re: Tell us your best fishing story as a kid.

This is one of my earliest memories of fisbing with my dad. We were in Lake Mechant. I was sitting on the boat motor throwing a sparkle beetle with my zebco. A bull red picked it up and yanked me off into the water. My dad fished me out by the life jacket and we were able to get the fish in.

70’s me my brother and dad. Camping in a tent at grand isle state park. We had a bateau with a small evinrude. Using 33’s and speck rigs, we hammered trout like nothing I’ve ever seen even to this day. We went to Elmers Island every morning and caught two at a time until we just had to stop around 9:00 every morning. Went on for like four days. Sometimes you just catch em like that. I was probably 13-14. I learned how to filet specks that week

Best Positive:
-Uncle took me and my cousin to Flat Lake in a little flatboat with cane poles and worms, I was probably 7. Caught 100 bream. At one point, it was raining on half the boat only for 30min…uncle stayed dry.

Best Negative:
-Uncle had promised to take me to “The Mouth of the River” for years. Finally make the trip and boat breaks down a good chunk of the way into the ride. Spend an entire night roped to an old rig while he tinkers. Finally get it to run but only at basically no wake speed. Take 4hrs to get back to launch the next day. Zero fish caught.

10 years old on the creek with my older brother and his friends. Hot as hell and the middle of the day. Less than ideal summer fishing conditions in retrospect.

Brother and his friends were fishing their asses off with a variety of artificial and real baits for no less than 2 hrs.

We only had my dad's rod to share and my brother wasn't in a sharing mood. I sat quietly on the bank enjoying the day until I had an idea to make a pole from a hickory limb and treat it like a cane pole.

We had line and hooks, but I was several years younger and no one would even lend me a worm. I was chewing my last piece of grape hubba Bubba gum and just went with that.

Within about 5 minutes I caught what was about a 2 lb catfish to the amazement of all. I basically dropped the mic and said have a good one. Went home to fillet it and grandma fried it up for me and served it with some fresh sliced onion. Great day

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Not my childhood, but my oldest daughters:

We were stationed at Fort Bragg. I had just come back from deployment and we moved to an awesome lake house. Now, I'm the one fishing my arse off with a tackle box of lures worth north of $1000. She has a Barbie kids zebco and a minnow. She leaves for the bathroom. Seconds later her pole literally launches into the water. I grab it and let off all drag. About 10 stressful minutes later, she comes back just in time to see me scooping out a behemoth of a bass that she'd cast right on its bed before walking away.

10.5 lbs and 24". Never caught a bass that big in my life before or after and I did it on a Barbie rod. She refused to let me release it. We had some pretty delicious bass steaks on the grill and a couple great memories.

quote:

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This wasn’t very smart

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No life jacket and no rails on walk either ;)

I was about ten years old and fishing in the pond at the neighbors place. I could get up close but the cypress were down close to the water out deep and I was hanging up on them and there was action happening right out past them so I waded in and started throwing a bait under and between those limbs. After awhile I heard a splash behind me and I turn and see a big damn fish between me and the shore and he's just hanging around with his fin out the water. Somehow I move slow enough to get a hand under him and I throw it on the shore. It's a MASSIVE Sac-a-lait. His fins have rotten spots so he's obviously on his last legs but he's alive and we took him up the the store and he weighed 4lbs 3oz.

Took my then 8 year old son fishing with a Crappie guide with grandpa back in April. It was his birthday gift and he got to miss a Friday of school. Best day of fishing at Sardis I’ve ever had. We had so much fun I’m taking him to Pickwick with a Smallmouth guide in October.

Welp just saw that it was supposed to be my memory from childhood. That would be bream fishing with my grandad. Any and every time.

Gosh I feel so blessed to have so many memories with my kids now and with my dad and grandpa. The two that come to memory...

My grandpa fished around CENLA damn near every day after retiring from Bolton high. He absolutely loved catching white perch they were his favorite by far. He called my dad and said water was perfect at Open Bayou we needed to come up. We went on the most epic sac a lait trip I have ever been on I have no idea how many we caught but we had them in the ice chest, drink chest, and in the minnow buckets they were all very nice size and it was just as amazing as it gets I was maybe 10?

Second memory I was a little younger my dad, me and grandpa out at Sandy point (still to this day my favorite place to fish) back when there was lots of land and beaches and LOTS of fish. We were fishing our green sparkle beetles and hammering the fish (like most days) my grandpa catches a very nice trout and I get a tounge lashing to not screw up the net job we get it in the boat, 28" and on a rusty scale that wasn't near accurate 8.5# the biggest trout I had ever seen in my life. A few minutes later I hook up with a nice redfish until it surfaces, it's a trout! Right as I get the fish near the boat I tell my dad "Don't frick up the net job!"... OOPS! I may or may not have had to clean all of the fish and been sworn to NEVER use such a word again around the ladies...They get her netted, 45 years later and it's still by far my biggest trout 32" and it broke the scale I have no earthly idea what she weighed but she was beautiful and unfortunately we ate both of them that night.

More recent my son and I fished Little Red River over Christmas. He had never fished with a fly rod.

In a half day trip we boated over 40 trout and he probably had half of them.

That was probably my favorite.

Before my Pop got his first bass boat he took me bass fishing out of the old ski boat we had down on the Chattahoochie ( yes, Allen Jacksons Chattahoochie).
We would run down the river to River Bend and fish the oxbows just off the main channel.
Many a time he would launch the boat ,on our way out or back , over the awesome wakes the tugs pushing barges used to make as they travelled the river back then. To a 6 yr old me that felt like the greatest thing in the world.
Caught my first largemouth back then on a black w/white polka-dots Creme scoundrel worm as I was messing with the spinning reel trying to get a loop out.
Found a pic of the fish while going through a box of his things a few months sgo (He passed in 2020 of Covid-related symptoms). I don’t know who had the bigger smile on their face…. Me holding that fish or my Pop taking the picture.

RIP Pop. This ones for you