When a man has been fishing seriously for over half a century he undoubtedly has accumulated a lot of memories; but he has also, undoubtedly, accumulated a lot of junk…uh, let me rephrase that: accumulated a lot of fishing tackle destined for greatness, but never given the opportunity.
Recently, I have been dealing with the task of going through my parents’ possessions - their estate, as our attorney calls it. It has amazed me, not what they had, but what they didn’t throw away!
I would not classify them as hoarders; they are the product of the Great Depression, a time when nobody threw anything away.
For the past seven weeks I have been contacting friends and family, asking if they wanted any of my folk’s junk, uh, treasured memories.
Then came the yard sale; we made a few dollars selling some of their treasured memories, but the bulk of their stuff is now property of Good Will or the Hall County landfill.
When I finally had a free moment to go fishing, as I looked through my bass boat for my bubblegum trick worms, it dawned on me: I have a lot of junk, uh, “fishing tackle destined for greatness but never given the opportunity”.
I’m just like them, it struck me.
So I told myself that the time had arrived for me to break the familial pattern of never throwing anything away. I promised myself that I would declutter my boat!
A chilly, rainy couple of days this past week provided the perfect opportunity, and I began filling one trash bag after another with “fishing tackle destined for greatness, but never given the opportunity”.
I also decided to attack the giant Tupperware containers in my garage that I used to house excess tackle. I couldn’t believe some of the things I found - some of them I didn’t know what they were for!
I have lures - still in the original box - that called my name as I glanced at them on the tackle shop shelf, promising one big bite after another, but as a poor high school student I could only afford to buy two. That was back in the 1960s!
They represented potential that has gone unrecognized, but were still riding with me in my boat nearly five decades later.
Digging deep into the recesses of my front storage locker revealed some original Crème Worms, the pre-rigged kind, the way Nick Crème sold them from his Akron, Ohio, mail order business shortly after inventing the plastic worm in the 1950s.
The original package has long decayed, but I think the worms were supposed to be “plum colored”; they somehow morphed into a disgusting shade of disco-pink.
“Into the trash bag, you disgusting disco-pink worms with the broken and rusty hooks,” I proclaimed victoriously.
It’s hard to explain, but I feel “clean”; I now feel “free”.
Over one hundred pounds of stuff is no longer in my boat, or in a series of dusty Tupperware storage bins in my garage. (My wife can now park her SUV inside our garage. Fringe benefit!)
I can’t wait to see how much faster my boat gets on plane; I’ll bet I get an extra 5 mph out of my engine, all because I am no longer buried under a pile of “fishing tackle destined for greatness, but never given the opportunity”.
You might want to give fisherman’s-lib a try.
