A Walk Down Memory Lane

[frederickwreid]

Geez guys, I'm feeling all nostalgic! I grew up in Newfoundland, and I remember walking with my dad over huge miles of bog (marsh) to get to a little honey hole. A bobber with a worm was the way to go, and we never returned home empty handed. At that time we could keep 2 dozen brook trout each, so we always enjoyed a big meal of trout when we got home. Those were great days. It is what fostered my love for fishing. Thanks for the walk down memory lane.

[jaycee]

Old Memory Lane, grew up in old Galt On. now Cambridge, just up the hill from Soper Park and Mill Creek, fished for specks there and up the creek into the country for browns . South of us there was Moffat Creek which also had specks and downtown Galt the Grand River, we fished for suckers, carp and the odd bass, the carp sure made my parents roses grow well and flower.

As we grew up , in 1958 parents bought a cottage at Sauble Beach on the river and then we got into rainbow trout fishing , there and on the Rankin river that flowed into the Sauble.
From there on expanded into fly fishing and when I got my first wheels , away I went with friends fishing all over, before I got my first car, spent a lot of time and put many miles on my bicycle fishing little lakes around Galt for bass and pike, blue gills, catfish and then got a small motorcycle and just extended my fishing territory as far as Durham On. , great enjoyable times .

If only we could bring back those days , nowdays if you spend anytime in Soper Park your chances of getting mugged and beaten up are quite high as we often read about it in the K.W Record, and beaten up for what ? they steal your cell phone .
What a crappy world it is these days.

[Pat32rf]

Does Soper creek run thru Soper Park? Newcastle area? Been 60 years but the name brings back good memories as well.
I'm over 70, been making good memories all my life.
Last year our GP told me that the cancer had returned and sooner or later I would die as a result. He could not understand why I was not all upset and depressed. Might have two years or 12, no way to know. Might also get hit by bus.....still time to make a few more memories.

[jaycee]

Does Soper creek run thru Soper Park? Newcastle area? Been 60 years but the name brings back good memories as well.
I'm over 70, been making good memories all my life.
Last year our GP told me that the cancer had returned and sooner or later I would die as a result. He could not understand why I was not all upset and depressed. Might have two years or 12, no way to know. Might also get hit by bus.....still time to make a few more memories.

The creek I am referring to is called Mill Creek, it does run through Soper Park, but in Cambridge On. which is a combination of 3 towns , Galt , Preston and Hespeler On., forced amalgamation in 1973.
It's headwaters are up around Aberfoyle On. where the Nestle Co. bottles millions of gallons of pure spring water.

Soper Park that I am referring to is in the old Galt On. part of Cambridge, and Mill Creek runs through it and the old Galt city emptying into the Grand River at Water St., it runs under the old Galt Knitting Co. which made Tiger Brand underwear, and was owned by the Warnock family , started by old Col. E.G. Warnock , then taken over by his son James Warnock and also renamed " Tiger Brand Knitting Co. ", I worked there part time during High School years at G.C.I &V.S.

Sorry to hear about your health, keep a positive outlook and there is a good possibility that you can stretch it out to 12 years ,

[sawbill]

As kids our family didn't have much money so dad built a rowboat and hauled it to the nearest lake. I can still remember him in the back yard tarring the bottom to seal the cracks. We had an Evinrude 3.3 to push it but mostly we ended up rowing because as kids we weren't strong enough to pull the rewind. If it didn't start on the first or second pull then we rowed.
We had an old reel loaded up with that heavy green cotton line that you could get one or two years out of before it rotted away. We'd hook up the only troll we had and tow that thing around the lake. It probably never sunk down more than 5 feet which is why we never caught one fish but we fished day in and day out anyway.

[Birdbuff]

I know it’s an old thread but I thought I’d bring it back to the top. These are some great stories being shared.

My memories don’t stretch nearly as far but I consider myself fortunate. My uncle had a cottage on nipissing and we went there often in the summer and fall. The fishing in the 80’s was incredible. Pike, walleye and bass all off the dock with just worms and a float.

My grandparents owned a place in Paris with the grand river in the backyard. Some summers I was lucky enough to spend a couple of weeks with them alone. My grandmother would feed me 24/7, that kitchen never took a break. My grandfather was into antiques and restoration. He spent most of his time in his shop fixing things. When I had a chance I would sneak down the ravine to the river which was right by a train bridge. There was a set of falls there. I would use caught crayfish for bait. They were under every rock. I would catch small mouth bass and chubs. I wouldn’t fish long as I knew my grandparents would worry, but in a short time I could manage dozens of fish. There were always a few anglers in waders fishing the middle of the river, I never understood why. Fishing was awesome as a kid. Every fish, big or small was a trophy. The nights laying in bed thinking of the days success, would lull me to sleep.

[Sam Menard]

I was raised in Ottawa and in my youth, my friends and I used to bike down and fish the Rideau River at Billing’s Bridge. For a couple of summers, we would go almost every day. We caught tons of panfish and one of the lads even caught a musky. As we got a little older, we ventured further away and fished Dow’s Lake and the canal where we caught lots of carp and I caught caught my first walleye although I didn’t know what it was at the time. We used to pose for the tour boats that cruised up and down the canal… they took so many pictures of us with our fish, we felt like celebrities. When I was 15, we started biking out to Black’s Rapids and did quite well on bass and walleye in the evening.

This past summer, a childhood friend of mine and I went back to check out some of these spots. Lol, the river doesn’t look as big and deep as it did back in the 1970’s. Just for kicks, we tried our luck at Black’s for a couple of hours and my buddy introduced me to sluggos. Living up north now, I don’t get many opportunities to fish for bass, but I did manage to land a couple. Funny, but I remember the fishing being much better there when I was a kid.