Worms and fishes

30Jul09

The advantage of living in the province is your surroundings can provide everything you want as a kid. Take fishing for example; we can make fishing rods out of bamboo sticks and knitting thread.

I never knew how commercial rods work. They seem too complicated with all the technology involved. And completely unnecessary. But then I never fished outside our village river, fish ponds and the occasional frogs in farms during rainy season. So what do I know?

And guess what we use as baits? Those good, old fat wriggly worms that must have been so tasty to the fishes. The rich farming soil provides the big tasty worms, the river provide the fishes, bamboos all around provide the fish poles, hooks from excess clothesline and grandma for the thread. Life is perfect!

One Sunday my cousin and I decided to fish. At dawn we were starting to dig up some worms. That day, with drizzling rain, worms were exceptionally fat and easy to find. You just pull out a big group of grass roots and they they are, still undecided which end is their tail and which one is the head. Sometimes I can’t believe how long they are. We even argue that some are snakes.  Sometimes we are stupid.

We used an old sardine can to hold the worms. And when it was about full, we headed to the river banks where all the others are already fishing. Some of them asked us for worms which readily handed out without second thoughts. We were praised on how big our worms were. We just shrugged as if it is the easiest thing in the world to catch big fat worms.

Big worms are always better when it’s time to skewer the worm in the hook. I always thought it was cruel. But between crawling in dirt and serving as baits, I thought they were better off. 

All set, we started fishing. Before we caught any fish, I clumsily elbowed the tin can that it spilled the worms and they rolled down towards the river. Nobody but my cousin saw it. He gave me an angry look and walked away to transfer to another fishing site far away from me.

At that moment, I knew he was justified with his anger. Although thinking about it now, I am not sure what he is angry about. Definitely not about the worms because I can easily run and get another batch. Is it because I was so clumsy? Or did I break his mojo and spilled worms is bad omen? Maybe it was the big roll of worm will feed a lot of fish and they will become full and disinterested with other meager baits.

I really didn’t know. He was so angry that he didn’t talk to me for the whole day. But as it is with kids, we were back as best buds the morning after. Life is great again!

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Tags: childhood memories, fishing, friendship, worms