And here all this time I thought I was the better and most devoted angler in the Frischkorn clan.
Whoops, my mistake, and I must relinquish the throne to my six-year-old grand-nephew, Nicholas Frischkorn.
Nicholas - or Nick for short - is the son of my nephew Richie and the grandson of my older brother, Rich.
That Nick has taken to angling the way an osprey does just shows how genetically we are linked. Even though Nick has only six years under his youthful belt he’s also managed to capture a Fish Ohio-qualifying specimen for three of those years.
You almost could say that Nick learned how to reel in a fish around the same time that he learned to walk.
Best of all young Nicholas loves to fish and loves to do it with his grand-uncle. That would be me.
“What’s that, Uncle Jeff?” Nick asked as he inspected the mortal remains of a plastic worm a bass had dispatched.
The soft plastic fake worm had been a whole entity fixed to the upper hook of a two-hook drop-shot rig. A bass had chewed off the bait’s tail.
I explained to Nick what the item in question was and whereupon the youngster asked if he could have one, too.
Shrugging my shoulders in a “why not?” gesture I then screwed the plastic worm’s leftovers onto the hook. Above the baited hook was a bobber attached to fishing line that was stored inside the guts of a Zebco spin-cast reel.
Nick then wound up, depressed the reel’s thumb-bar and flung the rig into the farm pond’s waters.
Even though Nick is a boy-size person he handled the man-sized spin-cast outfit in a manner that suggested the two have been attached for just about forever. Certainly longer than for only a couple of hours.
By golly, Nick knew what he was doing. In spite of the fact that the bitty piece of plastic worm shouldn’t have attracted the interest of a pint-sized sunfish, Nick made it work by catching a palm-size bluegill.
Swinging the now-suspended panfish toward me like some crane operator, Nick was suggesting without words that he’d like his great-uncle to unhook and release the fish. A task easily done and properly accommodated.
Then Nick went back to casting and after his grandfather had replaced the trifling bit of plastic worm with a fresh Berkley PowerBait leech.
All of this activity came roughly three hours after our arrival at the farm pond. You’d have thought that a child’s attention span would have vaporized long ago but then you’d misunderstand Nick’s love of fishing.
Asked if he were tired and wanted to call it a day, Nick’s answer was short and straight to the point: “No” was all he said.
Don’t get me wrong. Nicholas enjoys all of the usual tempting distractions that are marketed to death on cable television’s childrens’ shows.
Except in Nick’s case he is also more than willing to step outside and go fishing. Just as his cousin - and another grandnephew - Charlie enjoys doing.
That both boys have said they like fishing with Uncle Jeff goes to show you that they have good taste in selecting their angling company.
The day progressively became warmer and the wind continued to stir the farm pond’s surface. Maybe the conditions were not ideal though you couldn’t prove it by Nick’s aptitude at catching fish.
Nick was clearly in his element, and both his grandfather and great-uncle displayed and remarked with appropriate pride the lad’s fishing acumen and intensity.
Let it be said as well that the announced end to the day came not from Nick but from me, a surrender seconded by Grandfather Rich.
After packing the fishing gear, Rich, Richie and I all chortled how much of a good time we had, enjoying catching fish but happier still that the day’s greatest trophy came by watching a very dedicated young man fall to the spell of fishing.
Nope, I don’t mind it one bit that the family’s top angling crown and scepter now passes over to Nick.
- Jeffrey L. Frischkorn
JFrischkorn@News-Herald.com
Twitter: @Fieldkorn
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