Town consisted of six small stores that included a gas station, a tiny grocery store and four stores where you could buy anything you needed, from gas and kerosene to frozen food and bullets. They were true country stores and many shopped in them for clothes, fishing supplies, canned food and cigarettes. Hoop cheese was one of my favorites and you could get any size slab you wanted.
The proprietors of two of those stores also drove school buses. They would run their routes in the morning then open the store. When time to run their afternoon route a family member kept the stores open while they were gone. I rode Mr. John Harry's bus from kindergarten through my senior year in high school.
A Resolution I Like
One year Mr. John Harry and Mr. Joe Frank made a pact they were going fishing every single day the next year. And they did. They would fish every weekend but also kept a rod and reel on their bus and often stop at a farm pond or creek crossing on the way home in the morning or afternoon for a little fishing.
This New Year's Resolution sounded like a perfect one for me and one I wanted to make each year since then. Since I retired I have tried but never have been able to fish ever day. Something always messed me up, like surgery on my thumb or a trip on a cruise ship, where there is water, water everywhere but no way to fish!
For several years my efforts ranged from missing seven to 25 days. That is not bad out of 365 days in a year, but not perfect. This past year, 2009, I fished some every single day of the year! I finally did it.
My Rules
My rules are fairly simple. I don't have to catch a fish every day, but I have to fish somewhere that I can catch a fish. So no fishing in the bathtub or in a rain filled ditch. And there is no time limit. Some days I stand on one foot in my bass boat for ten hours casting for bass, others days I sat in a folding chair on my dock for ten minutes catching bluegill on pellet fish food.
Some days tried my determination to fish every day. On a week long trip to St. Louis to attend an outdoor writers meeting, I stayed at a hotel. There was a small creek with a pond on it on the hotel property but I was told no fishing was allowed. I let everyone know how stupid it was to have an outdoor writers meeting at a place that didn't allow fishing, but their rule made me explore the Bush Wildlife Area just outside town, a beautiful place open to the public that included over 20 ponds that I could fish. The Budweiser beer people made this place available to the public and is a fantastic resource for people in the area.
I found out the third day of the conference no one watched the pond for fishermen so I did wet a line there, too. I saw some small fish around the edges but didn't catch anything.
Another tough day was when I had a doctor appointment in Mobile, Alabama and had to leave early in the morning for it. I drove out to my place at daylight and fished for a few minutes before leaving. I was determined not to let anything mess up my record this year.
I have fished when it was so cold I had to dip my rod tip in the water to melt ice from the guides to days sweat dripped from my nose and ran into my eyes constantly. And I fished in Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Wisconsin and Missouri and caught largemouth, smallmouth and spotted bass as well as crappie, bluegill, green sunfish, shell cracker, bullheads, flathead catfish, hybrids, stripers, rock bass, gar, carp, bowfin, walleye, muskie and northern pike.
I have kept logs on my web site forum listing each day fishing and what I caught. It is a good way for me to keep up. It has been a fun year. I actually fished every day between November 2, 2008 and the end of the year. That was 424 days in a row. Maybe I will get tired of fishing some day, but not yet!
Gotta go fishing - Day 4 of 2010!
