Graham Kislingbury

I rummaged through the attic last week and, miraculously, found my old plastic tackle box, two fishing poles and two Mitchell 300 spinning reels. One of the reels was missing a handle, but my neighbor Paul Harris graciously loaned me one.
It’s been 21 years since I last went fishing. Tony Overman, then a Democrat-Herald photographer (and now with the Daily Olympian in Washington), and I went out opening day in 1986 with the idea of doing a People page feature called “Fish for lunch.” Neither of us got so much as a nibble that day, so the headline read “Opening day blues.” It was also the day I quit fishing.
Well, I came out of retirement last week and bought a fishing license for myself and our French exchange student, Mathieu Lalo.
In 1986, there was no such thing as Power Bait. So I bought a jar of that, too. It looks like a combination of salmon egg pate and Playdough. And fish are supposed to like it.
We camped over the weekend at Detroit Lake State Park. On the weekend before the Fourth of July, it’s not such a great place for bank fishing. Hundreds of boats were on the water during the day and late Saturday night for the annual fireworks.
I fished from 5:30 to 6:45 a.m. and again, with Mathieu, from about 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. and 7:30 to 9 p.m. We got a few snags but not a single nibble. Others reported bad luck, too.
This time around, though, I enjoyed fishing and just looking around the beautiful lake and surrounding forests. I’m not ready to quit.
Next week, I’m fishing at Dorena Reservoir near Cottage Grove and Cleawox and Siltcoos lakes south of Florence.
And I’ll take the advice of my fishing expert friends. I’ll try a 4-pound test line instead of the 6-pound test I used at Detroit. Smaller hooks are also on my list. And I’ll pay more attention to how I put that salmon egg pate on the hook.

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