Preface

How It All Began

You're a family man. You've got a ten-year-old son who got sand in his toes, salt in his hair and sun on his nose last summer. In the course of so doing he saw some men and boys fishing and catching fish in the surf just the other side of the lifelines.

Ever since then your boy has wanted to do what those other kids did, go fishing and catch fish. And you've been hooked, too.

The proof is the fact that you've got this book in your hand, your nose furrowing up the pages for some anybody-can-do-it fishing know-how. But you don't want to rush off and start buying rods and reels and other equipment because a fellow can get burned if he fails to look before he leaps into spending some of his hard-earned cash on the basic equipment he'll need.

When a man buys a new car hell look and look long, even though he probably doesn't want a car to last him more than three years. Does he want whitewalls? Radio? A beavertail for the radiator grille? Pink or red seat covers? The initial purchase of fishing equipment calls for just as much looking around.

Because fishing equipment, if he buys it right the first time and then keeps it right, will last him a lifetime. And just what constitutes fishing equipment? Only four things: rod, reel, hooks and line. Everything else is a beavertail. Only the hooks and line are expendable. Just like tires, they'll wear or pick up the piscatorial equivalent of a nail.

And nowadays when a fellow does buy a car he doesn't have to be a graduate mechanic to run it. All he has to know is maybe how to change a tire or how to get to the nearest phone to call the garage. When he goes fishing these twen­tieth-century days all he has to know about rod and reel mechanics is whether he should use his right or his left hand to squish the reel around in fresh tap water after using, and whether he should squeeze the oil can between two fingers or three when applying oil to the moving parts. The people who made the reel will be happy to do the rest. The new fisherman can learn the mechanics of equipment repair as he grows more proficient in the ultimate purpose, the fun of catching fish. As for care and maintenance, Chapter 14 will tell you all about it.

As we said, this is the twentieth century. Fishing wasn't always as simple as it is today. You and your boy Andy are living in a marvelous era and you want to go fishing. You're not unusual. So did primitive man.

He started from scratch when he set out to bring home the fish meat and potatoes. He didn't even have a fishhook. It took some doing and quite a few years—how the centuries did tick off!—to get a hook with a barb on it and then to have the barb pointed in the right direction. Just to give you an idea how long it took, man had to discover fire first.

Then, because the rod and line were unheard of and the barb was heard of, early man put a handle on it and called it a spear. Aside from some backward parts of the world the only place the spear is used today is by that hardiest and by no means primitive fisherman—the skin-diver.

The first rod was cut in Egypt along about 2000 bc from those bulrushes that Moses called home. It was six feet long and Mr. Early Man rigged it up with six feet of line to match, and a hook.

So now the world, or what there was of it, had hook and a rod and line and we were on our way. All sorts of con­traptions were tried and served for a time. After all, that hook still had to get out where the fish were and six feet of rod plus six feet of line equals only twelve feet. That isn't very good surfcasting.

The evolution came slowly and surely and so did America. While their Old World brothers were developing the spinning reel, our forefathers lent their ingenuity to the development of the revolving, or bait-casting, reel.

The revolving reel is good, in fact it is very good, but it is inclined to show off its curl, just like the little girl in the nursery rhyme. And that creates an impossible situation when there are fish out there just daring you to try and catch 'em.

Fishermen who cast with revolving reels call these curls many things, but of all the things they call them about the only printable one is "bird's nest." Take a good look at a real bird's nest and then try picking it apart straw-by-straw.

Had enough?

That's why this book will talk of open-faced spinning reels as the reel for all beginning saltwater fishermen to use.

In visits to tackle shops you'll see both the bait-casting or revolving reel and the open-faced spinning reel. You'll also see a third type, the enclosed spinning or spin-casting reel. You'll recognize it by a nose cone that gives it a closed face. It's a good reel, and it should be, because it represents the American tackle industry's efforts to combine the best features of the bait-casting and the open-faced spinning reels. But it hasn't yet been tooled to withstand the rigors of salt water fishing and so it isn't the reel for you.

Getting back to where and how it all began, European fishermen were casting for, lo, those many, many years into the streams and the bays and the inlets and the surf with gusto and with glee because they were free of foreign en­tanglements, namely bird's nests.

And then came die Second World War.

It produced lots of things we'd like to forget. And what better way than to go fishing? That's exactly what a few hun­dred thousand American servicemen stationed in Europe did every chance they could.

And they discovered that European contraption—the open-faced spinning reel!

Cast, cast, cast, cast and cast again. Simpler to use than any what we Americans call conventional reel. Cast just as far and maybe beyond. Cast just as accurately, maybe more so. Cast lighter lures or sinkers. No bird's nests ever because there can be no backlash; and it's the backlash that builds the bird's nest, thereby bringing all fishing to a stop.

The war over, the boys came marching home and they brought the spinning reel with them. Like we said, the war produced lots of things we'd like to forget, and what better way than to go fishing. So, let's go!

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