Compile a Fishing Partner List

Okay, here’s your task for the week. Compile a list of all the people you have fished with and send me your results. Spending the last 5 minutes doing the same, I came up with 41 people after compiling a similar list a few years ago and remembering even more.

42. Matt Kennedy.

The original reason for my list was an attempt to remember stories…

43. Richard Price

…that have hap…

44. Fred Hand

…pened on the water. I did a story related to this years ago entitled “Paddle Talk,” in which I tell various tales heard on the water when fishing with Nebraska angler Stan Schied.

But let me be honest. I’ve been working on a longer essay for a few years now that deals with all the stories that our family audience at NEBRASKAland would not want to read, or at least my administration would not want me to tell.

45. Roy Stewart

46. Bucky Stewart

Stories like when I was once told about a grown man’s marital affair while I was dating his daughter, the time I was…

47. Tim Roberts

48. Phillip Penny

49. Kevin Jackson

…straddling a cow wire as it repeatedly zapped me on both of my legs, or when I watched a 350-pound man fall from a johnboat and immediately leap back in the boat like he was Aquaman…

50. Damon Reynolds

…or even…

51. Tom Densford

…running from the shotgun-toting landowner when I was 12 because the combination of 5-pound bass and No Trespassing signs were just too tempting for a young boy.

I like to think about these lists because, as you have seen, the names come in bunches, each group signifying a different time in my life when, regardless of what was going on, I was trying to drag someone new out on the water with me.

I hope you’re doing the same.