Born and bred to stick with it

Mike P. is 70 years old, and he didn't waste any time selling his four-bedroom home in Schaumburg. He packed up and headed south to Clearwater, Fla., just so he can take advantage of those famous early bird dinners down there. Some of you are aware that once an individual reaches a certain age, feeding time comes earlier each successive year.

Mike was also a largemouth bass fanatic who fished with me on Lake Geneva and a bunch of other southern Wisconsin lakes.

Arnold S. is another escapee who is in his mid-60s, only his GPS took him to a land where brains pickle easily and people get excited there when the mercury hovers around 70 degrees. I jokingly told him his housing complex needs to hire security guards to warn his fellow residents in his complex when warm weather takes a vacation.

And here's the sad thing about these two characters.

Neither of them is enthusiastic about angling these days. Go figure

Here it is, 2009, and I promised my wife I would once again commit to cleaning the basement and getting rid of the stuff she calls "fishing junk."

Little does she know that with each old lure and banged up tackle box, an experience is attached. Herein lays the problem. Do I erase all those wonderful memories with a massive sweep of a push broom and an Olympic tossing of those huge garbage bags? I think not.

My two former angling compadres Arnold and Mike often participated in those memories over the years.

The first time Arnold walked on frozen Petite Lake with me he said maybe he could get interested in ice fishing.

"You and me, Jackson, grew up in Chicago together when kids reveled in the cold air and enjoyed playing ice hockey outside in below zero temperatures. We fought the ruts in the side streets and learned to accept winter for what it was, a break from the summer heat," he declared.

Arnold caught his first 5-pound largemouth bass with me while we worked a heavy weed patch on a small lake. He was just learning to use my SnagProof weeedless frogs and up until that moment, he didn't have an ounce of confidence in all of the artificial lures I gave him to use. Those are the same baits in my basement.

It's a similar story with Mike. I loaded him up with plastic worms and spinner baits. I then took him to a large pond and suggested he flip a spinner bait to a partially sunken tree. On his third cast his casting rod doubled over. The scale read 7 pounds, and after catching a dozen more smaller fish, he hinted he could be tempted to go ice fishing in the up-coming winter, just so he wouldn't turn into a couch potato.

Mike was also a Chicago boy who sailed through his misspent youth toughing it out in the snow and slush. I guess those of us who grew up here became conditioned to survive through the cold, dark months. Maybe it's a genetic thing.

Anyway, I looked at about a hundred old crankbaits and plastic thing-a-ma-jigs and shuddered at the thought of the refuse hauler taking advantage of my misfortune.

I trudged up the basement stairs and confronted my wife.

"I refuse to succumb to your obsessive need to rein me in, especially when it comes to my fishing gear," I said. "After all, we have a grandson who will eventually get all my stuff."

"Give me a break," she retorted with a smirk, "he's out there in the desert where the only water he sees is in the shower. And even with that custom fishing rod you bought him, our daughter is terrified he'll start collecting junk just like you. Face it -he's of a different breed, so live with it."

Heaven forbid.