Racoon leaving after exploring my tackle bag
I haven’t been blogging about it (sorry), but I have been fishing a fair bit this summer. Not as much as I have in the past–life just gets busier and busier, it seems–but I’m trying to get away for a little while at least once a week or so.
This year the fishing hasn’t been great in the lake I usually fish, but I’ve been out about three times this summer to a large private pond owned by a good friend, and have caught a lot of nice bass there.
But a couple of weeks ago I was fishing at the public lake, late in the evening, and I carried my tackle bag (a nice one I got from Bass Pro Shops some years ago) with me to the shore line and set it on a rock. (Often I just leave the bag in the car and take a pack of plastic worms in my pocket.) I caught two or three little bass, but I couldn’t help noticing the guy up the shore to my left–he was catching three times the number of fish I was–little ones, probably crappie (I was too far away to see). Anyway, as a result, when it came time for me to leave, I turned to my left and began climbing up the short hill to my car. Had I turned to my right, I’d have seen my tackle bag sitting there, but I didn’t, and I absentmindedly left it and drove off. It didn’t even register with me that it wasn’t in the car when I put my rod away.
I had the opportunity to go back out the next morning, and when opened my car’s hatch and reached for my pole, I noticed for the first time that the bag was not there. I figured out pretty quickly what had happened, but alas, the bag had disappeared from the rock where I had left it and was no where to be found. I was sad, but perhaps more than that, I felt pretty stupid right about then. While I normally have a copy of my fishing license in the little plastic window on the top of the bag, this year that didn’t get done, for whatever reason, so there was no way for the finder of my bag to find me.
I didn’t have an extensive collection of lures, really–but I figure there was close to $200 worth of stuff there, including a really nice little fly case that I bought when I was in junior high, more than 40 years ago–I reckon that makes it an antique–it was a nice metal case with tiny little metal clips inside to hold the flies. I’m probably saddest about losing that.
I had a birthday coming up, and my family members gave me gift certificates for more fishing tackle, so now I’m starting over. I’ve got a brand-new tackle box and a few of the essential things–hooks and weights, floats and other odds and ends. In a way, it’s fun to replace stuff, especially in cases where I didn’t really like what I had before, but couldn’t justify replacing it.
I genuinely hope that whoever found my bag has the opportunity to use that stuff well and often.
I hope you’re having a good summer.
