The great Minnesota fishing opener was May 15. I have participated in this annual event about 25 of the past 30 years.
When I was younger, I would start at the midnight opening bell. I entered every fishing contest in the area for the competitive challenge.
Today my fishing exploits have far more to do with who I am with and which lake I am on than how many fish I could catch in a day or even a season for that matter.
The entire effort to ensure that I had one or six of every new lure and color has been replaced by the ability to drive by a big sporting goods box store and not even slow down.
Times do change. I still really like to fish, but the life with four Labradors, hours dedicated to habitat conservation, and operating four different businesses at the same time has created other priorities.
What are your best fishing memories? My dad never was much of a fisherman. He would take our family out to the Missouri River in the summer to fish from the bank. He would just ask some rancher for permission to camp in their pastures. A hole was dug for the weekend outhouse and that was all we needed.
He was an industrial sort. He rigged up about a dozen rod holders and used a battery-operated bicycle horn. You could adjust a spring on the contraption that set the sensitive line. When a fish would pull on the line, the rod would apply pressure to the horn and it would sound. It was normally my older brother who could run the fastest, and he would grab the rod, set the hook and reel in the fish.
Back in the day we only had primitive fish stringers. At 6 or 7 years old I decided to do one better. I dug a hole in the bank with only a small inlet to let the water fill the hole. Any fish we caught we put in my land-based live well, and at the end of the day dad would clean whatever fish we caught and we would eat them for supper.
I cannot really remember catching very much. The one thing I do remember is that when a school of fish swam by, all of the horns would start going off at one time. We caught walleyes, small mouth bass, silver bass, catfish and a few panfish. I was in about second or third grade at the time.
It was enough to give me the love of fishing that has lasted the rest of my life. I spent hundreds of hours as a kid peddling my bicycle round the lake in our town. Lake Okabena was a great babysitter for young kids who understood that when the 6 p.m. whistle sounded, it was time to get home for supper.
After supper it was when the streetlights came on that it was time to head home for the night.
There is one spot in the brain of every human being that is attracted to the outdoors, and fishing is the most common way for all ages to enter into that kind of lifestyle. I figure yet today kids running up and down the shore with poles in hand are less likely to end up on the wrong side of the law.
When is the last time you went fishing? If you are a regular participant, when is the last time you took someone new fishing with you? Taking new anglers is not necessarily for the faint of heart. You tend to get little fishing in and spend most of your time with tangles, broken equipment, tipped over tackle boxes and answering where the snacks are.
My dads’ favorite line when I got snagged was to just wait a little bit and see if a fish could or would unsnag my hook. Never worked but I was too young to know how bad those odds were.
Fishing license sales are up, as we were unable to do many of the indoor things we were used to doing. I hope that when folks actually got back outside after months of not having done so that many of them will re-energize in the sport of fishing. It doesn’t take a lot of money but you can’t be doing 10 other things at the same time. It just allows you to stop the crazy world spinning and take a few moments to ponder what is really important in your life.
Fishing does that. Kids on the dock, your wife or girlfriend in the lawn chair next to you living in the greatest country in the world. What could be better? Not much in my opinion.
Take some time to sit by the water and unplug the craziness around you. You will be glad you did.
Scott Rall, Worthington, is a habitat conservationist, avid hunting and fishing enthusiast and is president of Nobles County Pheasants Forever. He can be reached at scottarall@gmail.com. or on Twitter @habitat champion.