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Welfare Fishing
By Tom Ogren, Fri Dec 9th
Welfare Fishing I've been fishing hard for the past 40 plus years and aboutthirty years ago I started to enjoy catching fish and tossingthem back. I usually bring along a camera and have collected somany photos of me or friends with fish caught (and usuallyreleased) that they now fill two large fish albums. My niece,Shana, recently complained, saying, "How come I'm not in thefish book?" I explained that in order to get in the fish book,you had to catch a fish and have someone take the picture. As akid I used to fish on the piers of southern California and inthose days everyone had a five-gallon bucket and into thatbucket went every single fish they caught. You could walk downthe pier, looking in peoples' buckets, seeing how the fishingwas going. It was a point of pride to have a bucket full offish--what kind of fish, tomcods, perch, mackerel, croaker,bonito, didn't really matter. What mattered was having abucketful of fish. Most of the many fish I tossed in my bucketended up getting buried in our back yard. Good fertilizer forthe plants was the way we excused it. Not that in those days weneeded any sort of excuse for keeping every single fish wecaught. It was the way it was done then. On the ocean pierstoday I see much the same thing. Catch and release appears to bea very foreign idea. Last time I was on the pier I was casting aline of little jigs, catching and then tossing back lots of bigsardines. The people on both sides of me asked me to give thefish to them, but I said no, I was into catching and releasing.They looked at me with a certain bit of hostility and as thoughI had to be completely out of my mind. One thing about me thatis quickly apparent is that I'm pretty big. At 6'2" tall and 230pounds I don't look like someone to mess with, and I'm not. Thisgives me somewhat of an advantage with irate fisherfolk. Twoweeks ago I was in Minnesota visiting my brother in St. Paul.One afternoon I decided to drive down to nearby Long Lake to trymy hand at tossing bread balls to the carp. There's a littlepier on that lake and I walked out on it and started to drownthe white bread. I had the whole pier to myself and it was quitenice, even if the carp weren't cooperating. Pretty soon a manwho brought an ice chest, a paperback copy of Clan of the CaveBear, several rods, a big tackle box, and a large portable radiojoined me. He tuned his radio to some classical music stationand turned it up loud. Now I like violins as much as the nextguy, but not especially when I'm carp fishing. But it was apublic pier and I'm a polite guy so I didn't complain. This newfellow was quite the talker. In no time he'd told me half hislife story. He worked for the city, had read Clan of the CaveBear five times, and was a (self proclaimed) expert on allmatter anthropological. He also complained bitterly about thehoards of damn foreigners who had moved to Minnesota and whocaught all the fish while they lived high on the hog on publicwelfare. I tired to ignore him as best I could but it wasn'teasy. Once in awhile I'd try to get my own two cents in aboutsomething or other but he never let me finish a sentence and Iquickly gave up trying. He was fishing with what looked likefifty-pound line, a huge bobber, a heavy sinker, a size 1 hookand a dead leach. He claimed there were huge bluegills in thelake but he
wasn't catching any of them. I decided to give hima little competition. I was using six-pound line on an ultralight outfit. I rigged up with a long shanked number 8 goldhook, put a very small bobber some four feet up from my hook,baited it with a worm from my brother's perennial garden andstarted to fish for bluegills. On the first cast I quickly gotinto a really beautiful bluegill, big, fat, solid, a male with abright orange chest. I pulled him up, admired him for a momentand then dropped him back into the murky waters of Long Lake. "What the hell did you do that for?" said my classical lovingbuddy. "That was a damn good fish." "I'm into catch andrelease," I said. "I just like to fish and catch fish. I almostnever keep any." "Well, give them to me then," he said. Now tobe honest, if I'd have liked the guy better, a whole lot better,I probably would have. But his welfare talk and ramblings abouthow the minorities had screwed up the world was buggingme...that and his big mouth and loud classical music. "Sorry," Isaid, "I catch 'em and I toss 'em. You'll just have to catchyour own." And then I started to fish bluegills with avengeance. I started catching bluegills almost as fast as Icould toss in my line and almost every one of them was huge. Ithad been years since I'd caught such big sunnies. Every time Itossed one back I could hear this guy groaning but I justignored him. After I'd caught a dozen or so of these slabsunfish another fellow joined us on the end of the pier. He tooka spot at the rail, between me and the other guy. He hadn't cometo fish, just to socialize I guess. I quickly found out he was aretired optometrist, and that he too felt oppressed by all thegays, lesbians, blacks, Asians, Mexicans, politicians, you nameit. I hung into my biggest yet. On my light tackle thelittle bruiser put up a darn good fight. I landed my fish,admired it briefly and tossed it back into the lake. "My God!"swore the old optometrist. "That was really nice sunfish. Whydid you throw it back?" "I'm into catch and release, " I said."Yeah?" said the old geezer. "Yep," said the city employee."He's into catching them and throwing them back. Nice fish likethat, you'd think he'd give some to someone else. But oh no, hethrows them all back." "You know," I said, talking to theretired optometrist and pretending the other guy wasn't eventhere, " People sometimes get me confused. They think I'm thewelfare department, that I'm out here to pass out free fish topeople. But I ain't the welfare department. And anyhow, all thefish I caught I put right back in the lake where anyone else cancatch them themselves if they want to. Funny how some people arealways looking for a handout, isn't it." The old fellow justlooked at me for a moment. "That's cold," he said. And I guessit was. But you know what? I enjoyed it. I caught a few more ofthe jumbo bluegills, tossed them back, and then left the pier.The fishing had been pretty decent but the ambiance sucked. Itwas time to find a different lake to fish.
About the author:Tom Ogren is a writer from San Luis Obispo, California, and headmits to keeping the occasional walleye, trout or crappie toeat.
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