Fishing For Worms

by Wendel Potter

While rummaging through my garage this weekend, I came across my fishing equipment.  The green and black fiberglass rod dates back to around 1960, I would guess.  The reel, an open-faced Ocean City 1600, is even older.  The line itself has to be close to 50 years old.

I went out into the backyard and casted.  The old equipment still works beautifully.  I wish I could say the same for myself.

After apologizing to the neighbor lady for hooking her shorts,  I reeled in the line and put the rod and reel away.  Then I returned the shorts.

It’s been a long time since I’ve gone fishing.  Not 50 years, but nigh on to twenty.

We used to live in a townhouse that was a hop, skip and jump away from a small lake.  I’ve never been much for hopping and skipping.  I like to keep both feet safely on the ground where I can see them.

The jump was over a stockade fence.  I chose to take the long way around. 


I fished a lot over the summers we lived there.  Never caught much, but the solitude was magnificent.

For me, the peace and quiet is what fishing is really all about.

My dad introduced me to fishing when I was quite small and we lived in Emmetsburg, Iowa.  We had a lake there--Five Island Lake--on the northern edge of town.  

The Rock Island railroad tracks stretched across a narrow section of the lake and we’d fish off the shore under the trestle.  It was an excellent spot to catch bullheads. 

It was also a great place to snag your hook on a rock or a chunk of timber.  Dad was proficient at that.  As a fisherman, he was a bad luck magnet. 

And his flustering, angry outbursts were a thing of beauty.  “Jesus” came out of his mouth on a fishing trip more than it did in church.

Dad’s temper also scared the fish away.  So much for magnificent solitude.

Maybe that’s why I came to look at fishing as--well, not so much fishing as drowning worms.  Sure, it was fun to reel in a fighting bullhead or a crafty catfish.  The fight is always fun if you end up winning.

But the pure enjoyment, the communion with nature, was my biggest catch.  And that’s no whopping fish tale.

I’m not a boat fisherman.  My agenda is simple:  find a quiet grassy nook under a shade tree and bobber fish off the shore. 

No fancy lures or spinners for me.  Just a small hook and a worm.

As a kid, the hunt for worms was as adventurous as the fishing itself.  It seems you always saw worms galore when you didn’t need them. 

When it was time to gather them for bait, they must have had a sixth sense.  They disappeared.

If you’ve ever watched robins, you’ll know how uncanny their worm-hunting skills are.  A robin will cock his head and put an ear to the ground, listening for movement.  When its radar locks in, the beak goes into the ground and up comes the worm in the robin’s mouth.

Nature is amazing.  For hungry robins anyway. 

I once put my head to the ground and didn’t hear a damn thing.  All I got was a ladybug in my ear.

But then, I don’t have a beak so that method wouldn’t have worked very well for me anyway.  Besides, I didn’t care for worms the few times I tried them.  Very bland.

Generally we used the shovel and dug for worms.  We found a patch of garden where there was nothing planted and kept overturning the dirt until we spotted the earthworms. 

Catching night crawlers in the dark was tricky, but a lot of fun.  After a rain, we’d shine a flashlight across the lawn.  Often times the ground would be teeming with them.

When you spotted a night crawler, you had to be quick.  They moved with the lightning speed of a snake. 

One person would hold the flashlight, the other would deftly grab the night crawler.  You had to pull because by this time the slimy critter was already headed down a hole into the ground. 

Sometimes they’d slip from your fingers.  Sometimes they’d rip in half. 
The secret was in the tugging, waiting for the night crawler to relax a bit so you could ease it back out of the ground.

I always kept my crawlers and worms in a can or a bucket filled with dirt and coffee grounds.  The dirt, of course, was their natural habitat.  The coffee kept them awake.  I found it much easier to catch fish with a wide-eyed worm than a sleepy one.

Then it was off to the fishing hole and to that magnificent solitude.

One of these days I’m going to dig some worms, grab that old rod and reel and go find one of those nice grassy nooks along the shore of a peaceful pond. Then I'm just going to sit all by myself and fish.

It won’t be church but it’ll be a good place to talk to Jesus.


Copyright 2010 by Wendel Potter