Spring Thoughts

My Mother liked to fish, but my Grandmother LIVED to fish. I think Grandma would have fished every day of the week and every time of year. She went in February when ice had to be broken to get a line in the water and in the Summer when bugs can eat you alive. Always fishing from the bank, she would fish when the water was so high she could sit in a tree. When I was little, my Grandmother and Mother would take me fishing with them. When a truck wasn't available, we'd tie the cane poles to the car door handles and take off for the morning. It was my job to get inside the car and hold the poles in place while Mom tied them with string run thru the door handle. Then Grandma and I would hold on to them for extra support while Mom drove.

There's a field near my house that floods every Spring. Usually it's from heavy rain, but sometimes just because the powers that be are playing with the level of the lake by letting water out of the dam. Once in a while we would fish in that flooded field. The water would come in thru a drain that went straight to the backwater of the lake so fish would be trapped in the field. And they were hungry! It was pretty easy pickings. Often times we would end up at the 'catfish hole' down the river road. In one area of the road, water was on both sides. It was easy to fish straight from the road, but sometimes they'd let water out of the dam while you were there. I don't think we ever really noticed how the water level was gradually rising until it was spilling over the road. There were also times that the water was so high that we could not reach the 'catfish hole'. Those times, we'd turn a bend in the road and discover it was completely under water. We'd have to back up almost to the main road before we could turn around. It's no wonder that I grew up with a healthy fear of rising water!

Have you noticed you don't really have handles on car doors anymore? I haven't thought about attaching cane poles to a car door in a long time or what I would do now that handles are not an option. Several days ago I was at a stop sign waiting for traffic to clear. A car passed by with fishing rods tied thru the window openings. Where there's a will, there's a way - especially if a fisherman (or woman) is involved. Grandma would be proud.

So far we've had a record amount of rain for May and that field flooded again. I lost count of the days we went without sunshine. My rosebush was going to be beautiful this year, but it was pounded by some pretty harsh downpours. Here's a picture of what is left of it - still pretty - and cropped so you don't see the weeds! Here's hoping sunny days are ahead for the fisherman in all of us.