Jan 29, 2017 4 min read

Regardless of your age, as a child I am sure that you were excited the two or three days before Christmas. A child can hardly wait.

Waiting for the Super Bowl or World Series can also do that to some.

Many times, the game or Christmas day is a letdown, but it’s the tail that wags the dog.

We also have found the emotion felt before these big events is important and learned to enjoy the days leading up to the event. So it is with those who enjoy the outdoors and their big events. For instance, I remember early days in spring and fishing trips on opening day of trout season spent with Dave George, who used to live in Canonsburg.

Many times, we left the house with fishing equipment in the trunk of the car and a pair of .222 rifles lying on the back seat.

We weren’t sure what we were going to do; we were just excited to be out on the first day of trout.

Prior to this climactic day, we would spend time in the wet, tender evening grass bent over in the yard catching nightcrawlers. In the daytime, we seined minnows or other water creatures for bait.

Sometimes, our bait-seeking trips became adventures in themselves that I fondly remember, even when I can’t recall what we caught that first day.

One time, while looking for bait, Dave seined up a good-sized snapping turtle. We put the prehistoric-looking creature in a box and then in the trunk of my car.

I bet you can guess what happens next. When we reached his brother’s restaurant, where we thought to deliver the turtle, he was no longer in the box.

He was backed up in a corner of the trunk hissing and snapping. I’ll never forget the look on that turtle’s face or the battle to get him out of the car trunk that followed.

Local creeks and the seeking of bait led to other endeavors. Catching crayfish sometimes was more fun than the fishing itself and usually far more productive.

We liked to catch helgamites that hid under the rocks lining the stream beds. One person held the net downstream while the other kicked over the rocks just upstream. The current then takes them from the rock to the partner and the net.

Then comes the pain as you learn that they pinch.

Some of my excitement now comes as I take a day to clean and otherwise prepare my equipment for either a hunt or the upcoming fishing season. It’s now time to sort equipment into sections one bag for trout another for pan fish.

Sometimes our fishing begins with trout in local water, but other years we have an early spring and it’s crappie that is the target. The tackle for each are similar but not the same.

I look over my trout lures and the tangle they have gotten themselves into and I shake my head. I will grumble a bit, but like reloading ammunition, it is a task and it’s not a task.

I will wind the line on my favorite reels and hope I did it right and didn’t put it on backwards. You know then the line constantly gets loops in it the first time out.

Over many decades of fishing and hunting, I have learned you can’t beat top-of-the-line accessories. So it is with fishing line, and it should be changed at the beginning of the year every year.

Last year, I overlooked something necessary on a trip to Cross Creek Lake for crappie. I had hooks, split shots and all the necessary lures but forgot the most basic inexpensive thing. I was short of bobbers and floats – whatever you want to call them.

That is a lesson learned. I had to borrow some from the old bobber tree. It’s the common things you forget.

George H. Block writes a Sunday Outdoors column for the Observer-Reporter.