[Cover Photo by PublicDomainImages on Pixabay]
One day I got home from school and found that my little brother and dad weren’t at home. Mom said they’d gone to a dentist or doctor appointment. What I didn’t know was that afterwards, Dad took David to a trout pond and let him catch up a storm of fish. I was stunned when they walked into the kitchen with a giant stringer filled with beautiful, rainbow trout. I was also quite mad for an 8 year old.
“Why didn’t I get to go,” I demanded!
You didn’t have a doctor appointment and I’ll take you another day,” was the response.
Dad didn’t seem to understand how much I liked fishing and how humiliating it was to have my little brother show up with more fish than I’d caught in the last six months. So, I wasn’t about to let him forget it. I reminded him of his promise to take me out of school on a fishing trip for months after that (even into the next school year). Then the day came.
“A friend of mine with a boat has offered to take us out to the lake Tim, but we’ll have to get up really early.”
I don’t know if he thought that was going to temper my excitement or willingness to go, but he was sorely mistaken if he thought that. I understand why he might have thought it. You see, I am a night owl. I didn’t like being told to go to bed and couldn’t fall asleep anyway when I was a kid. I would smuggle flashlights and books, magazines and comics into bed and read until late into the night. So, naturally, I was very hard to get out of bed in the morning and oh so pleasant to deal with during breakfast and on the way to school. None of that mattered when it came to fishing though.
I was willing to wake up early, do chores (stunning that they didn’t realize that) and pretty much do anything and tolerate everything if a fishing trip was involved. So, while I remember it being painful to wake up for the trip, I got up when he came and shook me, got dressed and dutifully went to the car in the pitch black dark with little said until we got to the lake.
The two adults had picked a glorious morning to go out. Glorious, that is, if you like being out on a boat, in the open air with very, very cold drizzle (on and off rain too), grey skies, wind and waves to start your morning. I can’t say that I appreciated that so much, but we were fishing.
Did I mention that this trip was with my dad not my mom? That meant we were not properly dressed for the cold. I think I had a thin windbreaker on, but it was not sufficient for the circumstances. So, as the fog came and went and the drizzle shifted back and forth from light rain to drizzle, we all eventually became quite soaked. Exposure to the environment was becoming a problem.
My dad’s friend had packed a small, dirty rag towel which I was given when the rain let up a little. We decided to pull over in a cove and start a small fire to warm up. That worked and we did get our clothes to dry out. The wind and rain let up and we continued to fish. Dad and his friend caught about 20 fish between them, but I’d had no luck.
Now, they were using full sized rods and I was using a tiny pocket fisherman type rod and reel. It was foolish really and dad should have encouraged (insisted) that I learn to use a bigger rod, but there I was with a rod that could cast about five feet (thus very limited opportunity radius). I’d switched to and tried about every lure in the tackle box, but again, I wasn’t casting more than five feet out. I hadn’t gotten so much as a nibble.
We’d been out for nine or more hours and it was getting late, but I wasn’t quitting. Ben suggested we troll a little. That was a good thing for me as I could let the line out quite far and actually have a fighting chance to catch something despite the limited rod and reel I was using. It worked. Despite being, cold, tired, and frustrated, I hooked a good one. He fought me pretty good (remember I was eight) and it took a lot of effort with that light, little tackle set up I had, but I got him in. A nice pike about 14-16 inches. I was so happy! I hadn’t gotten skunked.
I overheard the two grownups discussing that they were happy I’d caught one too. “He never quit and never complained about not catching one,” Ben said.
“I was pretty pleased with his patience too,” said Dad.
I shook my head, of course I never quit. I was fishing! I didn’t like the cold, the lack of proper gear, the rain or the wind, but that wasn’t about to stop me. I may have been eight, but I knew who I was. I was, and still am, a fisherman.
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