BOB KORNEGAY: Sometimes we’re all little boys

The young man, age 20, unhooked the mountain-lake white bass and dropped it into the livewell. Hurriedly, he made another cast and the small crankbait was again viciously attacked. The light-action spinning rod bowed crazily and the reel’s drag whined in high-pitched song as the second fish strained hard at the end of the 6-pound test line. Soon, it too succumbed and was brought aboard.

After that, all was frenzy. Angling discipline all but disappeared. With boyish excitement in his eyes and a wide grin etched across his face, the exuberant fisherman wholeheartedly immersed himself in that spring’s white bass run and became totally lost in the excitement of the moment.

“Look at him,” said the guide in the bow of the boat. “He’s like a five-year-old.”

At the stern, the young man’s father grinned and understood. In fact, the young man’s first-ever fish, a big crappie, had been caught when he was exactly that, five years of age. Other than the physical differences, his son was much like he had been that day, a decade and a half earlier.

“Yeah,” came the father’s indulgent reply. “These are his first spring-run white bass.”

A few years back, on north Georgia’s Tallulah River, I guided a thirty-something friend to a pool of stocked rainbows. My new-to-trout-fishing buddy slipped and fell three times while positioning himself, then proceeded to make at least a dozen clumsy, water-churning casts before finally hooking and landing one fish. Dripping wet and smiling like a mule eating briars, he fished feverishly, at last bringing fish number eight to hand.

Afterward, the novice angler babbled (yep, like a five-year-old) and even did a little dance he’s likely to kill me for revealing. This “kid,” by the way, was and is an accomplished and skilled angler. But this was his first limit of trout, gullible stockers though they were. He now loves trout fishing with a passion.

Several summers ago, two more buddies and I motored out of St. Simons Island’s Golden Isles Marina and anchored on a shallow inshore shelf situated beneath the choppy waters of St. Simons Sound. There, we rigged slightly up-sized bass gear, baited fish-finder rigs with chopped-up poagies (menhaden), and proceeded to tempt the 10 to 20-pound sharks that abound in these waters this time of year.

We were not disappointed. The sharks were there and, as sharks normally are, quite hungry. The bite was on and it was difficult to reach the punch line of even the shortest joke between strikes. There are few fishes more ravenous than sharks when actively feeding.

At the outset, I was unaware that the youngest of our party had never before experienced this kind of fishing. I found out soon enough, however, after he set the hook in his first feisty blacktip. There it was, that “five-year-old’s” jaw-gaping grin accompanied by those juvenile whoops of absolute glee that few adults are prone to utter when sober. We started out fighting fish by turn and ended by allowing the “kid” to enjoy the lion’s share of the action. One look at his face in my photos proves the sacrifice well worth it.

Said kid, as it were, had just turned 40. He is a Georgia Tech graduate, a successful environmental engineer, and a long-time veteran angler.

Then there’s yours truly. A dozen years ago, I caught my biggest-ever smallmouth bass from a lake near the Georgia/Tennessee border. The energetic bronzeback fought just as all the old outdoor writers of my youth said it would. I’ve never had a more worthy angling opponent. Following the battle, I released the fish and just stood there in the boat, visibly quivering and firmly believing I could actually hear my own heartbeat. Uh huh, the five-year-old’s grin was there, too. On the face of a young kid of 51.

My guide took one look at me and said, “Man, you’d think that was your first smallie.”

Finding my voice, I replied, “Yeah, you would, wouldn’t you?”

It’s a funny thing, folks. When it comes to fishing, age and experience have but slight bearing on one’s level of enjoyment. And one thing’s for sure and certain. Little boys come in all ages.