Fishing stories...I love them.
Here's my contribution.
When I was a kid, we almost always fished for panfish. (It's still my favorite kind of fishing....sitting lazily on the lake, and IMO no fish tastes better than those little sunfish/bluegills with the occasional crappie thrown in.)
But anyway, fishing for panfish inevitably meant dealing with the occasional bullhead. I knew people who swore by pickled bullhead, but to us they were just a pain in the ass. Too bony to bother with, soft and squishy meat when fried, and of course as a little kid those catfish like spines scared us. And on top of it all, the damn things always swallowed the hook.
The latter meant we always kept a pair of pliers in the tackle box, technically for general purposes, but primarily to pull those hooks out of the goddamn bullheads. So anyway, early one evening, less than an hour before dark, ordinaily prime fishing time, we got a run of bullheads. Which was pissing us all (my father, my late brother, and I) off.
After about the fifth or sixth one, my brother had enough, and after pulling the hook off, threw the thing as far as he could from a sitting position in a rowboat. And being just about the perfect weight, did that thing fly. To my 10-year-old eyes it seemed a mile, though I'm sure it was only 50-60 feet.
Problem was, my brother still held the bullhead in his hands.
That far away plunk was our pliers.
From that moment on, whenever we passed through that part of the lake, we always talked about stopping see if we could catch that "pliers" again.
Dad and brother are both gone now, and I haven't been panfishing in a couple decades, Iowa being devoid of lakes and even more devoid of people who I know who are interested in panfishing.
Damn, but I miss those days.
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Romans 12:2 (NKJV)