Full five senses lend sixth to lessons of long ago

The Old Man held a hook in two fingers of his left hand, having lifted it from a bulk box labeled “Mustad, 3/0.” His opposite hand pinched the bottom of a loop of waxed nylon line into a point and threaded it through the hook’s eye, looping it over the point and bend, then pulling it tight. He did the same for a hundred or so more, securing each neatly into the rim of a foam cooler, piling the line carefully in the bottom where it would not tangle or snag.

In years to come, we would add barrel swivels and other practicalities that made the lines work a little smoother, at least in the command of the less-practiced, but the first lines I saw were all built with a sailor’s practical command of knots and line and nothing else. A catfish could eventually twist off of a line made without a barrel swivel between the drop and the main run, but lines made in the old way were, for a master at least, faster to build and less expensive to create. And if the lines were run as promptly as meant to be, nothing ever had much chance to twist off.