Dan Hughes

The URL egoodig.com was registered on Oct 26, 2009, so the company is brand new, and on Nov 28 it showed up on the URIBL list of known spammers.

Couldn't the NFL make a lot more money selling this to a network, or are the networks not interested? The audience has to be small, because many people don't get the NFL network.

My cousin Darryl lived a block from the Mississippi River in Minnesota, and my family visited them for two weeks every summer. We both loved to fish, him in the Mississippi, me in a small creek back home in Indiana. I was about 14. We went to Darryl's favorite spot, where the water moved slowly in a pool, and Darryl told me I should be using a steel leader because if I hooked a pike, it would bite through my line. But steel leaders cost a dime each, and I told him I wasn't fishing for pike, I was fishing for bass, so I didn't need any steel leaders. I was using my favorite lure (the Shyster, an inline spinner much like the Mepps, discussed here earlier), and I caught a couple of small bass. Then I got a solid hit, the fish fought for a few minutes, then the line went limp. I reeled it in, and the lure was gone. Darryl said it must have been a pike, and he had bitten through my line. Next day, same place, same situation. Did I use a steel leader? Nah. Another Shyster and another good hit. I fought the fish, reeled it in, got it right up to the shore, and through the clear water I was in an eye-to-eye staring match with an 18-inch pike. He glowered up at me and then wiggled his jaw, and the severed line dropped away from his mouth. And here's the part that is as clear in my memory today as the day it happened, nearly fifty years ago.... He suspended quietly for a moment, then turned tail and slowly swam away, with the blade from yesterday's lure spinning on the left side of his mouth and the blade from today's lure spinning on the right side of his mouth. He looked like a 4th of July celebration. And I swear this is no fish story.

As a kid in the 1960's, I fished Eagle Creek on the west side of Indianapolis. For those of you who know the area, this was long before the reservoir. It was just a small creek, maybe a foot deep in the rapids and eight or ten feet deep in the pools, and you could easily cast to the opposite bank. I used tiny spinners and spoons to catch 8-inch smallmouth bass, and I had a ball! Hate to say my tackle wasn't light - the Zebco 202 reel came with 10-lb test line, and it sold for about what it costs now - $5.95. And that was all I could afford from my paper route money. Anyway, I think I had more fun "landing" an 8-inch smallmouth then that I do landing a two-pound largemouth now. The fight those little things put up was just tremendous, and they leapt all over the place. Anybody else have similar experiences?

The Shyster is now made by the Luhr Jensen company, a company I remember from the old days as mostly making larger lures for northern fish, and ice lures. And that 75-cent lure now retails for $2.92. But at least it looks the same in the Jensen ads as it did 50 years ago.

The group home we ran was in Selma, Alabama, in the mid-seventies, and we enjoyed it immensely and we like to think we helped a lot of kids make positive changes in their lives. We live in Champaign, Illinois now, which has a population of over a hundred thousand. A lot of these kids are from the south side of Chicago - they came here after Chicago closed up their housing projects. And they brought their gangs and their guns with them. It's a pretty bleak situation. I really think some of them could be helped in a one-on-one situation, but when you get 20 of them at a time you just can't do a thing.

Mrs Bladesmith, my wife is an art teacher in a public middle school, and she has one class that is half autistic and half hardcore delinquents. The hardcore kids have no respect for anyone, and are quite a chore to handle. And its not like she hasn't had experience - we ran a group home for delinquent teenage girls for several years, and love and consideration worked pretty well there. But today's kids seem worse. (Three of her ex-students are now in prison for murder - all separate cases.) Hope the board chiefs don't chastise me for getting so far off topic! Sometimes you never know where a conversation will drift. Now how did we get here again, from talking inline spinner lures?!

I'll bet Bladesmith agrees with me that the music of the sixties was the best ever. Did you enjoy teaching special ed? Nowadays "Special Education" (at least around here) mixes kids with learning disabilities with kids who have been thrown out of other classes. Seems insane to me.

I fished it by throwing upsteam and holding my rod high enough that it didn't snag on the bottom. If you let it hit bottom you'll almost surely lose it. But boy did those smallmouth love it!

I'm sorry Mrs. Bladesmith, I was just trying to be funny! Didn't mean to be mean. I'm really a nice guy, and I apologize. I'm a college instructor (broadcasting is my field), and I'm retiring next week (!) after 26 years of teaching, so I'm giddily happy and talking rather silly sometimes. Again, sure didn't mean to hurt your feelings. What is your pet forum? My wife is nuts about Elliott Yamin (American Idol), and she spends all her computer time discussing him. And my daughter, who just graduated from college and will teach special ed next semester, is really into old-time radio (Jack Benny especially). I'm mostly into softball nowadays, but I still fish sometimes and smallmouth in a swift stream have always been my favorites.

Okay, that's the same fish you and your husband are holding in your separate pictures, right? My cousin lived in Shawnee for a few years and I visited him there, but we never went fishing.

I turn 60 in August, and I was buying those Shysters in the early 1960s. You could get Japanese-made knockoffs for something like three for a dollar, but they looked very poorly-made compared to the original. Nonetheless, I bought a lot of those fake ones and did well with them. The fish didn't seem to be able to tell the difference.

When I was growing up in the 1950's, my smallmouth lure of choice was a 1/8 oz Shyster, yellow and black body, gold blade, and yellow feathered treble. They cost 75 cents each. I don't know if the Shyster is still around (I don't have the opportunity to fish for smallmouth much anymore), but I must have caught a thousand bass with it. For those not familiar with the Shyster - it was much like a Mepps spinner, but the body was torpedo-shaped and painted, usually dots on a solid color. The top of the lure, where you tied your line, was keel-shaped instead of round, so the lure was less likely to spin during retrieval. I found this picture: The worst problem was that it snagged easily, and since most of my smallmouth fishing was in fast, shallow water, I lost of lot of lures. Often I would wade out to free them, even though that messed up the fishing for an hour or two. But I was a kid, and 75 cents was hard to come by. So....any other Shyster fans?