"Summer time and the living is easy, fish are jumping ..." Fishing and summertime go together like iced tea and lemon, like a cane pole and crickets. The days I spent as a boy fishing were some of my best. Anytime I see a boy with a pole over his shoulders today it resurrects some Mayberry moments from childhood.

Summers spent fishing were a time of pure bliss. There were no jobs, nothing called a career, no demands, and no stress other than snagging a hook on a stump or limb.

I used a cane pole until I was old enough to cast a black plastic Zebco. I never could afford a Zebco 33 with its steel cover, one of those little things from youth you never forget. I kept my Zebco and rod and a pack of rubber worms close by. I caught my first bass at my Grandmother's farm in the pond down by Poland Road.

When the white bass were running I'd grab some Shysters and Little Cleos and fish on Pistol Creek near my Grandmother Walker's place. The most fish I ever caught at one time came out of that creek. I caught 23 fish in an hour.

As a boy, all I thought about was fishing. I read anything I could about fishing and copies of Outdoor Life were always close at hand. I'd thumb through the magazine envious of the sportsmen and the huge fish they caught. Many a hunting and fishing fantasy leapt from the pages of that magazine.

And then football, high school, college, and work relegated fishing to "something I used to do." I remember the last time I fished, and though I didn't get a strike, it was special.

In the late '70s and early '80s I worked for a fellow Georgian I've written about before, John Culler, who gave me my first break as a writer. Culler grew up in Americus, but unlike me, he never abandoned fishing. He's one of those fortunate souls who make a living out of his love for the outdoors. He served as the editor of Outdoors In Georgia before becoming the editor of South Carolina Wildlife magazine, where he hired me in 1978.

John wrote Purple Heaven, a book filled with memories of growing up in Americus. A gifted storyteller, he relived his boyhood days of fishing in a chapter titled "Memories."

"I grew up in a small Southern town with plenty of free time in the summer, a lot of it spent adventuring along various creek banks and around a big old millpond about a mile from home. It was a time when every day was exciting and every new thing an adventure, and some of the very best moments came when I had a fishing pole in my hands."

John describes the cranky old man who ran the gristmill and how he put him on the bluegill bed. "He was covered with a fine white powder all over his bib overalls, from his untied brogans to his grizzled face, which held about a cup of meal in his three-dayold beard and eyebrows. He had a penchant for giving anyone he saw a piece of his mind but all he had ever given me was kindness and a soft smile. Once he even let put my hands in the fresh ground meal. 'Feel it,' he said. 'It's warm.'

"The day he showed me the bream bed had been one of the lesser of the better days, and I was passing the mill on my way home.

'Didn't do much good, did you?' He was sitting on the steps.

'I got some bites, but I missed them,' I lied.

'Come here a minute, boy. Let me show you something,' he said as he got up and started walking along the path next to the dam right by the road. Slowly parting the covering of honeysuckle, he gazed intently into the water. 'Looka there, boy. That's a bream bed, and if you drop a fat wiggler in there about daylight tomorrow morning you're going to be on to something.' "

The next morning at dawn John rushed to the bream bed (The most delicious time in all creation is just before sunup on a summer morning," writes John).

"Keen with the anticipation of the battle I was sure to come, there is no way I can describe the way I felt. It was absolutely better than any Christmas morning that ever happened. I was so nervous and excited it took four tries before I could hit the worm with the hook, then the darn thing got tangled on every strand of honeysuckle within five miles. Finally it fell free and dropped into the water with a soft plop.

"Evidently I had too much lead, because the cork sank too. 'Shucks,' I thought, and raised my pole to bring it in. But I didn't have too much lead, a big fat bluegill had my worm. There was a violent jerk, a tremendous sloshing and splashing in the shallow water, and I was in the middle of the fight of my life!

"Finally I got him on the bank—a tremendous bluegill, perhaps more than a pound—and my heart was running 500 miles an hour. I heard the mill start up, and I took off to show the miller what I had done. My knees were still weak. It was a tremendous feeling. I haven't gotten over it yet!"

If you've fished a bream bed, you know how John felt. We have our special memories too. And among mine is the last time I fished. It was with John. He had just accepted the editor's position at Outdoor Life, the beloved magazine of my youth. We talked about the big change coming in his life as we sat in a flat-bottomed boat on a pond near Camden, South Carolina. Soon, he'd be in the Big Apple, overseeing stories and photos of fish sure to fire the dreams of new generations of small town Southern boys.

John didn't stay too long in New York City. Shortly after accepting the job, a mugger killed one of his staffers. From that day on, John walked the city streets with a pistol tucked in his boot. He came back to South Carolina and started a new magazine, Sporting Classics, and later, South Carolina Homes & Gardens.

I haven't touched a rod and reel since I fished with John in 1980. I never did catch a record fish of any kind. The biggest bass I ever caught weighed maybe four ponds. My boyhood days of farm ponds and creeks behind me, my one memory of fishing as a man is sitting side by side with a fellow Georgian, a man about to take over the magazine that thrilled me to no end as a boy. It was one of those pure moments you remember forever.

As he wrote in "Memories," "It was a tremendous feeling. I haven't gotten over it yet!"

Email Tom with feedback and ideas for new columns. tompol @earthlink.net