My friends and I all collected different types of fishing gear. We all had nice lures, but never knew when or where to use them. Most of the lures were bigger than the fish we caught. They were all kept in our tackle boxes for purely aesthetic reasons because we all fished with bait. Bait was readily available and, more importantly to a 12 year old boy, it was free. All we had to do was open the refrigerator and grab a pack of hot dogs or salami and we were gone fishing.

One fish stands out in my memory in all those carefree days of my youth and I like to think of it as my first fish. One day I discovered there were large fish in the creek. I could not believe how huge these fish were and started immediately researching how to catch this particular species. I finally found an article on them in a fishing magazine. The article gave a recipe of a certain kind of bait that was guaranteed to suit the taste buds of this particular fish. My mother helped me make a large batch of this bait and the next day I gave it a shot.

I got to the fishing hole, baited my hook, and casted to the middle of the pool and waited. To my disappointment, the fish did not flock to the bait from their hiding places as I expected. Worse yet, I found that once the bait was in the water 10 or 15 minutes, it became saturated and fell apart. So much for catching the big fish.

One day, however, I discovered that three of these fish would come out and feed in the pool daily at nine AM. I coaxed my mother to make another batch of the bait and the next day, at precisely nine AM, I was at the fishing hole. I nervously looked into the pool and there were the three fish happily feeding on the bottom. I baited my hook with the special bait and drifted it to the bottom of the pool. My only hope was that the fish would find it before it fell apart. As I sat there shaking with anticipation, the largest of the fish found my bait and ate it. Nothing. It went on swimming happily. I wasn't sure if the bait had fallen off the hook or if the fish had stolen it from the hook. I gave a sharp tug on the line and a great battle was engaged.

This was the first time I had ever had to fight to catch a fish. With all my previous catches, I just yanked them out of the water. There was no yanking this fish out of the water. The pool I was fishing, was under a bridge and I was fishing from the concrete footer which was three feet above the surface of the water. I would have to lead the fish downstream from the bridge and beach it. After what seemed an eternity, I finally beached the monstrous fish. To my horror, the hook came untied just as I beached it (I tied my hooks to my line with multiple granny knots). I dropped my pole and lunged for the fish and another whole new battle was in the making. I finally subdued the fish and got it securely on my stringer and laid back in the gravel and mud to recover from my pounding heart.

I immediately headed for home with my large fish dangling from my stringer. As I walked home along the road, I held the fish so all the passing motorists could see my prize. One truck driver gave me a double look like he was thinking: WOW! NICE FISH!

When I got home I filled a wash tub with water and put my fish in it. Then I gathered all my friends together to show them the monstrous fish I had caught. Of course they were all envious.

"Holy cow! Where did you catch that huge fish?" they would say.

"At the creek," I'd smugly reply.

"What kind of fish is that?"

"A carp."

"Oh."

As the years passed, I learned to fish for sport fish, but eventually tired of the sport and got interested in other things. Then, one day my oldest daughter, then six, came to me with a request, "Daddy will you take me fishing?" It had been years since I had fished, but the idea appealed to me. So we went out and bought a couple of fishing rods, a tackle box, assorted hooks, weights, and bobbers, some spoons, and a large lure for aesthetics. We then went home and I tied a metal washer to the line of my daughters fishing rod and taught her how to cast. In no time at all she was casting pretty well.

The bridge that I fished in my youth had been replaced years ago and there was no longer a pool underneath. So I took my daughter to a place on the creek where there was a small dam. I showed her how to tie the hook to the line (no granny knots), how to put weights on, and then how to bait a hook with a worm (no hot dogs). I told her to cast her bait to the base of the dam, which she did. I then started to prepare my own line. When I finished, I turned around and there was my daughter struggling with her rod that was bent at 180 degrees. She was landing a large fish without any instructions from me! I looked at the fish as she beached it, it was a large smallmouth bass. I unhooked the fish and measured it, 17 inches! I couldn't believe it. What a first fish! The look in her eye reminded me of when I had caught the monstrous carp.

I now have something to brag about to my fishing friends. "My daughters first fish was a 17 inch smallmouth bass!" I'd say smugly. In my adult life, I've never mentioned to anybody about my prize carp. Until now.