One of the earliest lessons I learned from fishing was that every living creature eats, and in eating, kills.

I once watched three bluegills devour an injured dragonfly bite by bite until only a single, crystalline wing floated on the pond surface.

When we fish, we’re casting to feed a creature’s hunger — something we can recognize in ourselves. Who hasn’t looked at a plump worm on a hook and knew no perch could ignore such a meal? That even within the pulsating baitball off the bow your particular herring would be the one to catch the striper’s eye?

Sometimes we cast toward gluttony, again something we see in ourselves. Bluefish are the ancient Romans of the piscine world, gorging on pogies until they sometimes barf to keep binging. I once caught a largemouth that hadn’t fully swallowed his last frog — webbed feet sprouting from its throat like a soggy bouquet.

Tidal ponds hold all manner of creatures for curious young fishermen.

We’d brought no rods, hooks or line to the beach, and after an hour of swimming in the surf, my little brother Nathan and I — 8 and 5 at the time — went to the rocks to explore. There, in the small universe of the tidal pools among the starfish, we spotted blue crabs scuttling back and forth. Like all anglers, we instinctively wanted to catch and hold what we saw.

A quick hunt yielded strands of rope washed in from a ship battered by the North Atlantic. The blue sea mussels that rose like stalagmites from the outcrops became bait. We smashed their shells with rocks until the peach flesh was revealed, then tied the oozing meat to frayed lengths of rope. We crouched, dangling the mussels in front of the holes, and lifted crab after crab into a neon bucket. Dad boiled them that night for dinner.

Every shoreline is full of small surprises. 

Crickets are more difficult to catch than mussels. A net helps, but sometimes all Nathan and I had were the shirts on our backs. We’d stalk through the grass along a mountain pond until the crickets’ tiny jumps betrayed their location. After catching three or four in our shirts, I’d head to the cattails for crappie and bluegills. When the light was right, I could see the fish slowly looming beneath the hook-skewered bug, then break the surface in a blink.

Bait catches bait. Small hooks land small fish, so when we brought 5-inch pumpkinseeds to hand, we’d thread them through the wrist of the tail to a larger hook and cast toward the drop-off where bass hid. Our bobbers traced the furtive movements before the plunge. The disappearance of the red-and-white globe triggered by the barrel mouth engulfing the lame fish caused a gasp. The sight of a leaping fish pulled shouts of joy from our mouths.

When we reeled in, the hook in the bass’s jaw was bare. We hoped the pumpkinseed had escaped. We wished no more ill will on a creature we put through the greatest peril. We yearned that fate might be kinder than us.

Not all bait is caught; some is bought. We had no way to seine shrimp or axe chickens for their gizzards and livers on our occasional visits to the sea. We bought them wrapped in plastic for crab traps and whatever skate or drum swam within reach of our casts from the beach.

Learning the ways of life through the aquatic food chain. 

Yellow corn from a can was manna for the raceway-bred rainbow trout the state dumped into the river in April. Four months later in the heat of August, trout still preferred pellet-shaped kernels to nymphs. Nathan would open a can and keep it in his bag for a week. Somehow, he never cut his fingers on the tin rim even though his eyes were always on the river when reaching for more.

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When my brother and I were young, we dug worms in the garden and picked them off the driveway when rain soaked the ground. After we began mowing lawns and our wallets filled, we became regulars to Yingling’s bait shack just outside our little Pennsylvania town. We only saw the proprietor twice — black-bearded with loam-stained hands. He smelled of crayfish and shiners. The business had no sign. We learned about him through talk at the hardware store. We passed the dirt road every time we went to fish for bluegill and bass but didn’t know how rutted it was until we descended to the shed. The self-service bait refrigerator was likely one of the first ever built and hadn’t stopped running in 80 years. The Styrofoam boxes were marked with an R for 50 red worms and CN for two-dozen Canadian nightcrawlers. We only ever bought nightcrawlers.

But when we miscalculated the remaining worms from our last purchase — there had to be a dozen hiding in the dirt, no need to stop for more — or the crappies and bluegills were particularly adept at stripping our hooks, we’d be left on the banks wondering what else might bring more fish to hand. If it was June, we’d pick wild strawberries. If it was August, blueberries. We always ate a handful before we lanced them to the hook. For our own joy of eating sweet things, and so we’d know what the fish couldn’t resist.