What's in your tackle box?

by Paul , Thursday, January 09, 2025, 19:57 (8 days ago)

I don't even want to think how long it had been, but we'd not been fishing in ages. A couple from church invited us to go to some marvelous place they knew of, so I packed up a few rods, a couple tackle boxes and other impedimenta for a day at the "open air live catch fish market" that passes for a fishing hole in this part of the Andes. There are few places one can get access to actual wild fish in rivers, and lakes are all surrounded by private property, so it's a matter of pay by the pound fish ponds stocked with tilapia and pacú for the most part, although higher up in elevation one can find places with cold water ponds stocking rainbow trout.

One thing I couldn't find was my knife. I've got a couple knives that have been packed along on all kinds of fishing trips since way back in the 20th Century - and neither of them was to hand. Well, I dug some worms from the park out front of the house (sure don't care for urban living!) and off we went. Got to the place and - they don't offer fishing any more. You can pay a cover charge to go in and "see the fish", some PETA type idiocy set up for ignorant city dwellers. So we checked out another place, a few kilometers further out on a narrow one lane road. It was great to at least get out of town and drown some worms for a change. Winter here in Coffee Country (yes, we're north of the Equator) is rough!

So I set up the rods with the contents of the top tray of the tackle box, put some bait on my hook and set back to enjoy the sound of water (a heavily polluted stream runs just below the fish pond there) and watching a bobber while trying not to get too much of the sun. After a while I caught a tiny native cichlid, like what I used to catch as a kid in the Amazon basin, and back in the pond it went. Later they told us we could keep those and use them for bait, but it was too late for that one! Then my wife called and I looked up and saw an almost U shaped rod in her hands, that light spinning rod was working hard! She pulled a 4 1/2 pound pacú out and we got a couple picks then put it in a net in the water to keep it alive and fresh while we caught a few more. Which, however, didn't happen. Oh, the pacú did fine and was alive and well when we finally paid the tab and left, but no more came to the bait! The little cichlids did, but could barely move the 3/4" bobbers we were using even as they were chowing down on the bait.

I eventually got tired of no action and decided to see what lures I might have down in the tackle box - and that's when I found my knife! An Old Hickory Carving knife in a Brazilian deer hide sheath my neighbor in Brazil made for me way back in the late 20th Century! So I pulled it out and removed it from the sheath and that's when I realized how long it had been since we last went fishing - rust on the blade along the cutting edge. Not heavy, no pitting, but not good either. A few strokes on the whet stone and a bit of stropping on a bamboo pole and it was back to shaving sharp.

And so I'm cogitating on the diverse options for a tackle box knife. What to you keep in yours? Kydex and stainless steel may "make more sense", but I've always been partial to carbon steel. The other knife I was (am) looking for was once owned by Mr. Love - a Presbyterian preacher who once lived and ministered in my home town up in the US. It's an Attica Sportsman with a roughly 4" blade, IIRC. It was given to me by his daughters who weren't interested in the rusty old tackle box with the rusted in place "trash knife". Another college student and I helped them pack up the family place after their mom's death and they gave us a lot of "junk" they didn't want. That other knife (it's around here SOMEWHERE) was solidly attached to the original leather sheath by oxidation. I got it loose by hammering the sheath to loosen up the rust and the blade eventually came free. After some work with a whet stone most of the surface rust was removed, leaving a hacksaw blade looking edge. A LOT of work with a coarse whet stone eventually got the nicks out, leaving a fine, SHARP edge. It, too, wears a sheath of Brazilian deer hide, made by the same neighbor back in the day. Those two knives have cleaned more fish and game and butchered more farm animals than all my other knives together.

Paul - in Pereira