Great Granddads’ Fishing Lesson

Do you know your great-grandparents? Many people do not and this came as a surprise to me. We take so many things for granted as we grow up. At least, I know I did.

A few days ago, several brethren were talking about relatives and the number of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren they had. Then one asked, “Do you remember your great-grandfather?”

Of the half dozen brethren gathered I was the youngest and the only one who did. None of the others had a memory of any of their great-grandparents and they were surprised that I did.

I admit that the only one I did know was great-grandfather Arthur Duane Cox, my mothers’ maternal grandfather. But what a choice memory.

Great Great Uncle Will A. Cox

He and his brother Will, my great, great uncle, on occasion visited my grandmother on her farm several miles outside of Corvallis, Montana. They arrived pulling a travel trailer and stayed in it for their visit.

I was lucky to be spending a summer vacation with Grandma and Shorty one year when they visited. I believe this was the summer of 1947 between my 5th and 6th grades.

Uncle Will and Granddad (actually great, great granddad, but we called him “Granddad”) often went trout fishing and one day asked if I would like to tag along.

I jumped at the chance. I knew how to fish for chubs and yellow perch and had done that a lot at home in Klamath Falls but I had never fished for, let alone caught, a trout before.

Of course it fell to me to get a shovel and a can to dig some worms for our venture. I learned that the best worm digging was in the dirt irrigation dams that had been made to direct the flow of water onto our fields. I also learned that if the holes I dug were not filled in and tamped down again, I was in trouble.

Well, after I found enough worms, we climbed into the pickup and drove up into the hills for a ways. As I recall we went up past Hamilton. The stream we arrived at followed right along side of the road. Granddad stopped at a place where the stream went over a slight fall, maybe a foot or so, and formed some ripples and a little pool. It was a small stream and the pool wasn’t very big either.

They fixed me up with a pole and some worms for bait and then they headed on up the road and said they would be back later to pick me up.

Like any youngster I couldn’t wait to bait up and get my line in the water. I managed to toss my hook to the head of that little pool and let it sink toward the bottom of the stream and float back down toward me. I did this several times and was finally rewarded with a tug and a solid hit.

Not knowing any of the finer techniques of playing a fish, I am sure I just jerked that fish in as fast as I could. And luck was with me. I had managed to land my first trout ever and it was a beauty about a foot long!

I baited up again and tossed my hook back in right away. And again and again. But no matter how hard I tried for the rest of the day, that was the only fish I caught.

When Granddad and uncle Will came back for me I was disappointed that I had only one fish to show. And I felt really bad when they showed me their fish. They had caught 8 or 9 between them. But then I looked at the size of their fish and my spirits brightened up again.

My fish was bigger than any of theirs!

I tell you I felt on top of the world. Maybe I couldn’t catch as many fish as they could but I could sure catch the biggest! When they admitted that they had dropped my off where they did mainly to keep me out of trouble and had not expected my to catch a fish at all, I was really pleased with myself.

This feeling stayed with me and kept me warm all the way home clear up until the time Granddad said that I still had a lesson to learn that day. I had never cleaned trout before and since they did more work catching, it was only fair that I did my part by doing the cleaning while they rested from their labor.

It took me a long time scaling and cleaning those trout in the cold irrigation ditch and my hands were almost frozen by the time I finished. But I learned a great lesson that day.

It is a lot more fun to catch a fish than it is to dig worms or to clean the catch!

Filed under: Family • Fish Stories

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