Fishing

 One of the residents where I work at asked me if I was a fisherman.  I said no, because I'm not.  He told me my shirt begged to differ.  I looked down and realized I was wearing the shirt from Prince's Bait in Milaca MN.  I'm from Minnesota.

I then told the resident about my shirt.  My mom would take us fishing when we were kids.  And in Minnesota you fish with bait, minnows.  We would get our minnows at Prince's Bait.  I caught my first fish out of the Rum River, and it was a northern (which I believe is a type of trout).  I don't know how big it was, but it seemed big to the child me.  

We also fished in some of the lakes up north.  Sun fish specifically.  I remember being on pontoon boats.  I think my fishing ended on one of those trips.  My mom got stung by a bee and it turned out she was allergic.  We were switching lakes and as we are getting ready to go out on the pontoon, she told my uncle she was having problems breathing. We loaded up really quick and headed even further north to a hospital.  This is a weekend and it is a two-lane highway that is busy on weekends. My uncle took us down in ditches and around cars.  Felt scary.  We got to the hospital, and me and my cousins stayed in the vehicle while he and my mom went in.  We waited what seemed like an eternity.  The doctors there did what they do and Mom was okay.  But they did tell her if she had been five minutes later, she would not have survived.  Thank God for ditches. 

We moved to the PNW when I was a child. Here you can't use minnows.  Bait is worms.  My dad is not the type to buy bait.  So, he would go out and water the lawn really well.  We have night-crawlers in our yard.  Watering really well makes them come to the surface.  When it was dark we would go out picking worms out of the yard.  That was fun for us.  I don't recall ever fishing with those night-crawlers, but someone did.  

We also loved smelt in Minnesota.  When we first were here my parents went smelting and brought them home.  Mom cooked them up and we tried to eat them.  They are different for some reason than Minnesota smelt.  Maybe our proximity to the ocean?

So back to my shirt.  A couple of my trips back to Milaca took me on nostalgia trips and I stopped at Prince's Bait.  Looked at all the minnows swimming around in their tanks.  And I bought a couple of shirts.   And no, I still don't fish. But I will eat fish.