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Fishing as a child, for me, was tagging along with my grandfather. We dug red worms for bluegills and brook trout, everything we caught went home, he cleaned it and Gramma fried it. Every meal was all-consuming. There were never leftovers.
I went home with blue fingertips, blue lips from blueberries he wanted in the pail for jams and pancakes, wild raspberries or warm summer strawberries, and spring spruce tips just the same, it was all candy to me.
Long about the summer of sixth grade I met a fellow, who fished as much as me, we always said our bicycles had more miles on them than all the other kids we knew combined, and we ditched them by many a creek.
But he was one for stopping and smelling the campfire during the day, and he created a lifelong experience I’ve enjoyed ever since. You catch a few fish, stop and fry them up on the spot. Noontime boil up, might be a roasted duck, rotisserie grouse on an alder limb, a skillet full of butter fried crawdads and once a summer we gigged bullfrogs, we just made sure we had lard to fry em in.
To this very day, Mrs. and I do the same. Yeah, we might not get a full limit of birds or fish, but some of what we got, cooked right there on the spot, couldn’t have been better fare anywhere.
- The Trout Whisperer
