Читать книгу Reeling In Time with Fish Tales - Brian E. Smith - Страница 8

The parking lot was empty, except for our car. Covered picnic tables dotted the lakeshore. Several uncovered tables were clustered around a nearby small playground area. Seagulls had gathered around a covered picnic table on a point of land where the lake cut back into a cove. Most of the gulls lay on the ground, either sleeping or preening, while others stood amongst them. I didn’t know if they were on guard or just looking for some mischief, but they looked, to me, as if they were up to something. A few had perched on the gazebo roof. From first look, they appeared to be painters, patiently painting the roof, one white spot at a time.

Dad starting unloading the fishing gear from the back seat of the car. On top of the fishing tackle and bait, he placed the two fishing rods we were to use.

“Champ, always load the fishing poles last, they’ll be on top of the rest of the stuff and are less likely to get broke,” Dad gave a quick lesson.

He leaned the fishing rods against the car. His was a six-foot spinning combination. It looked fancy, especially, next to my fishing rod, a short stick with a pistol grip and a Zebco® 33 spin/cast reel. He said that style of reel had caught more fish than all other type reels combined. It looked like an old hand-crank pencil sharpener; he called it a push-button. Dad had given me the push-button the week before. He took me in the yard to practice fish that same day.

“How am I going to catch a fish in the yard, Dad?”

“Champ, really you’re not.”

“Then… why am I fishing in the yard?”

“You’re going to practice casting, not fishing.”

“Dad, people will see me in the yard with a fishing pole and think I’m stupid.”

“Don’t worry about what people think because most of the time they don’t think things through in the first place.”

“I’ll still look silly, won’t I?” Dad smiled, and then moved the practice to the back yard.

In the back yard, Dad explained the reel as he got it ready for practice fishing. He pushed the button in the back of the reel, releasing the fishing line. To keep the line from going down inside a little hole in the front of the reel, there was a piece of plastic attached to the end of the line. He pulled twice as much line out of the reel as the rod was long, and then turned the handle a quarter turn forward. The reel made a clicking noise, and that action stopped the line from coming out any more. He cut the piece of plastic off the end of the line with his pocketknife, putting that in his pocket. Then he took the end of the fishing line and threaded it through each of the hoops—he called the hoops the eyes of the fishing pole—and out the last one, which he called a tip. After all of that, he tied a 3/8 oz. bell sinker to the line end. The sinker looked like a tiny bell made of lead.

“Champ, did you see how all that worked?”

“Sure, Dad.” That wasn’t the truth, but I figured I’d learn how to do it on my own later.

“Champ, wind the sinker so it hangs about six inches from the tip of the pole.” He showed me as he went through the motions. “Then push the button in and hold it in with your thumb. Keep the rod straight with your arm, bringing it over your shoulder to about the ten o’clock position.” He stopped his arm and said, “Right like this.”

I acted as if I wasn’t watching all the way, but I was paying full attention out of the corner of my eye.

“Quickly move your arm and swinging the rod forward to about one o’clock, let go of the button, like this.” When he did that, the sinker sailed across the yard and my head snapped around to watch it fly. It was a small baseball on a string!

“Let me try it, Dad!”

“Watch me, one more time first.” Either he liked doing it, or he was just showing off, because the next cast went further than the first by a long shot.

I couldn’t wait for him to reel in that chunk of lead to give me a turn. Finally, after forever, he gave me the rod. In the blink of an eye, I thumped myself in the butt with the sinker on the back cast, and then flung the rod several feet in front of me during the forward cast. I had let go of the button and the rod, which then bounced and cart wheeled across the ground. I rubbed my butt as I ran to the rod to see how badly broken it was. Embarrassed and ashamed, I picked up the rod. Except for some clumps of dirt and grass, the rod and reel were fine.

“Dad, this thing is bullet proof!”

He smiled, “But it will sink.”

Those words calmed me down. He told me to slow down and add speed as I learned. Ten or fifteen minutes later, I was flying the sinker all by myself. Each cast being better than the last!

While I practiced, Dad got a metal garbage can lid. He put it on the ground ten feet in front of me.

“Let me see the rod, Champ.” I gave it to him and on his first cast, he plinked the sinker off the lid. “Now, you do it.” Nine shots later, the sinker plinked the rim of the lid. Davy Crocket on the fishing pole I was!

“Now, do it three more times,” said Dad. The last two hits, I made in a row. He walked up and moved the lid five feet further away, saying, “Hit that three times.” After I did that, he moved the lid five more feet away, and after the lid was thirty feet away, he left me on my own.

An hour later, the sinker sailed across the yard, way past Dad’s longest shot. It sped high over the chain link fence, crashed through the leaves of the trees behind the house, ricocheted off some large branches, slammed against an exposed hickory root, and tumbled along the ground into some leaves. Wow, I’m already so much better at this than Dad, I thought, until I reeled in a ten-foot section of fishing line with no sinker attached to it.

“Dad, the line broke and the sinker is lost in the woods.”

“Champ, anything but water that touches that line puts peewee cuts in it. The grass is nicking away at your fishing string with each cast. Feel the end of the line with your fingers. Do you feel how rough it feels between your fingers?”

“Yes, sir” and I nodded.

“Check your line every now and then, and when it feels rough, cut out the bad line and re-tie with fresh smooth line.” He tied on another sinker, showing me a simple overhand knot, and gave me two extra sinkers to put in my pocket along with his pocketknife.

By the time we finally got to the lake, I was more than ready to cast anything other than that sinker, such as a lure, bait, or whatever, all the way across the lake, just to impress Dad.

Once the fishing rods were out of the car, Dad pulled out a knapsack that had our lunch, drinks, a loaf of stale, white bread, and some other stuff. The bait came next. The cricket tube contained a few dozen crickets crawling from one end to the other. The worm bucket was a three-pound coffee can half-filled with garden soil and crumbled leaves with a couple of handfuls of fat earthworms mixed in. Finally, a good-sized Plano tackle box.

The earthworms we dug up from our garden. Dad told me the best worms were under the weed patches, so be sure to dig there. It took only ten turns of the shovel to produce several dozen wiggle-worms. It was cool to dig up the worms the day before we went fishing, but what was really neat was Dad’s worm bucket.

He ran both ends of the coffee can through a can opener to form a metal tube. He put a plastic lid at each end to close both ends. Each lid he punched with plenty of holes using a nail. Toward one open end of the can, he punched two holes across from each other using an ice pick and a Phillips head screwdriver, to open up the hole. Afterwards, he strung a section of small rope through from the outside in and tied an overhand knot on the inside bitter ends to form a simple rope handle.

“Don’t swing the bucket around, son, the bottom lid will fall out,” he cautioned.

“Dad, why did you knock out both ends of the coffee can and not just the top?”

“Do worms dig up or dig down?” Dad asked.

“Down, right?”

“You’re right, Champ, but in this magic can the worms will always crawl to the top on one side or the other.” He didn’t fool me with the magic can bit, but Dad always had a reason for doing things.

“Dad, tell me why you told me the best worms are found underneath the garden weeds?”

He smiled and said, “There is more than one way to weed a garden.”

Four days before going fishing, Dad took me out to the garden; he was toting two large Russet potatoes. He took his pocketknife and cut both potatoes into thin slices, giving me a handful of slices, saying, “Put a slice or two under every old board, brick, block, garbage can, garbage can lid, and especially under the sheets of plastic we used to cover the tomatoes.”

Dad’s gone nuts having me hide potato slices like Easter eggs, but I did as told. This was so strange I was afraid to ask. Once I hid the potato slices, we walked away, no words about it. I was really confused.

The day before we went fishing, after we dug the worms, we stood in the garden.

“This is a cricket tube, son.” It was a cylinder made of hardware cloth, about twelve inches long and four inches in diameter. One end tapered to a half-inch funnel hole with a cork in the end. To keep from dropping and losing the cork, it had a knotted string stapled on the end loosely tied back to the tube. The other end of the tube was blunt. Dad showed me that it had a sleeved cap to secure that end made of the same hardware cloth as the tube.

“Is that some kind of cricket trap, Dad?”

“No, this is where you put them after you catch them.”

“Catch ’em? I don’t see any to catch”

“Look under that garbage can lid where you put the tater slices a few days ago.” I flipped the lid over and black and brown popcorn started hopping up off the ground. I took two quick steps backwards and heard Dad and Mom laugh.

“Mom?”

She had snuck in behind us and said, “Grab ’em, Babe, grab ’em.” I jumped in like a chicken on a June bug. I swatted at one, missing. Then one hopped on me; I grabbed myself and it hopped off. Finally, I slapped one to the ground.

“I got one, Dad!” I picked up my hand to find cricket goop. The rest got away. I turned to Dad with a forlorn look.

“Champ, you got to be ready, sitting on go when you flip the lid. In addition, you have to pick a target. In other words, don’t get distracted by a whole bunch of jumping crickets, pick out one and go for it, but do it gently. Remember, you’re a giant compared to tiny crickets. Do that once more; remember you only have two hands, so most of the crickets will escape to go fishing another day. I’ll help also so we’ll have plenty of crickets to fish with.”

“What about Mom, she can help, right?”

Dad smiled, “I don’t think so, Champ.”

The crickets were fun to catch. Mom seemed to have the most fun just watching us cricket-cowboys. The crickets hopped. We hopped. I paid attention to what Dad said. I was getting good at catching two crickets each flip-over. In a competitive spirit, I tried to match Dad in the number I caught, but it became obvious that he had done this a time or two before. In half an hour we flipped over everything I’d hid a potato slice under. We had a good number of crickets in our tube.

“Champ, did you notice the little notches missing from the edges of the tater slices?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Crickets like to eat potatoes and we used potatoes as bait. I’m not as crazy as you thought, am I?” He had read my mind!

Dad slid the cricket cage in the top of the knapsack before slinging it across one shoulder. As he bent over to get the tackle box, I grabbed both fishing rods and the worm bucket.

“Which way, Dad?” He struck out walking toward the point where the birds were. When we were still a good way off, some of the gulls began to call and screech. The ones lying on the ground got up. Strangely, some of the ones on top of the gazebo commenced to paint. When we were within a stone’s throw, the entire flock flew off. By the sound, they didn’t like us breaking up their party.

I started running. “Champ! Don’t….” The bottom of the worm bucket fell out. “You can’t run with the worm bucket.”

“I know, Dad, I forgot.” We scooped up the worms and soil, putting the bucket back whole.

On the point where the gulls were, Dad set up camp on the picnic table, under the gazebo. He took the worm bucket from me and set it on the table, doing the same thing with the fishing rods. Next, he pulled the cricket cage from the knapsack setting it beside the worm bucket. The loaf of stale white bread, he put at the other end of the table over the top of a few sheets of old newspaper he brought. The next items were two cans of whole yellow corn and a hand turn can opener.

“I hope that’s not our lunch, Dad.”

“Just fish food, Champ, fish food.” I was watching intently, because Dad had an agenda of some sort.

“Come on,” he said, grabbing the two cans of corn and the can opener and moving to the end of the table with the bread. He spread three sheets of newspaper out to form an eighteen by twenty-four-inch rectangle. He set the cans of corn on the windward corners to keep the slight breeze from blowing the papers. He took the top eight slices of bread, including the heel, and put them in the middle of the paper.

“Son, get up on the table and help me do this.” I did as he asked.

“When are we going to fish, Dad?”

“Give me five minutes; we’re making a fish-call! Here’s what to do…” He took a slice of bread between both hands and began rubbing his hands back and forth. Mini-crumbs rained down like snow. “Rub it lightly so you won’t get big clumps,” he warned.

Four minutes later, we had a pile of tiny breadcrumbs in the middle of the newspaper. Dad rolled the paper into a cone and folded over the pointed end several times.

“Hold this straight up, Champ,” he told me as he took a can of corn and the can opener. He cut the lid so it was hanging on to the can by a thread of metal. He drained the corn juice on the ground. “Let’s switch.” He gave me the corn can and took the cone of newspaper with the breadcrumbs. We walked down to the left side of the point together. By snapping his wrist sharply, he scattered breadcrumbs five to ten feet off the bank as we walked along the water’s edge until the breadcrumbs ran out. We backtracked along the shore doing the same thing with the corn in a more hit and miss pattern. Dad used the lid as a choke to keep all the corn from going out in one toss.

Some pretty white ducks were swimming toward us when we were putting out the corn.

“You have to use a fish-call that sinks quickly, otherwise you’re putting out a duck-call, and a duck-call, when fishing, can lead to trouble,” Dad told me. The ducks swam around where we had tossed out the fish-call, but soon lost interest when there was nothing for them.

“When are we going to start fishing, Dad?” I repeated.

“Let’s go get the fishing poles and bait; I’ll explain the fishing rigs while the fish-call works.” He picked up my fishing pole from the picnic table. “Do you know what this is and what it does?” He pointed to a pencil-shaped piece of Styrofoam pinned to the fishing line.

“It’s the thing that lets you know when you have a bite, right?” I asked.

“You’re headed in the right direction.” He went on to tell me by many names such as cork, float, bobber, tip up, and even a strike indicator by fly fishermen. He explained that bobbers come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, depending on their application, and always to use the smallest bobber necessary. However, the important thing to remember is that they all do the same job, and that is to keep the fish bait suspended in the water at the depth you want.

“How do you set the depth, Dad?” I asked.

He explained that most fixed bobbers have the fishing line pass through the middle and use a wood or plastic peg to pinch the line and bobber together. He showed me the peg on my bobber, and how by removing the peg, the bobber could slide up or down to change depth.

“Today, we’re going to be fishing close to the bank. The water is three to four feet deep, so we set the bobbers to keep our bait two feet or so below the water.”

“This is called a split shot,” as he pointed to a BB bump of lead pinched on the fishing line six inches above the hook. “Son, what does it do?”

“It makes the bait sink, Dad,” I said with confidence.

“You’re right, but it also makes the end of your line heavier so you can cast further. Champ, if you put too much lead under your float, what will happen?”

It took me some time before my eyes popped wide open, “Sink!” He gave me a high five.

“Hooks are important, Champ.” He told me hooks come in more shapes and sizes than bobbers do. “We’ll talk all about hooks later, but in a nutshell…,” he said, “you need to create balance. You have to consider the bait you’re using and the fish you’re after or most likely to catch. For example, today, we’re fishing with small bait for hand-sized bream, so the hook needs to be on the small side. Keep in mind, bream tend to inhale the bait deep, so a long shank hook will help with hook removal.” He pointed to the hook he tied on our lines “Champ, this is an Aberdeen #8, it is strong and small enough to catch bream, yet light enough so the bait we’re putting on remain alive and act natural.” I know I had a glazed look on my face when Dad said, “Champ, I just planted a seed in your noggin so one day you’ll figure it out without realizing you had even given it thought. Just remember balance.”

Dad cut the lid off the other can of corn before we walked down to the shore with the worm bucket, cricket cage, and tackle box. We set up on the left side of the bank where Dad started the fish-call. He flipped the worm bucket upside down, taking off the lid. Sure enough, the worms were on top. He ran my hook twice through a fat worm.

“Go ahead and toss it out.” When he dropped that green flag, I fired off about thirty feet of line from my reel toward the middle of the lake. With a slight smile and nod he said, “Been practicing, I see!” I smiled back and said nothing, just glad he noticed. He pinned a worm on his hook, flipped it just ten feet from the bank and the bobber sank.

“Too much sinker on your line, Dad,” I grinned when I said it. He pulled a fat bream out. My face spoke for me.

“You over-shot the fish, Champ. The fish-call brought them to us. Reel yours in about twenty feet.” I did it with speed and my bobber sank. “Set the hook, Champ!” I heard him say as I ran up the bank past him. I stopped at the picnic table. That poor fish had left a slime-trail in the grass for the first fifteen feet before it ran out of slime.

“I got ’em, I got ’em!” I squealed, jumping as if I were a gold medalist of some sort, raising the fishing pole in the air, Stanley Cup style. Dad came along in a minute, fish in one hand, fishing pole in the other. He dropped both down, grabbing me up.

“Way to go, Champ!” We celebrated that bream as if the International Game Fish Association (IGFA) were honoring my catch!

Dad and I walked back to the lake with our fish still dangling from our fishing lines. Dad pulled a nylon stringer from his tackle box. The stringer was just a heavy cord with a metal ring on one end and a four-inch metal spike crimped to the other. He unhooked his fish first. While he still had his fish in hand, he slipped the metal spike underneath the gill plate, out the fish’s mouth, and ran the spike back through the ring to secure his fish to the end of the stringer. Holding the spike end of the stringer, he tossed his fish into the lake, dropped the spike end, and stepped on it, holding it solidly to the ground.

“Champ, let me show you something.” I came up to him with my fish that was barely flipping and worn out. A foot above the fish, Dad pinched the line between his thumb and forefinger on his right hand. Using his left hand, he formed a circle around the line with his thumb and forefinger; he then slid his left hand down the line and let it form over the fish until he had a firm grasp on the fish with just its head sticking out from his hand. “Did you see how that worked?”

“Dad, you just grabbed the fish; what’s the big deal?”

“Watch.” He let go of the fish. “Did you see that?” He pointed out that when he let go, the fish stuck its dorsal (top), pectoral (side), and pelvic (bottom) fins out. “Those fins are sharp as needles; they’re a defense mechanism to protect the fish. As long as the fish doesn’t have teeth, sliding the fish through your hand like this—he did it again—brushes the fins down so they won’t poke you.”

“It’s always something new, isn’t it, Dad?” I sighed.

“Let’s do some more fishing!” And we did! The game was on, no more explaining things. Well, almost. He told me to reel the fish in and not take it for a sprint up the bank again.

Dad pinned a couple more worms on our hooks and we couldn’t finish a sentence before one cork would be yanked down, then the next. It went on and on as long as there was bait in the water. Some of the fish were big enough to go on the stringer, but most were a bit smaller and we tossed them back. It didn’t matter what size the fish was; every one of them was fun to catch.

“What about those crickets, Dad?”

“You’re right, Champ, I’ve been a touch lazy. We went through the trouble to get them and bring them. Let me show you how to use them correctly. When I have a bird in the hand, it is hard to go for the one in the bush, Champ. The worms were catching fish so well, I kept using them.” The cricket tube was lying next to the worm bucket. “Quick, let me show you something.” I could tell by his tone and action that this wasn’t going to be a long drawn out lesson. Dad had fishing fever.

“Pull the cork, shake one of the critters down the funnel into the palm of your hand, then loosely close your hand around the cricket, turn the tube pointy end up, and replace the cork. Always replace the cork or you’ll end up on a cricket rodeo. Shake your hand with the cricket in it toward the thumb to motivate the cricket, between your thumb and forefinger. Champ, this takes feel; feel that comes with practice, not explanation.”

He jostled the insect about in his hand until it lay face down on his forefinger underneath his thumb. “Come close, you have to see what I’m doing.” I leaned over his hand, watching him take the hook with his other hand, turn it sideways and slip it forward, toward the head, underneath a hard flap that covered what I would call the cricket’s neck. “That part is called the collar.” He guided the hook halfway under the collar, then turned it up and gently wiggled it until it punctured all the way through. Using the fishing line, he lifted the cricket away from his hand. The cricket squirmed in the air, firmly attached to the hook.

“Champ, that cricket doesn’t know it’s hung on a hook. It’s not hurt and it will behave naturally. Whenever possible, hook live bait so the hook does the least amount of damage and the live bait acts natural. Generally, natural action produces more bites.”

“Imagine if you will, Mom sends us to Browns’ Turkey Farm to pick out a turkey for Thanksgiving. Given the choice of all the birds, would you pick out a big, strutting, pretty turkey or would you pick the dirty one, limping along the fence line?”

“Dad, I don’t like to think about hurting a turkey, but I get what you’re saying.”

“Champ, think about all the effort we put into collecting the live bait and getting it here in good shape; why would we go through all that trouble just to kill it right before we need it most?”

“Dad, there is more to this fishing thing than I realized, isn’t there? There’s always something more than meets the eye. The guys on TV make it look easy, hauling in fish after fish.”

“It’s the same way with anything you’re going to do well, you not only have to know what you’re doing, but why you’re doing it the way you are.”

Together we flipped our crickets into the lake. You could see the crickets slowly sink. Their little legs paddled as they went down. Flash! A tea-saucer sized something sped by, took my bait before my eyes, and yanked my rod tip down before I had a chance to do anything.

“Reel, Champ, reel!” I was on it.

“It’s a big one, Dad!” That fish darted left, right, up and down, and then again. At times, I couldn’t reel; at times, I forgot to reel. Somehow, after what seemed forever, I managed to get the fish close enough so Dad could get hold of the line, bringing it in the rest of the way.

“Dad, that’s the biggest one!” The bream weighed almost a pound. I jumped in Dad’s arms “I love crickets!” Over Dad’s shoulder, I noticed a fish flopping on the shore. I hadn’t noticed, but he had caught a fish while I was dancing with mine. It was bigger than mine was, but he was happier for me.

He took my fish off, put another cricket on my hook, and sent me fishing. By the time he had his on the stringer, I had another bream on the bank. It was a good one, too.

“Champ, we got twelve or fifteen fish on the stringer. I think that is plenty for dinner. Let’s start throwing them back.”

“I don’t care, Dad; I’m having fun just catching them.” We spent the next hour or so feeding the fish crickets until we ran out of crickets.

“You ready, Champ?”

“Sure, Dad.”

“Give the rest of them a treat; sling this corn in the water.” Handful after handful, I peppered the water with corn. I wondered why we didn’t use it when fish started to come in and eat the corn as it sank. Oh well, at least I found out the corn was good bait, too.

The last two handfuls I scattered around the picnic table to make amends with the gulls. A flock of gulls hovered around as Dad and I picked up our stuff from the table. He carried most of the gear and I had the fishing poles and worm bucket.

“Dad, I think the birds are still ticked off; one just painted my head!” He wiped my head off with his handkerchief, laughing all the while.

At the car, Dad popped the trunk, putting the fish in a five-gallon bucket he had inside it. He put the rest of the fishing gear in the trunk, too. In the front seat, he tossed the knapsack, and then he arranged the fishing poles in the back seat.

“Hop in, Champ!” We had our lunches of lukewarm Coke, Fritos, and PB&Js in the car on the ride back to the house, while I gave a recap of every bream I’d caught.

“Do you remember that one, Dad, that took my fourth worm and ran to the middle of the…?”

At home, Dad told me to dump the worms back in the garden. While I was doing that, he carried the bucket of fish to the backyard picnic table under the maple tree. Then he carried a scrap piece of plywood to the table, while dragging the garden hose with a nozzle behind. I was waiting at the picnic table when he came back around with a shovel, sharp knife, fish scaler, and a big plastic bowl.

“Jump down, Champ.” As I did, he wet the table and board with the hose and took the fish from the bucket, sliding them off the stringer onto the table. The bucket, he sat on the bench next to the plywood.

“Champ, today you just get to watch, but in short time this is going to be your job, understand?”

“Yes, sir.” I had my hind-end up on the table, mopping up some water with the seat of my pants, watching every move he made. First, he took the fish scaler and scraped the scales from each fish. There were thirteen bream. Scales flipped around everywhere, some even got in our hair! Second, he cut a semi-circle around the pectoral fin, toward the head before cutting the head off. He put the heads in the five-gallon bucket beside him.

I thought, This isn’t girl stuff, for sure!

Third, he ran his thumb in the body cavity to remove the guts, which he put in the bucket, too. Last, he rinsed each fish with the garden hose and put the cleaned fish in the big plastic bowl.

“Did you see how that worked, Champ?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now, take these fish guts and bury them at least a foot deep in the garden. I’ll take these fish and knife to your mother. When you’re done with that, wash down the table and bucket, and put the plywood and hose up, OK?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Be sure to turn the water off, too.”

By the time I finished, Dad had already put the rest of the fishing tackle away. He was busy doing something so I watched TV, drifting off quickly. Mom woke me up for supper.

Mom had put most of a bag of corn meal in a paper sack, then she’d drop in three or four fish at a time, she’d shake the bag until the corn meal covered the fish. She eased them into a cast-iron pot, half-filled with hot peanut oil, cooking them until they floated up, golden brown. With tongs, she put them on an oblong platter, layered in a few sheets of newspaper with a top layer of paper towels. On the side, she made French fries, coleslaw, and home-canned green beans. It was a heavenly smell.

We held hands as Dad said grace. I was happy he didn’t go into a long prayer. After Amen, my hand shot to the fish platter. I grabbed the top fish, fingers telling me it was the last one out of the hot oil.

As I juggled it back to my plate, Dad said, “Hot, Champ?”

“Yes, sir, but I just couldn’t wait!”

“Honey, eat it slowly, so you won’t choke on a bone,” Mom told me. I watched and did as Dad did. He used his fork to work along the backbone, and then flipped one side of the fish over to expose the meat. Steam rose off the fish. He picked the meat away from the skin. They were so delicious. I ate three fish. I believed every piece I ate I’d caught. I told Mom about the whole day at the lake, even told her about the bird painting me.

“For goodness sake, go take a bath!” Mom said, making a face.

“Good night, Dad.”

“Good night, Champ.”

“Thanks for taking me fishing today.”

“We’ll do it again soon, OK?”

“Sounds good to me.”

He didn’t know it, but that first fishing step directed me on a long, joyful journey, which has enriched my life with adventure, experience, knowledge, friendship, and love.

Thanks again, Dad. Today is my forty-seventh birthday and the thrill of fishing has lasted, getting better with each new trip. The memory of that first Push-Button and my dad’s fishing lessons will be a treasure in my mind, always.