I Wanna Go To Fishing School

I want to go to school.  Not just any school, a fishing school.  No, I did not say "finishing school," otherwise known as charm school, I said fishing school. You must know by now that charm school would be wasted on me.
Choose the reason Charm School would be wasted from the following: 
A) I am altogether charming already, 
B) I am too set in my ways to re-learn how to set a table, or 
C) The project would be too much (I can barely spell etiquette, after all). 

Not long ago, a friend of a friend of mine came to visit.  He loves to fish, and apparently spent part of every day doing just that.  Joe never met a stranger, so he quickly met some folks who told him about a few fishing spots nearby, and he happily plundered those places for a variety of fish, crabs and shrimp.  

Toward the end of that same visit, Joe invited all of us to dinner and proceeded to feed six of us all we could eat of local fish he had caught over the several days he had fished.  In addition to his skills as a fisherman, he is a pretty good cook, so we ate our fill.  We didn't eat it all, he left freezer bag upon freezer bag of fish in our friend's freezer.  We will have to wait until October for his return, but we are "licking our lips" while we wait. 

I am coming quickly to the conclusion that fishing school is the answer for me.  If I have even a modest amount of success, we might be able to sustain ourselves on my meager talents until "the master" returns.  Mind you, I am not talking about charter fishing off shore.  The cost of a day's charter far exceeds the amount I'm willing to risk on this venture.  

I have to tell you that the number of times I have fished since the age of three can be counted on one hand, including the time I brought a bamboo fishing rod to a state park with my son and tried to get him interested, mostly because I thought that was one of the things that fathers should do for their sons.  He stood by, holding the pole, while I baited a hook.  He lasted no more than a minute and a half standing on the shore waiting for a bite.  He then ran off and left me holding the bag--er I mean the pole.  I stayed with it for an hour, during which I killed three worms, but no fish.  Another of my fishing experiences occurred not long after my friend Tom returned home from his stint in the Marines.  He and I. along with two or three other friends decided to go camping and a little fishing.  We went out to the small lake, camped and tried to fish.  We killed three cases of beer, but no fish.  

Later, on my wife's twenty-second birthday, she and I went fishing in Wisconsin with her former college roommate and her husband.  He took us up to Washington Island, off the tip of Door County.  He was an avid fisherman, and we caught and fried dozens of fish that day.  It was extraordinary, but he really did it all for us, and we learned very little.  Cleaning the fish was the wife's job, and my wife, bless her heart, wanted no part of learning how to do that.  

Needless to say, my wife preferred something a bit less rustic on her subsequent birthdays.  I am still waiting for her to ask to go fishing again.  Maybe if I go to fishing school....  

I started researching fishing schools, using my favorite research tool, google.  I found numerous "schools" that were essentially a marketing tool for charter fishing boats.  Joe fished standing on land or a dock most of the time, and that suits me (and my wallet).  Then I found an entry for "Fishing Scholarships" which sounded to me like a way to defray some of the cost of those more expensive "schools."  Alas, as it turned out, these were scholarships to college for good young fishermen.  It turns out that schools like Colgate, Yale and Cornell have bass fishing clubs.  Some universities treat bass fishing as any other sport and offer scholarships, witness Bethel College in Tennessee, which has offered scholarship in the range of $1,000 to $4,000 per year.  

I have already been to college, and am not likely to get on the professional bass fishing tour in this lifetime, so this path is out.  I am still looking for that fishing school, but am starting to worry about the tougher parts of the curriculum, like learning to clean the fish.  Nevertheless, I will find one.  From there, i hope when Joe comes back this summer he can provide some post-graduate work and I can begin working toward a Master's degree in fishing.  Wish me luck.