About five years ago I switched from monofilament line on my fishing poles to fluorocarbon. I really don’t know the difference in terms of chemical makeup, but fluorocarbon is less stiff than monofilament, and it comes off the reel with less resistance. Fluorocarbon, however, has a tendency to curl, so a year ago I switched to braided line. Braided line does not curl, but it is so strong that it is hard to break when a lure is permanently snagged on something at the bottom of the lake. Sometimes the only way to free snagged braided line is to cut it with a knife up at the pole. This can leave 20 or 30 feet of line dangling in the water. This is bad for the ecological integrity of the lake, and it also is a quick way to use up all of the line on a reel. The solution to this problem is to use braided line with a fluorocarbon leader. Most of the line on a pole is braided, but the last few feet is fluorocarbon. Whenever line needs to be intentionally broken, a hard steady pull will snap the fluorocarbon right at the lure – and no line is left in the water.

The downside of this braided/fluorocarbon combination is that it is difficult to find a reliable knot for connecting lines of different diameter and different consistency.

The best knot for tying fluorocarbon to braided line is the FG knot. I don’t know what FG stands for. I have watched two or three instructional videos on the FG knot, and I have watched a friend of mine tie the knot a half dozen times. As of last week, I had yet to tie it correctly. Every time I think I have it right, the knot fails to hold.

In preparation for my annual Canada fishing trip, I decided to sit on my front porch and practice the FG knot until I had it down. I bought new line for all of my poles, I brought out nail clippers to snip the tails off my knots once I had them tied. I watched a how-to video a final time, and then I sat outside on one of my two faux Adirondack chairs to perfect the troublesome knot.

I was on my front porch for so long that the two kids who were riding bikes in the cul de sac stopped to ask me what I was doing. When I told them that I was tying knots, they wanted to learn. I wasn’t about to teach kids how to tie a knot that I couldn’t tie myself, so I redirected their attention by asking them whether they’d ever casted a fishing pole. Rollin, about age four, hadn’t. The older Alice said, “My uncle Jim took me fishing when I was young, but I’m almost seven now.”

I found a hookless plug in my tackle box and put it on one my poles. Then the three of us went out into the street and I showed them how to cast. Rollin went first. His first cast was actually pretty good, but when he tried to retrieve the plug he turned the crank backwards. On that particular reel, turning the crank backwards unscrews it from the body of the reel, and it quickly became detached. Rollin thought he’d broken my fishing pole.

I reattached the crank and let Alice try. With most spinning reels, there are three distinct steps to a successful cast: pinning the line to the rod with a finger, flipping the bail, and lifting the finger off the line just as the cast is being made. Alice carefully went through the three-step sequence, but timed the finger release poorly. Her first cast sailed sideways right into my neighbor’s cedar tree. The reason I’d gone into the street in the first place was to get away from trees, but Alice had found one anyway. I was not surprised. She’d only done what I sometimes do even after years of practice.

Rollin and Alice’s mom must have been watching us from her house. When she saw me climb into the cedar tree to untangle fishing line, she came out of the house and walked up to us. I assured her that the kids weren’t bothering me, and I suggested that each kid should have two more casts before she took them home.

For nearly twenty years, there were only three young kids living on my street, and one of them was my daughter. Lately several of my former neighbors have died or moved to retirement homes, and the street is being repopulated with families with kids. This is wholly a good thing.

I might have figured out the FG knot, but I won’t know for sure until I hook into a big fish.

Thirty years ago, when my cousin Tom bought a mom-and-pop resort in northern Wisconsin, I helped him run the place during his first two summer seasons. I tended bar, worked as groundskeeper and, as much as my limited skills allowed, served as handyman. The resort came with an extensive set of tools, but they were spread out between Tom’s basement, his two-stall garage, the bed of his pickup truck, and a tool shed on the far end of the property. If a project was small, I sometimes spent as much time looking for tools as I did making the repair.

One of the first improvements Tom made to the resort after he’d settled in was to build a large workshop alongside the garage, and one of the first things he did after the construction of workshop was done was to move all of his tools to a single location. Once the tools were compiled, he discovered that he had six hammers, two dozen screwdrivers, and enough crescent wrenches to supply a small hardware store. Tom pointed out that I had helped to create this overabundance of tools, because during my two summers at the resort, I preferred buying new tools to scouring the resort for the old ones.

Last week I was reminded of Tom’s cache of tools, not because I was organizing my own tools (which I should probably do), but because I was getting a tackle box ready for my annual Canada fishing trip. The wide disbursal of my fishing gear was reminiscent of Tom’s tool collection.

Even when my fishing gear is organized, which it seldom is, it is still spread throughout my garage. There is a big tackle box for my Canada trip and a small tackle box for fishing from the confines of my kayak. There is a sled containing my ice fishing gear. There is an old tackle box with a broken latch that holds any lures not currently in use, and there are two well-stocked tackle boxes from a friend of mine who died a few years ago. Dave’s widow had me take them away not long after he died, but to date I’ve been reluctant to dig into my friend’s gear. It probably is time to add his lures and hooks to mine.

I hauled out all of my gear and spread it out across my front porch. As expected, I had too many of some things, not enough of others. For example, I use weighted alligator clips to measure water depth. These clips often sit next to the cash register at bait shops, so I sometimes grab one as an impulse purchase. I need one for each of my two tackle boxes, but I currently own ten. Between my two tackle boxes, there were a dozen Mepps spinners, and Dave’s two boxes contained an additional twenty. I have enough spoons to get me into the next decade, and Dave left me with a lifetime’s supply of deep divers.

I am possibly short of Rapalas. Rapalas, both floating and diving, are among my favorite lures, but they are delicate. Under the chin of each of the balsa wood minnows is a plastic scoop that makes the lure wriggle like a wounded fish. If the scoop shifts even slightly, the wiggling action ceases and the lure is useless. Unfortunately I cannot tell which ones are damaged just by looking at them. I have to reel them through the water to feel whether they still have the right action. As I sit on my front porch and sort through these lures, I might have more Rapalas than I need or I might have a small pile of useless balsa wood.

Clare wants to replenish my tackle box as a birthday present, but it turns out that I am in pretty good shape. I’d like a few more Rapalas just in case. I could also use a Little Cleo or two, a bottom bouncer, and as many panfish hooks as my daughter cares to buy. If she gets me these things and I put new line on all of my poles, I’ll be set both for my Canada trip and for my upcoming summer on the river.