Just as the spinnerbait was passing the edge of a moss bank, something stopped it dead.
Dead, as if it had hit a concrete block
I thought maybe it was caught on some moss under the surface, but I set the hook anyway and then grabbed the rod with both hands and braced it against my belly as a seriously big fish took off.
This was my first time to use a spinnerbait, and, as I held on to the rod, I congratulated myself for buying it.
It had cost me 29 cents at Kerb Felkins’ Grocery, where it was one of 10 or so hanging in plastic packages on a card on the wall.
Spinnerbaits, if you aren’t familiar with them, are shaped like safety pins that stand vertically. On the top arm, there is a blade the size of a nickel that spins as the lure goes the water. On the bottom is a plastic skirt that wiggles like a small fish’s fins and tail and camouflages the hook.
As a kid, I fished mostly with worms, grasshoppers and bobbers and caught sunfish and the occasional catfish or bass.
But hey. This spinnerbait looked like it might catch something with bragging rights attached, so I paid Kerb, went home for my rod and reel and headed to a farm pond a couple of pastures away.
Seems like it was the third or fourth cast that I hooked the lunker. It was the time of my life for about 10 seconds, until the line went slack.
Darn. Biggest fish I’d ever hooked and it got off.
Funny thing was, I hooked more fish and they all got off, too.
It was then that I noticed something odd. There was no hook on the spinnerbait.
My first thought was: Kerb sold me a defective lure.
I had stuck the plastic package in my pocket, so I looked, and, sure enough, there was the hook.
So... There was some assembly required. You had to attach the hook by slipping it through a wire loop in the body of the lure.
Who knew?
Amazingly, with the hook on the lure, I caught and landed a couple of nice bass, but none anywhere as big as the legendary one that had gotten away first
Half a century later, I still use those old-timey spinnerbaits, even though they are getting harder to find and you can buy ones that come with the hook already in them. They catch fish consistently and they’re still a link to a time when country grocery stores had fishing lures on the wall and sold cold bottles of pop for a dime and peanuts for a nickel.
They also make me wonder, in contemplative moments, about how many times I might have caused myself problems or missed out on blessing because I hadn’t put the metaphorical hook on my lure.