When I was a kid, fishing and preparing to go fishing were a major part of my life. We lived in Chicago, and summer weekends, my brother and I would ride the Montrose Avenue bus down to Lake Michigan, where we could fish for perch from a long concrete breakwater. We started out with simple bamboo cane poles, but eventually graduated to the new fiberglass fishing rods and the Swedish- made Abu Garcia bait-casting reels. We would dream of one day hooking a 200-pound lake sturgeon, but no such luck. That was for the best, I suppose. Can you imagine hauling a flapping 200-pound fish home on the bus?
Growing up, we had seen pictures in our family album of our dad and his fishermen friends with wheel barrows full of walleyes, and holding up trophy-sized muskies. They had caught them at his favorite fishing haunt on Lac du Flambeau, on the Chippewa Indian reservation in the north woods of Wisconsin. We would drag his old tackle box out of the closet and beg him to tell us the story behind each of the well-worn fishing lures. One called the “Double-Jointed Pikie Minnow” bore the teeth marks of all the muskies it had caught. Eventually, we talked him into taking us up there for annual week-long fishing trips.
Lac du Flambeau had quite a reputation among fishermen. There was even a story about it in the now defunct Argosy magazine that told about a huge muskie that lurked in the shallows. The locals had named it Jingle Bells. The legend was that it had been hooked and gotten away so many times that it had a mouth full of fishing lures that you could hear jingling as it swam near your boat.
We never heard Jingle Bells while we were up there. For that matter, we never caught a wheel barrow full of walleyes. The lodge owner would always say “You should have been here last week. They were biting on bare hooks.” Mostly, we caught only pan fish — bluegills and crappies — that were not much bigger than my hand. As years went by, I upgraded my equipment to the newest carbon-fiber rod and a state-of-the-art Pflueger spinning reel. This, of course, required buying a whole new arsenal of the latest fishing lures. One, the “Rapala,” came all the way from Finland. It bristled with three treble hooks that probably caught my fingers more times than any fish. It was soon joined by favorites like the Johnson’s “Silver Spoon,” the Arbogast “Jitterbug,” and the red-and-white striped “Daredevle.” Sad to say, after all these years, not one of them bears the teeth marks of a muskie.
Eventually, I came to the realization that having the latest and most expensive equipment was no guarantee that you would catch the biggest fish. Nowhere was this better demonstrated than during my recent vacation in Guatemala with my daughter, Liz, and 32-year-old grandson, Michael. We spent a few days in Panahachel, a quaint Indigenous village on the shore of Lake Atitlan. This picturesque 50- square-mile lake actually fills the caldera of an extinct volcano. It is more than 1,100 feet deep. That’s deeper than Lake Michigan.
One afternoon while Liz and I were out shopping at all the handicraft stalls, Michael went for a stroll along the lakefront. He eventually got out of the tourist area and came upon a boat dock where he saw some of the locals fishing. They weren’t using carbon-fiber fishing rods and expensive spinning reels. In fact, they weren’t even using bamboo cane poles. All they had were empty beer cans with fishing line wound around them. There were no jingling fishing lures; just a few kernels of cooked corn, or a scrap of tortilla on the hook.
They saw that Michael was intrigued, so they offered him a tin can and line to give it a try. He soon mastered the technique of using a side-arm toss and letting the weighted line unwind off one end of the can. Wouldn’t you know, in a matter of minutes he caught a fish. Not just a 6-inch bluegill, but a 3-foot-long carp. That’s bigger than any fish I had ever caught. He has the picture to prove it. Pretty soon, people were gathering to take his picture with the fish. Then they were asking if he would take their picture holding his fish. Nobody has ever asked me to take their picture holding any fish I ever caught. Eventually, Michael gave the fish to the guy who lent him the beer can. That was for the best, I suppose. Can you imagine schlepping a 3-foot-long carp home on the airplane?
Over the years, I have probably owned several thousand dollars worth of fishing rods, reels, and tackle. My advice – don’t waste your money on all that crap. All you need is a beer can. The local brand (“Gallo” in Guatemala) seems to be the most popular. Nobody was using expensive imports like Heineken. If you are under 21, you should probably use a Coke can, though I can’t personally vouch for how well they work. Whatever you use, just remember to recycle it when your fishing trip is over.
If you’ve always wanted a trophy fish to hang on your wall, check out your neighborhood garage sales. I never caught a fish worthy of sending to the taxidermist. Most weren’t big enough to bring home to cook. Speaking of which, Michael’s father texted him this recipe for carp. Clean and scale the fish. Slather it in olive oil seasoned with salt, pepper, lemon juice and garlic. Lay it on a piece of cardboard and cook it in a preheated 350-degree oven for 20 minutes. Throw away the fish and eat the cardboard. Bon Appétit!
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