Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Hattie Flowers has been fishing all her life.

Perhaps, not “all” her life, but at age 101, “Miss Hattie,’ as she is affectionately known by all who know her, has been fishing long enough to have perfected the art of “off the bank” fishing.

“Back when I started fishing, we made our own poles,” Flowers said. “We would break green, reed poles and pull the drawstrings out of old flour sacks. Me and my sisters would put wax on the strings to make them stronger and tie them to the poles.”

The worms came from the worm bed in the backyard.

“We’d breakup the ground and wet it a bit,” Flowers said. “We would sprinkle sifted meal on the bed to feed the worms. Worms were the best bait you could have.”

Flowers fished around the millpond, the creeks and river banks, “anywhere fish were.”

Back then, fishing was how children “played.”

“Not like today,” she said. “All they want do is stay on cell phones. They need to put them down and go fishing.”

Hattie Flowers was getting ready to go fishing at the Brundidge City Pond with great expectations of bringing home a stringer of fish.

She is a veteran fisherman at Pike County Kids Fishing Day. For more years than she can remember she took her grandchildren fishing.

“I have good memories of those days,” she said. “I was blessed to go fishing with my children and grandchildren. Sweet and fun memories.”