Chambug

[chambug]

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[Ham]

I've been fishing for as long as I can remember. My Dad fished and I sure wanted to be like him and spend time with him. I'll guess about 45 years so far sooooooooo, I'm just getting started. Fishing is a lot more than a past time to me. I'll fish until I can't anymore and honestly, I hope I don't live much longer than that. Sorry to hear you've called it quits CB, but I'm glad you've got family to enjoy.

[laker67]

I was born in "49", and it seems to me that I must have grown up waist deep in the warm water creeks here in camden county. My dad was a creek wader and flyrodder, so flyrodding was what we did. We fished the glaize creeks mostly with several ponds thrown in. Started trout fishing around 1960, but was only able to fish 3 to 4 times a season. Once I could drive, that changed. If you don't subtract the 4 years that I spent overseas while in service, I would safely say I have fished for 55 years or so. Would dearly love to be able to spend 20 more.

[FishinCricket]

I've fished well over 75 years if you add in my previous lives...

I was born in 80 and was manning a fishing pole by myself on the banks of an Ozarks river since I was 4 years old, and I've fished every chance I've gotten since the bug really bit me back when I as about 12...

What's this about you hangin' it up, Chambug? Say it ain't so...?

[Mitch f]

Born in '61 and have been fishing since I was 4 or so. My brother and I are only 17 months apart so everything regarding fishing my dad bought us in pairs. We had matching Plano tackle boxes with Purple Creme plastic worms that welded themselves to the tackle box. The only lure my dad ever fished was a black and gold floating rapala. One of my fondest childhood memories was my father catching an 8 lb bass in a muddy farm pond on that lure. I thought he was 10 feet tall from that moment on. I just celebrated his 90th birthday last weekend with my family. Watching him hold my 2 year old daughter with a smile on his face last weekend is my newest great memory.

[ozark trout fisher]

Well, I can't say I've been at it even a significant fraction of 75 years, but I have had a fishing pole in my hand more or less constantly since I was three years old. I'm told my first fish was a small rainbow from a little pond in Craig Colorado,though I can't say I actually remember that.

For me fishing, specifically trout fishing, has just always been the most natural thing in the world. I can't remember a time ever in my life when it was anything less than my passion.

[Al Agnew]

There is a photo of me at about age 3, holding a Zebco No-brainer rod and reel on the bank of an Ozark creek, so I suppose I've been fishing for at least 56 years now. Dad was (and still is when he gets up enough energy) a reservoir bass angler. Grandpa was a crappie fisherman more than anything else. But Grandpa would go to nearby creeks to trap his crappie minnows and take me along, and it was with him that I caught my first smallmouth. Dad took me on my first float trip (on small and low upper Big River in his 16 foot aluminum reservoir johnboat--real work!) at about age 7. I was riding my bike the mile to the river from my house by age 8 or 9 to fish for sunfish and hope for smallies. Dad saw how much I loved it and bought a 12 foot aluminum johnboat for me to use to float the river in my early teens. Bought my own canoe right after I graduated from high school. I fished local tournaments pretty successfully in my late teens and 20s, and dreamed of being a professional fisherman when I wasn't dreaming of being a writer and illustrator of magazine articles. Neither came to pass...I got tired of reservoir bass fishing when it got really popular and dominated by expensive, high speed bass boats, and the big outdoor magazines mostly stopped using illustrations in favor of photographs. So I taught school for seven years before becoming an artist. I chose teaching mainly because I could take the summers off and work toward the goal of floating every Ozark stream. Once I became a real artist I did a lot more traveling, and my goal became catching a stream smallmouth from every state where there was a smallmouth stream. It wasn't until the mid-1990s that I started flyfishing for trout (and salmon). Gradually my goal changed to fishing a river in every state. I'm up to somewhere around 35 states now, and I figure that with luck I'll have another 25 years or so to complete that goal!

I enjoy any kind of freshwater fishing, but my first and greatest love is to be on moving water. I love rivers. I love paddling a canoe on fast water. But it still seems sacrilegious to get on a stream without having a fishing rod in my hand. I've fished for salmon in Alaska and Michigan, steelhead in Idaho, trout in nearly every western state, smallies on nearly every floatable stream in the Ozarks and in 30 states and a Canadian province, largemouth on Florida lakes and rivers and a bunch of different states, walleye on the best Ozark rivers and other places. I've done halibut fishing in Alaska (won't do it again...boring), tarpon, permit, and bonefish in south Florida (okay but I wouldn't want a steady diet of it), seatrout and redfish in Texas (the most fun I've had on saltwater), and striped bass off New York. I even fished for bass in Zimbabwe, as well as peacock bass in Hawaii. I now live part-time on one of the most famous western trout streams, and will soon be looking for a place as near as possible to one of the best Ozark streams to live the rest of the time.

So it's obvious that few things in life are more important to me than rivers and fishing.

[snagged in outlet 3]

Also born in 61. They have pix of my mom while pregnant with me at Bennett. My family friends always jokes that I was concieved and raised at Bennett. I fished from as early on as possible. Pictures of me playing in Norfork Lake at 3 yearsold with a zebco. My dad gave me a fly rod right away. I built my first rod at probably 12 or 12 years old. I thought I had lost it but when my dad passed we found it in the back of closet.

I traveled all over the US with him and his buddies. Many of them are pretty famous guys. Pretty cool to Fly fish, bird hunt and play golf with people like Lefty. Jack Mclaughlin and a guy named Carl Mantell taught me alot about hunting and fishing. Also how to sip brandy and smoke. When to use rig gun grease for problems with your back side in a duck blind. What a great time. I was taught to tie flies by Ed Story when his fly shop was on the Rock Rd.

I took to the salt on my own and love big fish on the fly.

When I was 15 I illegally drove my sisters car to Montauk for the weekend. Got me arse kicked when I got back. I still twitch a little when I see a mid 70's camaro.

So 47 years or so.

Pete

[chambug]

Ozark Anglers (the site), and anglers who are not necessarily Ozark, never cease to amaze me. I felt like a lot of you would enjoy "telling your story" about your life's fishing experience(s). I was right. You are putting some of the best stuff on here that i've ever read about the fishing heretage that is a part of so many of our lives.

I'm flattered and flabbergasted, but don't stop....you have given me a greart deal of pleasure.

Collectively, we could be a very significant part of any publication that promotes fishing.

Keep it up, but put a new dimension with it....tell us how you have gotten your own children and grandchildren involved in the wondersome sport of fishing.

[snagged in outlet 3]

Give em a fly rod, a set of clubs and a 22. Then just bring em along.

Nature will take its course after that. DNA helps.

Pete