Gone Fishin’

Getting fresh fish in north central Illinois in the mid-1950s was difficult. But late May/early June usually marked the time of year when the family would travel to northern Wisconsin on a fishing trip. If the fishing was good, that meant meals of fresh fried filets of smallmouth bass and northern pike. I’m not sure that I appreciated the bounty that was available, but I did partake. With gusto.

As I think back on those times, my role there becomes much clearer. I was invited out in the mornings with my father and his friend Bob, our neighbor and the son-in-law of the owner of the cottage where we were staying. I was the designated rower. In the photo above, this was not my first fishing expedition; I had been on fishing trips to Wisconsin since I was even smaller.

My father and Bob were on a mission to catch a lot of fish, equipped with two poles each, one for casting with a lure and the second, a line for trolling behind the boat with a live minnow. They had their favored fishing areas and would test based on where they thought they could achieve results. So we motored to the various areas in the lake, and I began rowing.

The oarsman

My job was to maintain a slow progress through the prime fishing areas, not too fast for baited trolling rigs, but sufficiently moving so that they continued to find new areas for casting their lures. I was to keep the boat moving about 50 yards from shoreline, fast enough so that the trolling bait lines would not sink and snag on the bottom. While I was keeping the boat moving, they were casting toward shore, hoping to capture some bass feeding in that area. When a fish struck on one of those poles, activity came to a halt. All the fishing lines were hauled in so that the hooked fish did not tangle in them. It was up to me to reel in the trolling lines and prepare for landing the fish with a net. Most days were successful. The boat returned to the cottage with enough fish on the stringer to feed the rest of the family.

Rewards of the day

In the afternoons, roles would change slightly, and my mother and Bob’s wife would join the fishing crowd, this time in two separate boats with a couple in each one. I was often left back to watch over the younger kids at the cottage. Then we all had fresh fish for dinner at night: Bass, pike, and occasionally some other large panfish, cleaned, filleted, dredged in flour, dipped in egg wash and coated with crushed cornflakes, then fried in leftover bacon fat — a recipe promoted by Betty Crocker at the time.

In the years since, I’ve eaten whitefish at fish boils in Door County, Wisconsin, grilled fresh ono in Kauai, and cracked lobster dipped in butter by the shore in Maine. It was all delicious, but the fried fish at that Wisconsin lake ranks right up there. Or maybe I was just hungry from rowing all day. How about you? Do you have a fresh game experience from your youth?

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