Spinners, Hoppers and Wippersnappers.

So that infamous, age-old question arises yet again: Does size matter?

It depends on who you ask. To an off-shore saltwater guru, of course size matters. They want broken poles and reel-busting fights and epic tales of beasts and red-haired sirens seducing them from the rocky jetties of the Atlantic.

The same can be said of the salmon junkie or steelhead tycoon, dreaming of cold days and colder nights, rising water and runs so thick that it'd be safer trying to cross over an L.A. freeway in waders at rush hour.

But light tackle, luckily, is not totally forgotten. There are still those brave enough to ignore the scouring looks and nasty jokes, those timid types that won't ever need much more than 2 pound test and lures that--if you listern hard enough--merely whisper "kerplunk."


They fish alone, out old country roads or along tattered city creeks. Their tackle boxes are meager, their spinning rods duct-taped, their spinners tarnished, they're simple people. They're not looking for a fight--just a fish.


They know that no matter what the pH level, no matter how hot the water temperature simmers, no matter how murky or junk-cluttered the shallows and eddies, there will surely be a pumpkinseed or two sunbathing somewhere under a fallen oak limb.


And they'll cast at it and land it and look at it proud, maybe even peeking around to see if anyone else witnessed that perfect placement of that scruffy hopper pattern with that scruffy fly rod; they bounced it right off the oak limb, they skated it softly off the boulder, they rolled it right into that pocket. And the little whippersnapper hammered it.

And dang it if that ain't the biggest thrill in the world too.