We would take tree limbs, clear the leaves and branches from them and make them into fishing poles.  To the limb we would tie twine and to that tie a bent straight pin and have a fishing line.  We would use a short piece of stick, a cork or a thread spool as a bobber.  For bait we would dig up worms, or if we were lucky, a grasshopper, but mostly worms.

The creek was very clear and you could see fish swimming around.  The creek was only four or five feet deep.  Sometimes I would try to move the worm on the hook (the bent straight pin) around so the fish would see it.  I didn’t catch much and mostly a small perch or bluegill.  They were so small they would be returned to the creek after catching them.

In an earlier note I wrote that my grandfather always planted a patch of sugar cane.  After the crop matured the tallest and straightest cane stalks would be saved for fishing poles.  After I got older I could use a real cane pole with real fishing line and real fish hooks.  Three or four inches from the hook you would tie a sinker.  This was to cause the bait to sink and was usually made of a piece of lead, a nail, and old nut or whatever you could find.  Bait continued to be worms, grasshoppers or larvae from wasp or hornets nests.

I mentioned boppers.  When a bopper was on the line and a fish bit the bopper would go under and you knew you had a fish on the line.  You usually waited until the bopper went under about three times before you pulled the line in.  If it only went under once you knew the fish was just nibbling.  Depending on where you placed the bopper resulted in how deep you were fishing.

At that time the fish were perch, crappie or bluegills.  Sometimes you could also fish in a stock tanks (pond).  Some of these had bass.

I remember going with my grandfather and uncles J. D. and Otis Bilbrey trot line fishing.  The entire families sometimes went.  We would stay on the river or creek bank all night.  Lines of heavy cord would be stretched across the river.  From these lines would be tied other lines with sinker and hooks so on the heavy cord might be as many as 20 hooks depending on how wide the creek or river was.  The hooks would sometimes be baited with dough balls.  These were made up of dough and blood and were an inch or two round.  A cowbell would be tied to the line.  When a fish got caught on a hook the bell wound sound then the grownups would either pull the line in or get in a rowboat and check the line to get the fish.  These were usually catfish.  Some of these were huge.

Sometimes as you removed the fish you could tell where a snake had bitten the fish.  These snakes were harmless water snakes or poisonous water moccasins.

After I married my first wife, Denise (we were married in 1953- she died in 1986), we would visit her mother who lived on Lake Salubria near Bath, New York.  They had a rowboat.  While we visited I would take the rowboat out on the lake and fish.  They were a lot of bass in that lake as well as pickerel.   By that time I was using artificial bait such as poppers, jitterbugs and spinners on a rod and reel..  These were types of artificial lures.  Sometimes I also used artificial lures.

We did not eat the fish.  The neighbor did like to eat the fish so I would catch them, clean them, and give them to him.

When I was sent to Southeast Asia in 1966 by the U.S. Air Force, my family went to live with her mother on Lake Salubria.  When I came back from Southeast Asia in January 1968 the family continued to live there while I taught at Saint Bonaventure University from January to June 1968.  I had accepted a position at Niagara University beginning in September 1968.  During that summer I fished on Lake Salubria almost every day.  I would fish for a while in early morning, go out again after lunch for an hour or two and again at dusk until after dark.  I really enjoyed that.

After we moved to Niagara Falls I would go fishing in the streams and bayous around Lakes Erie and Ontario but mostly Ontario and in the Lake itself from the shore.  Sometimes one of my two sons would go with me.  When we moved to Niagara Falls my wife’s mother, Germaine, moved with us so the property on Lake Salubria was sold.  About 15 years later my two sons and I  rented a boat and spent a weekend at Lake Salubria fishing.  It was enjoyable but just wasn’t the same.

Fishing can be very relaxing.