My grandfather was a saint. I am convinced that he had to be. I can’t say as I recall too many theological discussions with the man, nor do I ever recall hearing him pray. Oh, he went to church every Sunday and always had a little something in his pocket when the offering plate was passed his way but to actually call the man religious I think might be stretching things just a tad. I do seem to recall on more than one occasion where he invoked the name of the lord, but I think that was usually due to something my brother and I had done to elicit his heavenly pleas. No, my reasons for believing in his canonization are entirely different. He taught me how to fish.
There were very few things in his life after my grandmother and golf that he enjoyed more than fishing. He was old school, too. A little fourteen foot aluminum boat with a 3 horsepower Johnson outboard motor and live bait, either minnows or crickets, sometimes worms, and a cane pole. He had an enormous tackle box and several really nice rod and reel combos but I’m not sure I ever saw him use them. When Papaw put on his straw hat and grabbed his trusty cane pole you could bet your last nickel that we would be having fish for dinner.
When I was a little kid, we had a camp on a little lake about 30 minutes outside of our hometown. Some of my most fond childhood memories involve weekends spent at that camp. I can recall my grandfather waking up early in the mornings and preparing his things for a day of fishing. He could stay gone for hours. My brother and I always wondered just what he did out on the lake for so long. Late in the afternoon we would hear that little motor chugging it’s way back to the dock in front of the camp and my brother and I would run down to meet him, eyes wide with excitement. “Did you catch any?” we would always yell to him long before he could hear us. We’d repeat the question five or six times before he would finally look up at us and without saying a word hold up a stringer full of the tastiest looking crappie we had ever seen. I always kind of felt he heard us the first time but enjoyed making us squirm in anticipation.
I’ll never forget the first time he asked if my brother and I wanted to go with him. We both were screaming, “Yes, yes!!” before he even finished the question. He was finally going to teach me how to fish. Until this summer, I have never fully been able to appreciate what he did for me so many years ago. You see, I took my kids on their first fishing trip just a few weeks ago. I feel I must give credit where credit is due. My brother-in-law, an avid angler, called and asked if I wanted to take the kids fishing with him. Had he not suggested it I probably would have delayed our first fishing trip for, oh I don’t know, another 10 or 15 years. The thought of spending the day untangling spools of four pound test and avoiding the inevitable hooked finger had until now not been all that appealing to me. The sheer fact that he had suggested we fish the private pond of an old family friend made the idea at least palatable. It was a small pond, stocked, and seldom fished. It would be like shooting monkeys in a barrel.
How does the old saying go? Give a child a fish and feed him for a day. Teach a child to fish and you had better have the patience of Job and a good set of hemostats because someone’s getting hooked. We prepared for our fishing trip with a little trip of our own to the local sporting goods store. If a kids gonna fish they are gonna need a rod. I remember my first fishing rod, a Zebco 33. Man, that thing was durable. You could completely submerge the rod and reel, I had problems with the concept of casting, and it would still function perfectly. I had no idea how the fishing industry had changed. The manufacturers are still the same, Zebco, Shakespeare and the likes but the rod/reel combos are definitely not. For my wee anglers we settled on Barbie, Bugs Bunny and Sponge Bob Square Pants. Thank God hooks, sinkers and bobbers are essentially the same.
The kids’ new rods even came with casting plugs so I felt a bit of practice was in order. We lined up in the drive and the lessons began. Quick studies, my kids for in what seemed only a matter of minutes they had the general concept down. They were casting as well as you could expect any three, five and six year old kid with 10 minutes of intense instruction. Then came the phone call. I only had to leave their sides for as long as it takes a person to say, “I’m sorry, you must have the wrong number.” When I got back my three year old was trying to explain to me how her reel doesn’t work right, fishing lined tangled so tightly around her legs she could barely walk the pole dragging some twenty feet behind her. In fact, fishing line was everywhere. It was in the trees, wrapped around the birdbath, the dog was even snared. It looked like one of those spiderweb scenes from a Halloween display. No way this much chaos ensued in the time it took me to sneeze. It was going to be a long day at the pond.
First stop on the way to the pond was the bait store. It took Zoë all of thirty seconds to find the minnow well. “Dad, it’s full of fish. We don’t need to go fishing, we can just buy them.” It took quite a bit of explaining that we were actually going after bigger game. We settled on a nice selection of wax worms and on the road we set out, again. After only three more stops, coffee and juice, “I’m hungry”, and gas (Why I couldn’t get all of those in one stop is still beyond me. Anyone who has ever traveled with kids can surely relate.) we arrived at the pond. I had never fished the pond but had heard all of the stories. It was the perfect spot for a kid to learn how to fish and fall in love with the sport.
In a matter of minutes lines were set and bobbers began plunging beneath the surface of the water. I can still remember the first fish I ever caught. I remember the exhilaration at seeing that bobber disappear beneath the water, the sheer excitement of feeling the tugging on the end of the line and watching that old cane pole bend. The ultimate feeling of having conquered the world when that tiny fish came flopping out of the water and continued it’s dance at my feet. I had thought those feelings were lost forever, buried deep in the recesses of my mind beneath all of the muck that accompanies maturity. I’m happy to report they are still there, alive as they ever were renewed in the squeals of jubilation from my children as they proclaimed, “I got one!”
The pond certainly lived up to it’s billing. My kids all caught fish, many fish. By the day’s end my boy, Zane had even started to bait his own hook. Can I unequivocally say that I have made little anglers of them all? Probably not. At least not yet. My hope, though is that I have planted enough seeds there to spark an interest that will continue to grow. I know at least that they had an absolute blast and to my great relief, the only thing that got hooked that day were fish.
Ooh!! Yea!! Dinosaur World. Dinosaur World. Dinosaur World!! Dinoworl! (Zella and Zander chimed in–they had no idea what Dinosaur World was. They were just following the crowd. Typical!)
