Fishermen are notorious for telling great tales when it comes to their experiences on the water. Many times the size of the fish grows with each telling of the tale. This is not only an occurrence found in the story being told by the angler involved, but also by the fellow anglers as they relay the story to others. You can expect the fish and the excitement of the encounter to reach epic proportions if the fish gets away. For those of you guilty of this behavior, or at least those who will admit it, I’m happy to announce I’ve conducted a scientific study and your behavior is not your fault, it’s in your blood.
As many of you know, my son Jacob is now 2 ½ years old and I can now say with confidence, a future fisherman. Last week my wife took him to a family get together. Our relatives have a pond they recently stocked with small bream and bass. Jacob’s been playing with a snoopy rod and reel from the age of 1 year old and while he has never been fishing, he has certainly caught his share of imaginary fish around the house, Sunday was the day the rubber finally met the road. Armed with a canepole and float, he caught several small bream. He was quite thrilled and told me about them when he came home. That night I decided to conduct my research that would free all fisherman from the guilt of the tall tale. I put my hands very close together and asked, “Jacob were the fish you caught this big?” He looked at my hands and quickly pushed them apart as far as his arms would reach and said, “this big”. I knew at this moment that we are really not responsible for our fishing tales, however skewed they may become and my son was going to become a fine fisherman. In his eyes, with all of the excitement of his first fish, those fish probably did seem that large.
One of the great components of fishing is the story. There is nothing like going to the local tackle shop and hearing a great story or sitting and listening to an old-timer tell you stories about their trips. For those of us that have been fishing our entire liv