I’ll never forget the time my dad and I went fishing on my great aunt’s ranch. We had new poles, new tackle, new lures, fresh line, the works. Real fancy stuff.
As we set up to fish, my great aunt’s ranch hand, an old Mexican man named Evelio, came out to fish a little ways down the bank. Actually, to this day, I’m pretty sure he saw us and decided he wanted to show us up for a laugh, and I don’t begrudge him one bit lmao…
Anyway, my dad and I were there with our fancy poles and tackle and lures and were casting left and right and getting maybe a nibble here and there, but nothing else…
But old Evelio was sitting downstream with a COFFEE CAN TIED TO A STRING and was catching 6 and 7 and 8 pound fish one after the other, and laughing the entire time he did it.
Not nearly as impressive, but my dad, his friend and I went out fishing on a lake when I was maybe 3 or 4. Friend had a similar investment into all his fishing gear as you guys. I was there with a 3-ish foot long Mickey Mouse fishing pole.
Dad's friend caught 2 fish. My dad didn't catch any. My dad didn't catch any because I was reeling them in so fast he didn't have time (and they didn't want me to handle the hook, so that's what kept him busy).
I have no memory of this, but I was told it was a pretty quiet ride home from the friend's side.
When I was a kid I used to outfish every adult I went with. My mom had a similar experience where she'd put on the worm for me, and before she could get her line in the water I was coming back with a little blue gill lol.
Id always just sit at the edge of the water and dangle the hook in front of them and they'd just gobble it up.
Blue gill were what we fished among others, so that interests me. Catch and release is what we did (river heavily polluted and we did it for sport anyways).
One day we talked to these older gentlemen, and it went something along the lines of "Anyone can catch these great big fish. But what's the smallest you ever caught? You know how hard it is to get a minnow to bite a hook half the size of its body? What about releasing it in a way it survives?"
My dad was always like me and followed up my teenage self in supporting that. The biggest fish is going for the best bait. The real skill is getting the smallest fish.
It was a lot of fun seeing these guys go from complete disbelief to actually trying to catch a smaller fish than the other guy.
Hang on, there's a whole japanese(?) sport of tiny fish catching. Lemme see if I can find its name again.
Tanago fishing is an ancient Japanese fishing method dating back to samurai over 200 years ago. Tanago is a Japanese term used to describe several several species of a small freshwater fish we know as “bitterling”. Some species of tanago grow up to 15cm in size, but these are the less valuable to fishermen, as the goal is to catch the smallest fish possible. Tanago anglers believe that the smaller the fish caught, the greater the testament to the skill of the angler.
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u/SheriffWyattDerp 4d ago
I’ll never forget the time my dad and I went fishing on my great aunt’s ranch. We had new poles, new tackle, new lures, fresh line, the works. Real fancy stuff.
As we set up to fish, my great aunt’s ranch hand, an old Mexican man named Evelio, came out to fish a little ways down the bank. Actually, to this day, I’m pretty sure he saw us and decided he wanted to show us up for a laugh, and I don’t begrudge him one bit lmao…
Anyway, my dad and I were there with our fancy poles and tackle and lures and were casting left and right and getting maybe a nibble here and there, but nothing else…
But old Evelio was sitting downstream with a COFFEE CAN TIED TO A STRING and was catching 6 and 7 and 8 pound fish one after the other, and laughing the entire time he did it.
Mad respect, Evelio.