fishing I think. My grandfather lived in a small town outside of Chicago called Pell Lake Wis. We used to spend time there every summer. I can remeber when I was 6 - 7 my dad took me out in the boat and I caught my first Northern Pike on a spoon it was only about 15" but I was so proud of it my dad did not have the heart to tell me I had to put it back it was to small. ( In the 60's catch and release was not thought to be important).
Bill from PA
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1961, Four years old, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Black and white photograph of two little boys. My older brother, Bill and I are standing in six inches of surf with Zebcos. Guess my mom or dad took the picture. Dad just bought 8 acres in NC mountains with a stream running through it. I asked were there any trout in it and he replied that he did not see any but didn't look that closely. Neither dad nor brother fish anymore.....oh well.
Steve
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I fish, therefore I swam.
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14-15 years old I don't remember exactly; a lot older than most of you but nobody in my family was into fishing so I had to figure it out for myself. Jerry McKinnis and "The Fishin' Hole" filled in a lot of the blanks.
Luckily I had school buddies who went by themselves, (imagine that today), every Sunday via BUS to a lake about 15 miles away and they invited me along. A friend's brother gave me an old rod & reel and I walked the 3 miles to the local tackle shop and bought the rest of what I THOUGHT I would need. I caught a shiner or something on my first trip and I was immediately hooked after that.
I still have the rod, that first tackle box, and the empty hook tins I bought on that very first trip to the tackle shop.