I don’t know who needs to hear this, but you’re allowed to fish for bluegill. You’re allowed to sit on a bucket with a can of worms and a $20 Zebco and have a perfectly good afternoon. Not every fishing trip needs to be an expedition.
I forgot this for a long time.
Somewhere along the way — maybe it was YouTube, maybe it was Instagram, maybe it was the bass boat guys at the ramp with their $80,000 rigs and their tournament jerseys — I started believing that fishing had to be serious. Had to be optimized. Had to involve braid-to-leader knots, FFS sonar, and a spiritual commitment to “the grind.”
I’d come home from a day on the water and feel… nothing. Or worse, frustration. I’d spent eight hours chasing a five-fish limit that didn’t matter, ignoring the fact that it was 72 degrees, sunny, and there were turtles sunning themselves on a log twenty feet from my boat that I never even looked at.
The Afternoon That Fixed It
Last summer, my neighbor’s kid — maybe ten years old — asked if I’d take him fishing. His dad doesn’t fish. I almost said no because I was tired and had work to do. But I said yes because I remembered being ten and having nobody to take me.
I didn’t bring the boat. Didn’t bring the tackle bag with seventeen Plano boxes organized by depth and color. I grabbed two cheap spinning rods from the garage, a carton of nightcrawlers from the gas station, and we walked down to the pond behind the subdivision. The one with the algae bloom and the sign that says NO SWIMMING.
We caught bluegill. Dozens of them. Some were the size of my palm. Some were so small I don’t know how they fit the hook in their mouth. He caught a six-inch bass that he held up like it was a tarpon. He asked me if turtles bite. He asked me why worms don’t drown. He asked me if fish sleep.
I didn’t check my phone once.
The Fish Don’t Care About Your Brand Deals
Here’s what nobody in the fishing industry will tell you: bluegill don’t know who Googan Squad is. A crappie doesn’t care if you’re wearing Simms or Walmart waders. A catfish will eat the same chicken liver whether you cast it on a G. Loomis or a Ugly Stik.
I’m not saying nice gear is pointless. I own nice gear. It works better, lasts longer, and makes difficult fishing more enjoyable. But difficult fishing is only one kind of fishing, and somewhere along the line I’d convinced myself it was the only kind that counted.
It’s not.
Go Catch Something Small
If you haven’t fished for panfish since you were a kid, do it this weekend. Leave the boat at home. Leave the $400 reel. Bring a cheap rod and some worms and a kid if you’ve got one, or just yourself if you don’t. Find a pond, a dock, a creek — anywhere with water and sunfish. Sit there. Watch the bobber. Listen to the frogs.
You might catch nothing worth photographing. You might catch fifty. Either way, you’ll remember why you started fishing in the first place — and it wasn’t for the Instagram post.