Windknots & Tangled Lines
Howard Levett from Wind Knots & Tangled Lines has called for bloggers to:
Write a synopsis of your fishing timeline.
My earliest fishing experience was in the summer of 1969. My father was going to law school at Michigan and working as the director of Camp Copneconic in the summers. We were out on a pontoon boat that had been christened Freddy the Turtle in honor of me. Hmm…maybe I was not a cute baby. Anyway, someone handed me a cane pole and I lifted the line up to inspect the hook. I was thrilled and exclaimed “I caught a worm!” 
Any sunfish that came after were anticlimactic after the worm. A few days later, I was on the camp pier with my mom waiting to get picked up for another worming adventure. The captain came in a little hot and hit the pier, knocking me into the water. I bobbed up turtle style, with a bloody forehead. I have a scar to this day. It was the first of many fishing related baptisms and several more scars.
After my father graduated from law school, he decided to remain a camp director and we moved to Camp Warren near Virginia Minnesota. I got right after the panfish of Half Moon Lake. I was shore and dock bound as a 4 to 6yr old, but I sure wanted to get one of those big bass I’d sometimes see. Several years later, we moved on to Wisconsin and I never got a hand on one of those bass.
When I was 10, I went back to Camp Warren as a 2 week summer camper. I remembered those bass. I spent every non-structured moment down on this dock at the end of camp. The dock was adjacent to a big reed bed. There were sometimes boats tied to the end of the dock. 
I was standing in the boat, working a hula popper with my 
Zebco 202 when it happened. I caught a 5lb bass. I managed to wrestle the beast up and lip him. 
Then I lunged from the boat to the dock, missing my mark as the boat bobbed and knocking my wind out on the side of the dock. I skinned up my legs on the rough wood and floundered in 2 ft of water thinking I was dying. The bass went flying, bouncing down the dock before splashing into the lake on the other side. After catching my wind and realizing I was going to live, I slogged back to the cabin covered in blood and weeds. Before I could tell my tale, my counselor grabbed me and I got to spend the evening in the camp infirmary.
The next morning after breakfast, a cry went up from the water front detail. A 5lb bass had washed up dead on the beach. No one had ever seen such a fish and no one believed me when I claimed I’d caught it the day before. It was the first time I realized that there are many doubters in this world and that lots of people just don’t understand those of us possessed by fishing.
Most of my formative fishing years came about at Camp Manito-wish on Boulder Lake. At first, I used a big old inner tube with a snorkel and fins to explore South Bay. I could spot fish and then jig them up with a Mister Twister on a hand line. I was sight fishing for rock bass, crappie and walleye. Once a big musky came in and attacked a little walleye I’d hooked. I aspirated water through my snorkel and about choked to death.
During the school year, we lived down in Milwaukee. I hated being away from camp, but made the best of it by fishing Lake Michigan. It was the early 80s, and trout and salmon were being poured into the great lakes and getting big and fat on Alewives. I started out fishing from Klode Park in Whitefish Bay. It was a long walk from home, but I was optimistic. It took several trips before I hit the water (temp and wind) just right for beach angling and landed two big lake trout. After dragging them up a mountain of stairs from the beach, and over a mile down Lake Shore Dr toward my house, their tales had lost several inches. 
After a few similar trips, I developed a strong catch-and-release ethic.
Back at camp, by age 12, I was checked off to take out my own canoe. I’d paddle around the adjacent bay to our cabin when I was not biking over to Nichols Lake for panfish/bass or swimming around and chasing fish in the Manito-wish River. By 15; I had a little motor boat. Soon after, I caught my first 32” “legal” musky on a brown bucktail. The entire lake was now my playground and Musky became my passionate objective. 
Boulder Junction Wisconsin is the self proclaimed Musky Capital of the world. By 17, I got a bigger motor and bought a 1973 Yellow Chevy Chevelle from my uncle. When I was not playing Dukes of Hazard on the logging roads, I’d tow my boat (with the Chevelle) to other lakes in the area and chase musky. A good friend’s dad sent us off on a trip with a real musky guide that summer and unknowingly set the stage for my future inability to get a “real job.”
I played football freshman and sophomore year, but once I had a driver’s license, I realized that I could quit begging my parents to drive me to fishing locations and drive myself. My parents put up a few small battles, but then realized that I was a hopeless case and figured time would be better spent on my sister who was interested in horses and not fishing.
I made many trips up to Port Washington, plying the waters of Lake Michigan and chasing lake run salmon and steelhead up and down Sauk Creek. Soon forays expanded to Door County and back up to Boulder Lake for late fall, early spring fishing trips with high school buddies. On one venture, while my buddies were shouting from the dock, I took off to show off warm up the motor. After making a hair pin turn and heading back for the dock, my prized Johnson motor, motored on past me; disappearing in a trail of bubbles and running full throttle to the bottom of the lake.
Johnson Outboard Motor
Apparently, I had not tightened the bolts securely.
Back in 2012 after a session of clearing out the cobwebs, I’m still stuck in the 80′s Howard. Thanks for triggering the flashbacks. I think I’m going to need a part 2.
