Gearing up for PaperDolls’ summer issue, I thought back to all the cool things I did every summer when I was growing up. Tap. Jazz. Ballet. Piano. Clarinet. Vacation bible school. Twirling. Swimming lessons was a total bust: I only lasted one day because the instructor held my head under water with her cane and made us jump off the high dive.

My poor mother tried in vain to introduce me to as much culture as she could. But I was like Teflon; nothing stuck. What I really was good at was sleeping late.

Some days I would sleep all day and stay up all night. My favorite times were spent watching horror movies late into the night. Boris Karloff in The Mummy—the original—and any movie with Christopher Lee, the best-looking Dracula ever. Some of the best fun I ever had was bribing my youngest brother, Blair, to stay up and watch them with me. He was easily bribed with a roll of SweeTarts. I would turn off all of the lights, and the den would come alive with the flickering lights of the television bouncing off the walls. Imagine me: frozen in fear, barely breathing or blinking, knees tucked up under my T-shirt, chewing my nails. I couldn’t even make myself walk down the long, dark hall for a bathroom break.

There were days when I would venture out into the daylight, mostly to do chores. Paint and re-nail the fence posts, paint the 5-foot-tall fence. Our house sat on three acres of land—it was no small picket fence. I think my dad had a really twisted sense of humor building that darn fence in South East Texas. Humidity, rain, heat, sometimes a rogue snowstorm. What was he thinking? Of course, he knew he was never going to have to paint it—he had three little Huck Finns at home to carry out his dirty work.

After all these years, I can still hear my mother and grandmother, in their thick Southern drawls, say, “Caryn, you’d better get up; you are going to sleep your life away.” I wouldn’t be a very good influence if I couldn’t come up with a better suggestion for summer fun than marathon sleeping, movie-watching, or fence-mending.

So I thought of my next favorite hobby that has stuck with me for years: fishing. I love to fish. It’s absolutely addictive. Just catch one fish and you will be hooked. I have never had any hobby that I consistently liked to do as much as fishing. It’s the kind of summer fun that you can spend all day doing and have lots of memories and stories to tell.

My first fishing excursion was down in Panama City, Fla, with my family. It was the mid-1960s, and we were fishing off a bridge. I remember I was wearing my first two-piece bathing suit. It had a yellow bottom and a blue top with a sailboat emblem. There I was, fishing pole in hand, huge grin on my face, and a pooch belly. Not much has changed since that time. Another thing I remember vividly: Coppertone suntan lotion. I can still smell that stuff. I love its beachy, salt-watery, sandy odor. We didn’t have or know anything about sunscreen back them—just burnt up like a bunch of lobsters.

My family never owned a boat, but once in while we rented a boat or houseboat if we were in Alabama on the Black Warrior River. The Black Warrior River is a really large river in the north part of Alabama, outside of Tuscaloosa. In this river the water is very dark and slow-moving. If you venture off the main river into the tributaries, you will find crystal-clear water and caves to explore.

I have been fishing off the coast of Cozumel in the Caribbean Sea and in the Bay of Campeche. Once we rented a guide boat, and it was about a two-hour trip that was wonderful. The whole thing cost about $500 for two hours, and we only caught a couple of barracuda. This trip is the kind of fishing trip where the boat operators bait your hook and reel them in for you. It is a nice way to spend a day on a private boat and see the open water, but make sure to budget this type of excursion into your trip.

There was the time a couple of friends came in from New Orleans, brought a large expense account, and wanted to go out in the Gulf of Mexico. I suggested we head down to Freeport and hire a private boat for the day. That trip lasted all day and cost between $1,200 and $1,500. It was freezing, and I think we caught two very small fish. The water was extremely choppy, and the wind was bitterly cold.

There is this one trip that I remember as a teen. The boat was a luxury party boat, and once the cute fishing guide took his shirt off, well, I couldn’t tell you what type of fish or how many we caught that day. One thing, I can tell you about fishing out in the open water is: Keep your eye on the horizon, and until you get your sea legs, stay out of the bathroom down below.

I was with my two brothers on my uncle’s ranch in Central Texas one summer, and we were going fishing down on the creek that runs through the property. This creek is slow-moving and heavily tree-lined, with several low spots that water will dry up and allow you to pass over the creek. There are spots that are very deep and will remain full of water throughout the summer months. We were scoping out our perfect fishing spots, pushing the brush aside, careful not to step on a snake.

Once we picked our spot, my brother Cliff saw a really large bass hovering in the water. It didn’t move or swim about, and my dad said that the fish was guarding its next kin from any predators. The fish would never bite a hook, he said. But as kids we were challenged and set out to catch that fish.

My brothers tried every form of bait we had, but nothing tempted that fish. It remained motionless in the water above its hollowed-out nest on the creek floor. The water was relatively clear, and the tree provided a lot of shade with a few glimmers of light from the sun that managed to find its way to the water below. I always thought that if you could see a fish, they could see you too, so naturally they wouldn’t bite your hook. Cliff placed his hook right in front of the fish, dangling minnows, crickets, and juicy worms. Nothing.

I didn’t have my own pole, so I grabbed a stick, ran to the tackle box, and cut off about 10 feet of line. I only needed enough to swing it out off the bank into the right spot in front of the fish. I took a hook from the box and tried to emulate the delicate line-tying technique that I had always seen my dad perform. My fingers were very clumsy with the fine line, but I managed to make a crude knot and was sure that it would hold. The only thing in that tackle box that had not been in the water was the melted goopy part of a purple plastic worm. This worm had been a permanent part of the bottom of the tackle box since the ’60s, and no one had ever scraped it up. Something that looks so outrageous can’t be ignored, I thought. I laced the fake worm on the hook without the usual pop and squish that you get with a real worm. I told my brother boldly, “Watch this,” and ran as fast as I could to the creek. I wanted to be the first one to try out this new technique.

I tossed the worm and hook out in front of the fish a few feet, and the worm made a kerplunk in the water. The fish lunged and swallowed it. I yanked the fish up on the bank and started howling with disbelief that my scheme actually worked. I raced back up the bank of the creek through the brush and to the campsite, where my parents were sitting. My dad was laughing and asking, “How did you do that?” I told him the whole story, and he still couldn’t believe his ears. PD






Caryn Freiley Resnick R.N. lives a charming life in Paris, Texas (north of Dallas) with her handsome husband and son.