Fishing

I am not sure when my love and interest in fishing began. My dad would occasionally take us fishing as kids. But I think it was when I joined the Boy Scouts around age 10 or 12 that my interest really started. I used to get the Boy’s Life magazine from the BSA every month. Invariably, there were always articles, pictures, and ads around various types of fishing that scouts did. About the same time in my life I got my first real bicycle (I think it was a six speed. Ten speed bikes weren’t common yet), and that bike afforded me a degree of freedom and mobility that let me go fishing a lot of different places. During the summer, I would frequently bike over to Lake Quassapaug, Lake Elise, or down to Hop Brook Dam to fish. But my absolute favorite fishing destination was to my cousin’s house (Joe LaPorta  who then lived on Breakneck Hill Rd in Middlebury). Joe and I would spend countless hours fishing for large mouth bass in Abbott’s pond, or the pond at the abandoned Girl Scout Camp (Beetle Bung Pond) on what is now the Hetzel Preserve. Back then Dr. and Mrs. Hetzel still owned the property and it wasn’t a public preserve. We used to have to sneak in to get access to the pond. We would catch so many fish that we couldn’t eat them all. It was all done with Zebco rods and reels, and the classic Rapala floating fishing lure.