Fast Forward Two Years

Hey, anyone remember what Cubby looked like two years ago?  Yeah, me neither.  Well, let's see . . .

TINY, that's what. Also bald.

And what does he look like today?

Enormous, much hairier, and still quite skeptical of big-ass fish.

Yes, in what has apparently become an every-two-years tradition, A. and his friend Jason had their all-day fishing marathon today, catching their limit of gigantic lake trout.  The difference this year was that all those fish were caught on a copper reel.

What's a copper reel, you say?  Well might you ask.  It's something no one uses anymore to fish because it requires two people and a hell of a lot of upper body strength.  A friend of Jason's gave him an antique one he was going to throw away.  Jason gave it to us sometime this winter and it's been sitting in the parlor ever since.

I tried to find an image online for you so you could see what this thing looks like, but after a quick perusal of www.antiquefishingreels.com (quick being the only kind of perusal I can grant such a website) the only one that's even vaguely the right shape is this one:

Very vaguely.

I wish I had taken a picture of Jason's before A. gave it back to him, but I didn't, so this half-assed description will have to suffice.  Jason's is sort of squarish like the one in the photo, but I suspect his must have been homemade.  I'm guessing in the 1930s or something. It certainly isn't all fancy metal like this one.  It's basically a square frame on which is wound a long copper line.  The crank handle is wood.  It's pretty decorative, actually, in a rustic kind of way.  And also, apparently, very good for catching fish.

 After a few hours of unproductive fishing with poles, A. and Jason decided to try the copper reel.  As soon as they threw it in the water, they caught a fish.  And they caught fish continuously after that until they had their limit.  They were the only ones on the lake catching anything, despite the number of fishing boats they saw, so it must have been the reel.   Or maybe it was magic.

Whatever it was, they caught a shitload of fish, all of which were filleted and many of which are even now brining in preparation for a session in the Little Chief.

In the contest between the old and the new, the old wins again.