Tom Gillispie: CLIP: GONE FISHING

Tuesday, October 16, 2018

CLIP: GONE FISHING

Photo by Yaroslav Shuraev from Pexels

(NOTE: I wrote this for the Winston-Salem Journal's Niche Publications department more than a decade ago. I found that photo online.)

GONE FISHING

By Tom Gillispie
Special Sections Writer

George King, Larry Whicker and Ted Weavil know each other well. They go to church together -- Morris Chapel United Methodist Church in Walkertown. They all fish, occasionally together, and they kid each other
constantly.

"They're my mentors," the 59-year-old Weavil said of King and Whicker. "Fishermen get rode pretty hard.

They LOVE to fish. Larry (63) is a little older than I am; George (58) is a little younger. You have to put their names in the article; otherwise, I'd never hear
the end of it."

King laughed uproariously when told that Weavil said they were his mentors, and Whicker chuckled.

"They're the best; I'm the rookie," King said, keeping in Weavil's mode of self-deprecation. "I go just for fun."

Whicker was more serious.

"I think Ted and George are good fishermen," he said. "On certain days, they're as good as anybody, but anybody has their good and bad days."

King says that he and Weavil used to fish together before Weavil had a boat.

"Once he bought one," King said, "we haven't fished together since."

But they talk fishing, even when they congregate at church.

"We tease each others about being pros; we call each other by the names of professional fishermen," King said. "It's all good-natured, at least on my part."

Whicker and King say that, once a year or so, they and a few others will go to Davis Island at Cape Lookout and surf fish.

King says that many fishermen, even in retirement, are competitive and are always looking for the big fish. He says he used to fish little tournaments, like those at Salem Lake or Reidsville Lake. Now, he says, he simply eats what he catches.

Whicker, who's retired from the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., doesn't have a ton of time to fish. He works on his farm near Walkertown. He works a large garden,
grows and sells hay, cuts and sells wood. In the middle of May, for instance, they'll bail hay, and fishing will have to wait.

"On a bad-weather day, though, when I can't work, then I'll go fishing," he said. "That's a good time to fish, when it's cloudy or raining.

"I've been fishing all my life; I fished farm ponds when I was a boy, when I had the chance. Now, I fish with my son, Ladd, some. We fish High Rock, Belews
Creek, Baden (Lake). I fish on Salem Lake by myself on the spur of the moment. We live out toward Walkertown, and I just hook up the boat and go. I'll fish three or four hours; it's handy for me. I'll go to Reidsville."

Whicker says that retirement has made it easier to find time to fish, even with farm chores.

"It's being able to do what you want to any given moment without worrying about getting off work," he said. "You can pick your times and do what you want to do."

King says that, when he first retired from the Forsyth County Department of Social Services, he spent 40 hours a week fishing. Now, he doesn't fish so much.

King recently went out to Salem Lake with his grandson, five-year-old Gray Bailey. King said he rarely got to fish with Gray, since his parents, Christin (King's daughter) and Barney Bailey, live in Mooresville. He says that Gray was impatient when they started, about six months ago.

"I look forward to getting him back out there," King said.

The day that King took his grandson fishing, Tom Himes was also out fishing.

"It's a good respite; I do a lot of travel to Asia (for business)," Himes said. "I can be here (on the lake) at 6 or 6:30 in the morning, stay until 11, and
still have a good share of the day left."

Himes says that even when he's not fishing it's on his mind.

"I like to think of fly patterns, tying flies, working with different materials," he said. "It's a good way to pass the time."

Himes says he's even had to pare back his hobby. "At one time," he said, "I had several hundred rods, and I had to cut them back about 50 percent. I had a
closetful of everything to throw at a bass. And then some."

Whicker says he'll take people from his Sunday school class fishing, or he'll fish with Steve Sink, a man he grew up with.

"Sometimes, I take my cousin Harold, Harold Whicker," Whicker said. "He's 80 years old, but he acts 60; I'm 63."

Himes says there's a sort of community on the lake.

"Most of the people who fish regularly know each other," he said. "There are a lot of good fishermen; I'm a novice compared to some others."

Whicker says he knows a good many fishermen, particularly on Salem Lake.

"There are some good boys who fish Salem Lake," he said with no sense of irony at age. "There are some good fishermen who fish over there, too."

The fishermen may have discovered fishing in their youth, but they find it a way to remain active now that they're in or near senior-citizenship. In fact, all of the fishermen warn non-fishermen that fishing, particularly bass fishing, is not sitting around in a boat and wasting the afternoon.

"With bass fishing, you're moving the boat around constantly (with a trolling motor)," said Bob Church, a 61-year-old fisherman from Kernersville who often
hits Salem Lake. "Your first objective is to catch fish, and you're always changing lures and casting. I'm not exaggerating, you might cast 500 to 1,000
times a day. It's an active sport, and you'll be worn out at the end of the day."

Church says that fishermen DO get better with age.

"I think so, just in knowledge," he said. "The more you know about bass fishing, the better you are. It's more of a science than a sport. You've learned the
lake, where you've caught fish before. That lake (Salem) is a tough lake. If you just jump in a boat and go, you'll probably not catch any fish."

Whicker says age doesn't help, but experience does.

"I have better equipment, and I've learned a lot; I'm more patient, and I know more things to try," he said. "The trouble is that, sometimes, you just are not
catching anything. You have bad habits when you're younger; you can't cast as well. When you're older, you throw better and pick your places better, so experience helps."

Does it ever get easier?

"No," King replied. "It requires the same combination of skill and luck that it did earlier. I think, though, that you have more patience as you get older."

"There's some work to it, if you do it right," Whicker added. "You have to be in pretty good shape. There's nothing easy about bass fishing all day."

But everyone agrees, though, that it beats the heck out of working.

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