Bob's Trout Fishing Experience

It was late June in the North Carolina Mountains when Bob left the camper early that morning. There's nothing like the sound of a rushing trout stream to draw someone out of a warm sleeping bag. He had camped just a few feet from the stream and it woke him before daylight, beckoning him and his fishing pole.

Scrambling down the bank, coffee in one hand, fishing pole in the other, tackle box under his arm, he made his way to the rushing stream, pushed a few fish eggs onto his hook and cast out to the falls. He sat down on a big boulder, sipped his coffee and WHAM! he got a hit.

It wasn't a trophy, but big enough to eat so he strung it up and cast out again. By the time he finished his coffee he had gotten a couple nibbles but hadn't caught anything else and decided to move a little more downstream. No luck.

The rest of the morning, he moved up and down the stream, trying corn, worms, lures and just about everything he could think of but didn't catch another thing. He went back early that evening and caught a couple nice size trout and by sundown, they were in his frying pan.

The next morning, he couldn't wait to get to the stream and three hours later, he hadn't got the first nibble. He was walking up and down the stream trying to find a spot where they were biting when an old Native American came out of the woods.

He was a wiry ole fellow carrying a long stringer of trout and as he approached, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a dough ball wrapped in plastic.

Pinching off a clump, he said, "It's flour, cornmeal, oatmeal and enough garlic juice to bind it all together." Then he held up his stringer of fish and said, "The trout love it."

Bob said, "I wish I was that good at fishing for trout."

The old guy said, "You should be wishing you were good at fishing for men." Then he handed Bob a book and went on to tell him about how Jesus Christ was God in the flesh and that He told the disciples to be fishers of men.

Bob told him that he really wasn't in to all that and the old guy said, "You oughta be. There's lots of legends and myths, but what happened when the Savior walked among men was written down. There were hundreds of eye witnesses."

The old guy's eyes were intense as he talked about how God himself had paid the price for all of the souls who come to Him of their own free will and how we will all face death someday. "There's evil in this world, boy," he said, pointing a bony finger in his face, "and when we pass on to the spirit world, those who have the seal of God are carried into His presence. Those who don't are on their own in the world of spirits."

Hesitating, not wanting to disrespect the old guy, Bob smiled and said, "I thought people who didn't go to heaven went to hell."

"Call it what want to, son," he said, climbing the bank, "evil is evil." He turned at the top and said, "None of what we see is what it appears to be. Once we are united with the Spirit of God, He transforms us into the children of God. Those who don't belong to God, belong to the devil, whether they realize it or not." He turned with that and said, "The dough ball should improve your chances of catching trout, but faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is what you need to catch men." Then he disappeared into the woods.

Bob stood there for the longest time, staring at the lump of dough the old man had given him. Then he looked at the book which had the words, "Holy Bible" on it. Crazy old coot, he thought, dropping it into his tackle box.

As he continued along the stream, Bob realized that the old guy had probably lived there all his life and knew where all the good fishing spots were and that the dough ball was just cheap bait. As for the guy's little sermon, he simply disregarded it and headed upstream, looking for a decent spot to fish.

There were only two worms left in Bob's tackle box and when they were gone, he decided to use the dough ball. He pinched off a piece, molded it onto the hook and cast it out. Not ten seconds later, WHAM! And by late morning, he was heading back to the camper with a stringer of good sized trout.

He couldn't sleep that night for thinking about some of the things the old guy had said. After tossing for what seemed like hours, he fired up the lantern and opened the bible. He had never read the bible before and as he browsed through it, he sensed a feeling of familiarity, as if he had heard or read it before.

The sound of the rushing stream woke him from a dead sleep the next morning and when he sat up, the bible, which he had laid on his chest when he fell asleep, slid to the ground.

There were only three more days left on his vacation but he got the ingredients and made his own dough balls with 1 cup oatmeal, ½ cup cornmeal, ½ cup flour and ¼ cup garlic juice. With his hands, he pressed it together and molded it into balls.

The dough balls stank to high heaven, but every day, twice a day, he returned to the camper with a stringer of fish. Also, every night, he read the bible and on the last day of his vacation, he asked Jesus to be his Savior.

So now, he too, is a fisher of men.