As odd as it may seem, I cannot remember the first fish that I ever caught.

In fact I cannot remember when I started fishing, or where I started fishing.  All that I know for certain is that fishing has always been a part of my life.

I’d like to take you with me on a journey.  We will travel through the archives of my mind, and track my development as a fisherman.
I can clearly remember as a little boy growing up in Port Neches, that I chose large mouth bass over all of the other “fish in the sea”.  Living on the Gulf Coast, there were certainly ample opportunities to chase reds and specks like everyone else I knew.

In fact, I remember going out to the jetty with my mom, dad, and brothers fishing with a shrimp and popping cork.  I’d cast my trusty Zebco 888 as far as I could and then hang on to wait for some action. Eventually some hungry fish would come swimming by and think he had found a free meal. The cork would go under, I’d set the hook, and the game would begin.

On many occasions this battle would result in me landing a nice trout or drum. I really liked this type of fishing until … the boat began to rock.

As the day would go on, the winds would pick up and the waves would increase. It wasn’t long until I became sea sick and the fun was over.

Not just over for me; it was over for the whole family.

I would get deathly ill, hang my head over the side of the boat, and begin to violently … I am sure there is no need for details and you get the picture. Saltwater fishing lost its appeal fast, and after a few trips with the same results, I settled on the little green freshwater beauty known as a bass.

Lucky for me, there was a cool little tackle shop right down the road from my house. I thought the guys who owned it must have been great fishermen, so I decided to become a groupie and spent countless hours in their store.

Looking back now I can imagine I got on their nerves and probably drove them crazy. However, they were nice and tolerated me wearing out my welcome. The store was called CJ’s Sporting Goods, and if my memory serves me right, I think the guys who ran the place were named Gary and Clint.

It was here in my hometown tackle shop that I filled my first tackle box. My box was filled with tiny torpedoes, H and H spinnerbaits, and plastic worms. I had a few Smithwick toothpicks as I recall, but my hands-down favorite at that time was a bomber baby bass crank bait. This was my weapon of bass destruction and I fished it almost exclusively.

My venue was none other than the three LNVA canals right down the street from my house. My parents would let me walk or ride my bike by myself to fish. When it was time to come home, my mom would simply holler my name.

There were no cell phones back then, so she would just yell instead.  My mom must have powerful lungs because I could hear her call from up to three canals away this is as far as I could fish from home because I had to be in voice range)!

I am still traumatized by the one simple rule I had to follow: I had to wear a life jacket. I argued that this was a crazy rule since the water was mostly shallow and I could touch bottom.  My mom wasn’t going to give in on this one, so I lost the battle and wore the darn thing anyway. I always hoped no one would notice the chubby kid wearing a life vest on dry ground.

In the end it didn’t matter because I loved to fish more than I hated my life jacket.  For years, I would make it a point to fish these three canals every afternoon and eventually I didn’t have to wear the life jacket (I think that was somewhere around my 20th birthday … jk).
Casting my crank bait parallel to the bank, I’d manage to catch one or two bass every day. They were usually 10-12 inches with my record being a 3.5 pounder.  The corner of the third canal was always my best spot. This is where the canal went under the street, and I always caught fish on both ends of the pipe.

In fact this is exactly where I caught my biggest bass and lost one that I can still remember in mind as if it were yesterday. The one I landed was 3.5 pounds and would hold our “family record” for years. The one that got away was probably 5 or even 6 pounds. She was a beauty and I almost had her.  She nailed a yellow and black Snagless Sally with gold blades late on a hot summer evening. I had her almost to the bank when she tail walked, exposing her whole body, and vigorously shook my hook loose from her giant mouth.

I made that same cast with every bait in my box for years, but she never was fooled again. Although I never caught her, she lives on in my mind over 35 years later.

The truth is, I guess it didn’t really matter that I wasn’t catching loads of fish, or landing giant trophy bass like the one that got away. I simply enjoyed fishing. It was relaxing, and peaceful.

The venue has changed over the years and I have actually caught a few whoppers, but one thing that remains constant is that now, just like then, when I’m fishing, everything seems right in the world.

To be continued …

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Brian Johnson, originally of Port Neches, is pastor of the Outdoorsman’s Church in Winnie, owner of DuckDogTrainer.com and outdoors writer for The News.