Sharing the Wealth

A million tiny circles formed on the surface of the lake as yet another spring shower fell on the little crew of fishermen enjoying a day on the dock. A half-dozen rods were resting in holes made in the log railing, created for just that purpose.

I was enjoying the morning on the lake. A handful of fellow retirees were sitting on the wooden benches, telling fish stories, talking about the good old days, and shouting and hooting each time a rod tip would bounce.

Fishing had been pretty slow. Most of us had a recently planted a trout or two on the stringer, but we could tell things would start heating up soon. Fish were swimming in schools easily traced by surface splashes as a few of their number grabbed at bugs on the top. The surfacing fish were working their way down the lake toward us.

Just as the prospect of a really good bite was heating up, a small group of new fishermen arrived, setting up shop on a small finger pier, and they started casting wildly toward the arriving school. The three hopefuls, a father and his two teenaged boys, had walked up from the campground on the other side of the little lake. We could see right away that they were in trouble.

While it didn’t take much of a cast to get out to the “honey hole,” these poor guys weren’t even getting their lures off the dock! “Must be a lot of line memory,” laughed the bearded fellow on my left. No doubt about it, these folks were using really old line, and outfits that had probably sat in the back of their RV for months, if not years!

Their line was tangling at the bail and around the reel handle. The best cast we saw in about 15 minutes of frantic effort was about 15 feet!

Plenty of Fish
Fish were biting on darned near everything. A few anglers in canoes and float tubes were getting lots of action on small spinners and surface flies. The boys on the finger pier were trying to cast big bass plugs and spinners so covered with yarn that they wouldn’t even turn.
Our attention turned to our own setups as the fish arrived in force. Before long most everyone had either collected their five-fish limit, or were doing a lot of catch and release. This was fun—lots of action, lots of shouting and teasing as fish were hooked, escaped or were brought to net.

The noise from the little pier was a lot less joyful. Like any skunked anglers watching others get all the action, the boys were getting testy. Lines were getting more snarled in frantic efforts to get lures to the fish. Those few attempts that got close to the school brought no action as clogged lures failed to move enough to entice a strike.

The two fellows next to me closed out their limits, put up their rods and started going though their tackle boxes. “We can’t stand watching this anymore,” grinned the fellow with the beard. The two of them took their CARE package and walked over to the frustrated boys and their dad. From their big tackle box they extracted a big spool of line and helped the boys strip off their old stuff.

Out came new sinkers, swivels and hooks, power bait and worms, and within ten minutes the boys and their dad were casting adequately (the poor quality of the rods and reels still made long casts nearly impossible) and were catching fish.

Good Example
After making sure that they were sufficiently schooled and had a nice dinner on the stringer, my two companions gave them enough gear to last the rest of their stay, and headed back toward the parking lot. The boys and their dad were smiling now, and laughter replaced the frowns of a few minutes past.

I had filled my ice chest with my limit of fish and joined the old-timers as they headed for the pickup. “That was darned nice of you fellows,” I offered. “You really made their day.” The older of the two, a short, powerful, baldheaded gentleman with logger’s suspenders, smiled wryly. “We’ve fished here for years,” he explained. “Nearly every day someone shows up with old line and no idea how to catch a fish. We bought a bunch of bulk line at a sale and get loads of tackle and bait on the Internet. Heck, it’s a lot more of a challenge getting these folks fish than it is to catch our own!”

What nice guys these were! They could have just left the folks on the dock to fend for themselves. Like too many of us they could have scoffed at their ineptitude and smugly enjoyed their own success, but instead they decided they could have just as much fun making someone else successful, teaching others how to get a little extra out of their vacation.

As I stood in the checkout counter at Freddy’s a little later that day, I added a couple of items to the replacement gear I had purchased. Somehow a big spool of four-pound line ended up in my bag, along with a few extra jars of bait and some spare sinkers and hooks. Those two guys on the dock taught a good fishing lesson to those three greenhorns on the pier, and maybe, to the old guy sitting next to them as well!