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Written by Andy
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Thursday, 03 January 2008 |
Scrounging
Posted on June 15, 2007
Sometimes the best tackle is free.
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My name is Andrew Geving, and I'm a tackle scrounger. That's right, I'll admit it. My whole life, I've been climbing trees to get at tangled bobbers that some hapless fisherman didn't feel like wasting their time retrieving. I'll wade across a Steelhead river to get at a gnarled tree root that is decorated with a dozen yarn flies. My eyes light up when I get snagged up in a river and feel the telltale pull of someone else's busted off mono.
It seems like half of my tackle is scrounged from one fishing spot or another. Each spinner, crankbait, walleye spinner rig, or fly that I find is lucky, too. Well, at least in my mind it is. I remember exactly when and where I found it, and think about it when I decide the time has come to use it.
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I remember finding a pink slip-float on the Mississippi River a few years back. The bugger was circling in a foamy eddy, and I waded out and got it. It was one of those weighted Thill floats, perfect-sized for just about anything, and I used it for two seasons with excellent results. I caught Steelhead and big Brown Trout from the Brule on it drifting spawn, Shortnose Gar on the Minnesota, Walleyes, Carp, Bowfin, you name it and this lucky bobber was integral in the catching of it. Then one winter morning I was fishing the mouth of a Lake Superior tributary, drifting a crawler under my lucky pink float. I hooked a good Rainbow, who leapt high out of the river's outflow and dug deep into the Big Lake. Suddenly my line went limp, and I watched as my lucky float rode the river's flow out into Lake Superior, finally becoming a tiny pink speck on the horizion. It hurts to lose something you care about.
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The other day I was fishing with my brother and scrounged up two plastic yellow smily-face bobbers from different trees around our fishing spot. As a fellow scrounger, he was very impressed. Trust me, these goofy bobbers will at some point in time be deployed and serve me well. I also found half a dozen giant split-shot that day, strung on something that looked like 150-pound mono so I don't know how anyone broke off with a rig like that. Oh well, their loss is my gain. Sometimes giant split-shot like that come in handy, but I would probably never buy any.
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Yesterday was Scroungeapalooza on the Mississippi River. Catfish1 scrounged 4 or 5 different lures, all excellent finds, and ended up catching his first-ever Sauger one one of these lucky lures. The fish took a slightly algae-covered Rat-l-trap. I had found a few jigs and one Rap, then while tossing lures I felt the telltale throb of someone's snagged up mono. Since I was wading a shallow, rocky flat I walked out and investigated the snag. When I grabbed my lure and pulled, up came a rod! Sure enough, I had hooked a nice 7-foot spincast combo. It was tangled up with multiple other lines, rigs, lures and sinkers from close to a dozen hapless anglers. Jackpot!
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So, I hope everybody keeps losing tackle and leaving it there for me. I appreciate it. And look out, because I may just invest in some SCUBA gear and kick it up a notch...........
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Andrew Geving, roughfisher at large
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 03 January 2008 )
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