Fishing the Pond by Wesley Dirmeyer

​This story took place during the summer around 2002-3. I'm not a hundred percent what year it occurred but I do remember all that happened during this time. My best friend at the time was a kid named Levi. Him and I had been friends for years at this point. We loved fishing so much that we would do everything we could to catch fish. We would wade through gross waters and come home smelling like dirty stagnant water and fish. It was always catch and release fishing because the fish we caught you didn't want to eat. There was a chance of getting sick. We enjoyed it very much despite the gross and the inability to really enjoy the fish we were catching. We had certain spots we would hit every year. My favorite spot was at my dads house, he had a pond on his property. I grew up fishing in the old small pond but Levi had never tried his luck. Well we both decided to try it out at the beginning of the summer to see how our luck would go. Catching fish all day was a chore. Every time we went out it was in one of three possible spots. Around the edges it was covered with moss and cat tails so it was possible to fish there but rough. The next spot was aboard this raft in the middle of the pond that was tied to an anchor along the bottom. The issue with this raft is its only surrounded by the deepest parts of the pond. It wasn’t usually the best spot to fish for bass. The last and the best was to fish off of this small row boat which you could use to get to the best areas. This boat i have fallen out of many many times for some reason. I was the only one of us it would happen to. It was like the boat dumped me out every chance it got. This was a month long fishing expedition between my best friend and I. It meant the most to me because friends have always been an important part of my life. The laughs, the talks, the arguments and the hunt for Big Bertha! She was one giant fish that broke all our lines and took so many good lures from us. It was also one of my first experiences with beer, unknowingly to my father it was taken from his garage fridge. And shortly followed by my first experience with throwing up and realizing just how much fish loved to eat puke....... gross. If you were to add a bigger and badder enemy, some kind of exciting story line apart from sitting and fishing and basically change the entire story around it would make an awesome heartfelt 80s movie. I picture a White Water Summer meets Stand By Me with a dash of The Goonies kind of movie if that puts some perspective on what I'm picturing. But in the end it was two friends who fished a small pond everyday for a month and spent most of it sunburned and unwashed. Despite all of that it was a simpler time and I hope my daughters enjoy some simpler times like I have. Unless you have sometime to slow down and do something you love you won't have any kind of meaningful moments in a persons life. Thank you :)