He can’t remember the first time he fished, nor can he remember a time when he didn’t.

Through 90 years, most of Harold Ensley’s earliest memories are of running barefoot across the virgin prairie, dodging cactus, prairie dog holes and rattlesnakes, toward the procession of pools known as Salt Creek in Lane County around 1920.

Wearing tattered bib-overalls, he spent hours watching simple twig bobbers, patiently waiting for small bullheads and dinky sunfish to bite. His fixation with fishing was so strong, his mother worried he’d never succeed in life.

She needn’t have worried.

Harold Ensley became the most legendary of Kansas sportsmen and a national fishing icon. His syndicated “The Sportsman’s Friend” entertained five generations of viewers.

Through it all, he was befriended by hall-of-fame ballplayers, billionaires and Hollywood’s heavy hitters.

“What I did was no big deal,” he said. “I just happened to be along at the right time.”

There’s no question the man has seen some remarkable times.

Valedictorian of the small Healy High class of 1930, Ensley worked stints at a Hutchinson business college and in minor league baseball before selling ads for a radio station in Joplin, Mo.

After decades of fishing, Harold Ensley, now 90, spends most of his leisure time gardening.

His broadcasting debut came about 60 years ago when the station’s sportscaster, Bill Grigsby — who would become a longtime radio voice of the Kansas City Chiefs — asked Ensley to broadcast a basketball game.

The experience came in handy in the mid-1940s, when an advertiser who had fished with Ensley asked him to do a radio show on angling. Moving to larger-market Kansas City, Ensley sold ads and did broadcasts of youth baseball and high school basketball. Ensley started an unpaid 15-minute fishing show on weekdays.

In the fall of 1953, Ensley was excited to sign on with KCMO-TV, agreeing to do a weekly 30-minute show that would air live. Six years later, “The Sportsman’s Friend,” was shipped to seven other Midwestern stations — still live, still new every week. So it went every week for 22 years.

Ensley’s cameras offered Midwestern living rooms their first look at what have since become legendary destinations.

But the need to get home weekly for the live shows kept things challenging.

Once Ensley drove to Winnipeg, then caught a flight to the Arctic. His return trip was delayed so long, he barely made it back to Kansas City in time.

“I think I made it with about 15 minutes before the show started, no fooling,” Ensley said. “As soon as the show was over, I got on an airplane, flew back to Winnipeg, got my car. I stopped at Crane Lake in Minnesota to shoot another picture.”

He taught Jimmy Stewart to cast at a motel swimming pool and fished with Henry Fonda in Wyoming at the 1963 premier of “Spencer’s Mountain.” Ensley also fished with Clint Eastwood, Clint Walker, Barbara Rhoades, Robert Fuller, Tennessee Ernie Ford and others.

Fishing trips with cast members from “Gunsmoke” and the “The Beverly Hillbillies” earned Ensley spots on both shows.

At the age of 88, Ensley ended the fishing show after its 48th season. In all, he’d done more than 5,000 radio shows and about 1,500 television programs.

A widower, Ensley spends a lot of time in his Overland Park back yard tending a sizable garden.

It’s a place that provides him with plenty of happiness.

“To be honest, I’d want to spend my last 24 hours in my garden, raising tomatoes,” Ensley said, looking up with a smile. “I’ve caught enough fish in my life.”