Spring panfish ritual

Chinquapins, bluegill, poles and crickets — the good life

For 25 years, it has been a spring ritual for one of my favorite fishing partners, Li’l Joe, and me. Sure, we may get together a few times earlier in the year and try to catch a hybrid or two, or maybe a bass and a crappie.

But, our fishing season doesn’t really begin until we get a box of crickets, our jig poles and go bream fishing.

Only once in those 2½ decades have we missed our annual bedding bream bonanza, and that was the year that I went bowling in March and didn’t walk again until September.

That’s right, bowling … broken femur.

Go figure.

I remember lying in the hospital, coming to after another one of those magical every 8-minute morphine blasts from that wonderful little machine, and seeing Li’l Joe standing there shaking his head with a goofy grin.

“I’m going to need a new bream partner this year, they tell me,” he said.

That’s how special our bream trips are. One of his best friends was lying in the hospital, facing six months of not walking, and his concern was about my missing our annual bream trip. I understood the gravity.

My leg would heal, thanks to Dr. Walter Shelton and $4,000 worth of titanium rods and screws, but my psyche was out of whack for the rest of the year, not settling again until our bream trip the following spring.

There in the hospital, feeling sorry for myself, the mere thought of missing our bream trip made me hit the morphine trigger again, even though I knew I still had 1 minute, 13 and a half seconds to go …

Important weave 

Our bream trips are woven into the fabric of our relationship, and our families. We’ve watched children — and now grandchildren — grow up bream fishing.

Joe’s daughter is now a nurse and mom of two sons. I’ve got two grandsons, too, that we will soon make part of the tradition. Since we’ve both remarried, there’s even more youngsters to include.

We’ve both lost both our parents, who in one way or another were a part of our bream trips. Big Joe, Li’l Joe’s daddy, taught us one day what holds bream in a spot.

The three of us found about a hundred big bluegill in a hole that didn’t look anything like a spot that would hold fish.

“What do you think is holding these bream here?” I asked.

Said Big Joe, matter of factly: “All these crickets.”

He had such a wonderful dry wit, and it left Li’l Joe and I laughing until we hurt.

I lost my dad, Ace, a few weeks before Li’l Joe and I caught 72 bluegills that weighed 69 pounds — they filled a wheelbarrow. It was the first year in a decade that Ace wouldn’t enjoy the fruits of our catch.

The next year, when my mom died on July 4, she asked for and dined several times on the fried fillets of bream that Joe and I had caught a few months before. Next to boiled crabs, fried bream were Carrie’s favorite. They were Ace’s favorite.

Solving life

We have settled a lot of life’s problems on the water fishing for bream, Li’l Joe and I. We’ve also created a few (no details). We learned we have the same taste in music, which is now a staple on our trips.

One of the most memorable trips was in 2002, when we caught 72 fill-your-hand-up-sized redear. They were huge, but not the important part of the trip. Joe and I were lucky to share the day with our new wives, Diane (his) and Pam (mine).

A few weeks ago, Li’l Joe and I went to the marsh to chase redfish with our friend Tommy. We had a great time, drank a few and filled a cooler with nice reds for the grill.

Between bites, Li’l Joe and I started talking about bluegill and chinquapins and circled two days on our cell phone calendars — the April 4 and May 3 full moons.

We know the chinqs will be bedded on April 4 and the bluegill on May 3. It’s a safe bet that we’ll be in my boat on his lake and sniffing out the beds.

Life goes on … and it is good.