I did not write this article, but thought its was a great one. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
The Things That Should Always Be In Your Box
I sat down in an attempt to give out advice on how one should organize his tackle. I even had the title of the article, Packing Tackle: How to organize your tackle box, what makes a box complete for what kind of fishing trip. Easy right?
I even had the perfect template to use for this article, my own tackle box. I knew I had rubber worms, jig hooks, rubber tube skirts, flat nose pliers that could cut wire and line. There was more there, but that’s all that initially came to mind. I actually hadn’t been in it in awhile. But, all I had to do was I’d open it and simply describe in words what I saw in the box. Sounds easy, right?
It’s not so easy as it turns out. There’s organized people and there’s unorganized people. Most of us fall into one group or the other. I fall into the unorganized group. Granted it had been awhile since I last fished, but I wasn’t prepared to see a box of stuff tossed like a salad of rubber worms, grubs, skirts, and hooks, all wrapped in fishing line. I was able to get to the weights and pliers. That was nice. I also had an old bottle of those beautiful, pink salmon eggs. If you take a kid fishing, take salmon eggs and worms, real ones. If the kid gets bored you can distract him with neon balls (salmon eggs) and worms. I had recently been fishing with my buddy and his nephew.
So, here I am, a tackle box in disarray and a blinking cursor waiting for me to move it along the screen and I’ve got nothing. Then I noticed my grandpa’s knife. I was the first-born grandchild in my family, on either side. And not just the first born, but the only male grandchild my Grandpa Casey ever knew.
I’m holding this knife and memories of my grandparents’ motorcycle gang are making my smile. We called it a motorcycle gang, but I don’t remember leather and tattoos, I remember camping and fishing and riding dirt bikes. Those were things my grandparents did with their ‘gang’; mostly it was just a large group of friends, they even squared danced together. I doubt you’d see many ‘Vipers’ or ‘Blood Mongers’ square dancing. It was funny, but finding this knife in my tackle box made me smile. The memories of my grandpa made me smile. I don’t have anything from my grandpa except that knife. I was about twelve when my grandpa died and my two uncles gave me his knife. And as I type these words into this computer I realize how much this knife means to me.
I don’t carry a knife in my pocket. My grandpa did, but I don’t. But, remember he was in a gang and I’m against gangs. So I keep the knife in my tackle box. I figure at least I’ll have opportunities to use it. And I’ll have opportunities to smile.
A lot of the tackle in my box is now, simply, stuff headed for the trash. I’ll salvage some, but most of my tackle isn’t high dollar. I originally had the little hooks in a tray, but they’re either laying on the bottom of the box or entwined in the line. As I pick up the hooks, I think about my dad’s mom, my Grandma Connie. I always thought of my two families as different, my mom’s parents were the country people and my dad’s parents were the country club people. But, it was my Grandma Connie, one of the country club family members that loved fishing the most. When my dad’s parents retired, they bought a boat and moved near a lake in Northern California. They didn’t move next to the lake, they moved near a lake. They actually moved next to a golf course. I guess they compromised, my grandpa got the golf course and my grandma got the boat.
The most vivid fishing memory I have of my grandma is of her struggling to tie her line with an arthritic right hand. Her thumb wasn’t really useable, in fact she couldn’t bend her thumb and it seemed to be shrinking, but she always got her line tied. I remember following my grandma up and down the banks of a crystal, blue river in Bend, Oregon. The water so clear you could see the trout just hanging out. I also remember renting a cabin, every summer for years, in a place called Kennedy Meadows, somewhere in the Northern California Mountains. Kennedy Meadows was a place my grandma used to visit each year with her father. There entire family would visit just to fish the rivers. Now that I think about it, this might have been the place my grandma first showed us her ability to crush snails between her bare toes. Fascinating for a kid. And another great memory.
Opening this tackle box reminded me of all these awesome times. I realized that opening my tackle box always reminds me of times gone by. I remember my first fishing experience at a fish farm just outside Ruidoso, New Mexico. I used corn as bait, plopped my line into a pool of trout, just begging to be caught as though it was their job, and still, I didn’t catch anything. I’m reminded of the time in high school when a fishing trip to the lake turned into a dare contest. We caught some carp, but better than that, I won ten dollars for eating bugs.
I’m not skilled, and certainly not organized, enough to give advice on how to organize your tackle box. We all know that the equipment we carry along depends on the fish we’re trying to catch, the weather overhead, and the type of water we’re going to drop our lines into. But, most of us don’t fish or spend time on a lake, river or, yes, even a canal, because we’re going to make living off of our fishing skills. Most of us love to hang out with our friends, our kids, our parents, and, if we’re lucky, our grandparents. When we pick up our tackle box, grab our pole and head out to our favorite spot or hole as some of us call it, we’re opening the door to a new memory. Not every time will a memory walk through the door, but I like the odds.
The title of this article was to be, Packing Tackle: How to organize your tackle box, what makes a box complete for what kind of fishing trip? I guess I really missed the point on this one. I certainly didn’t support the theme, but I think, for me anyway, that I remembered why I liked fishing so much. It’s the memories. No matter what kind of fish you’re after or what kind of weather’s on the horizon, the things you never leave home are the memories. Those are the things that should always be in your box.
I am mad at myself for throwing away so many “memories” in my youth…things from my Dad’s or Grandpa’s tacklebox that I thought were just not worth trying, outdated, or too rusty…things I would give anything to have back in my tacklebox now if I could!