Tell us your best fishing story as a kid.

Fishing with my Dad off the Waveland pier in the early nineties. We were fishing on different sides of the pier. I hooked a massive Spanish mackerel and people started to gather around me as I was reeling it in. Remember my Dad saying he looked over there and realized it was me, saying "Hey! That's my son!"

Fishing with my dad was probably a good bit different than most here. It almost always involved taking a dip net and traveling along country roads in search of muddy ditches(Twin Bridges and McKeithen dr. for you CENLA peeps). He would drag for crawfish and that was our bait. No crawfish = no trip. We would then sit on a mostly muddy bank(no bucket) and set out multiple rods all baited with either small live crawfish or the peeled tails of larger crawfish. He made his own lead weights from melted tire weights in a mold. The hook would be up the line kinda like a drop-shot. Channel cat, bullheads and goo were the main things we caught. The occasional eel and turtle would be caught.

My most memorable stories are catfishing with my grandpa on Caddo Lake up on the Texas/Louisiana border west of Shreveport.



My favorite story though is when we lived in south Florida. My dad's friend was older/retired and his "hobby" was buying the biggest piece of shite cuddy cabin he could get his hands on and getting it seaworthy. There would always be a problem though when we would go out with him after he had "completed" everything. One time we didn't even make it to the bridge and we broke down in the bay. He called local law enforcement (maybe sea tow I don't remember) on the radio and they kept saying they needed the name of the boat. After telling them multiple times the boat didn't have a name yet one of the calmest guys on the planet lost it on the radio and said "there is no fricking name, I am the only fricking white boat floating across the bay with its fricking engines out of the water, it will not be hard to find me". Got a lot of funny responses on the radio. He also fell off the boat fooling with the engines while waiting on a tow and was drenched in his jeans when they eventually arrived.

Not as a kid but as a young adult
Bringing my pawpaw on his last fishing trip he would take and being there to see the last fish (drum, sheep head) he would ever catch.

On more than one occasion, as a kid my dad would knock off of work and bring me and my brother to the boat launch not far from their house to catch fish for supper. Within a matter of a half hour or so we'd fill a 5 gallon buck with perch and head home. There are two Cypress trees right off the bank next to the launch about a hammock apart, we'd stand on the tree roots and pull slabs out of the water between those two trees on every drop. Those were some of the most fun fishing trips of my life, a mere half mile drive to the launch with a bucket...

Same boat launch, same age range, my dad and uncle brought me fishing for choupic. We walked into the woods to a clearing a few hundred feet down the bank from the launch. Calcutta cane poles in hand. A few minutes after we got there my uncle's stopper starts trailing down. Giant choupic. He hoists that one onto the bank and puts it in the bucket, rebaits and drops it in the same spot, jigs it once and stopper starts trailing down again. Another giant choupic.

We packed up and went home. My mom made the best choupic patties on Earth that day, and we fried a bunch too.


One more, when I was about 16 or so I started going bass fishing in Bayou Black with my cousin pretty much every weekend. One time it was me him and my cousin (his son). I tied on a Booyah Boogie Bait, explaining to them how awesome it was and how much luck I had with it in a local pond I used to fish. Must have tied a bad knot. It went flying and never came back. The boat was silent as they stared at me trying not to laugh. To this day they ride me for it and we share laughs. Not sure if we limited out that day but we used to hammer them. My dad taught me how to fish, but he taught me how to bass fish. I often think back and miss those trips. Learned a lot about bass and sac au lait fishing and about life in that boat with him.

Oh, as a kid. In Arkansas somewhere probably about 10. Pops and my Uncles took me and my cousins to some river to fish off the bank. I had a white oldschool H&H on a Zebco 33, moving down the bank, not catching shite but concentrating like a mofo expecting big daddy any minute. Made a cast and on the turn from the backswing my rod came to stop, pulled drag and heard “aiyiiii”. I’d buried both hooksin my old man’s eyebrow he was cussing up a bluestreak with a spinnerbait hanging out his face

Shouldn’ta walked behind me is all I could say as my Uncle Allen cut the barbs off for extraction.

In high school my Dad took me and three buddies down to Empire. We went out to the Sandy Point rigs and caught a good mess of nice trout. I remember my buddy Alan hooked into a big redfish (we guess), and when my Dad asked him what he had all he could say was "I have no idea, I cant even see where my line hits the water. Just one of those trips I look back on him taking four teenagers out fishing, and thinking how great of a man he was!

My grandmother lived near a pond in South Carolina and I would go fishing there every day while my mother took care of her. One day I caught 47 bream.


I remember catching 25 and then running to the house and asking grandma if I should keep the rest.

On the way up to running to the house, I saw what looked like a copperhead
On the hot blacktop and played with it with a long branch until it struck at the stick.

Then I ran faster home.

I came back to start fishing again. I quit using a bobber and lead and really just use a small hook with a quarter of a worm. It worked so much faster with the worm, falling to the bottom, and the bream could not resist it and nailed it the second it hit the water.

I started from zero and caught 22.


I kept 22 of the largest ones, and she showed me how to clean them with a hose. She cut a slit in the bottom and then blew out the guts with the hose.

I enjoyed that so much and my grandmother deep fried in her skillet. I’ll never forget that and we talk about it to this day.

She cooked her thin biscuits and cream corn to go with the bream.

Fishing as a little boy at a small private pond. Me, my dad, and his friend. It was his friend’s dad’s pond. I hook a huge bass. Maybe 5-6lbs, but to a 9-10 year boy, might as well have been 17lbs. I didn’t know any better and tried to swing him up on the pier by the rod. Both my dad and his friend were like “wait, wait. No, no, no!!!” About that time he came off. They just stood there with their hands on top of their heads.

Fishing in small stream. Not much luck with rooster tail. Took dad’s pole with Texas rig. Landed 4.5 lb smallmouth like second or third cast.