Old Green Tacklebox

Moving around some stuff in my shop the other day, I noticed my grandpa’s weathered green metal tacklebox quietly collecting dust on a shelf. Reaching over and picking it up, I couldn’t help but smile.

Thirty years ago on a Saturday morning it could be found in the backseat of my Big Pa’s blue Oldsmobile, with me bouncing around the front seat eager to get to our favorite fishing hole.

Yes-sir… life was sure good back in 1992. The sun was shining, the fish were biting, and I didn’t have a worry in the world.

Opening the tarnished copper latch, memories of years past flooded my mind as I peered into the old green box. 

The contents inside wouldn’t be very impressive to most, but to me, every thing in there is a story from another time. For instance, the old, chewed-up wooden plug on the top shelf. If I stare at it for a moment, I’m taken back to the side of a river in 1992 with my Big Pa perched on a bucket telling a story something like this.

“Craig, I bet we caught a thousand jackfish on that plug way back in Billy’s Lake. We’d have to  clean fish until our hands were blistered.”

In the bottom of the box, there’s an old roll of dry-rotted, 12-lb. monofilament, no good for anything anymore, but as I glance at it, it reminds me of the 6-year-old boy that couldn’t keep but getting his line tangled every 15 minutes or so, and his Big Pa would have to re-spool his reel before the fishing trip was over. 

Looking back now, I don’t think he ever got aggravated.

Lying at the very bottom of the box was an old rusted fish scaler. One poke from it now and you’d probably need a series of tetanus shots, but I remember when it was still shiny stainless steel and the first time my Big Pa showed me how to clean a fish.

I wouldn’t take a thousand bucks for that scaler. No way, no how.

Every item in that box takes me back to somewhere or another, a different time and place. When life was simple and good, sitting on a bank somewhere, waiting on the fish to bite.. next to that old green box. 

Satilla Feed & Outdoors