Fishing

Well It’s that time of the year when you see this mass exodus from the big cities, and in case you don’t read the papers, or you’re living under a rock, its not a terrorist attack, but the opening of fishing that brings them all up Hwy 10 and 94, heading for the lakes. Boats with enough electronics in them to make Microsoft blush will hit the water and three hundred dollar fishing rods with equally expensive reels will try to entice some wary walleye to a lure that looks good enough for even me to eat. I know when it comes to the fancy boats---I’m being a little facieses and it’s not true for everybody-- but some of the rigs I have seen, left me with my mouth hanging open. When you have to have a super duty truck to pull the rig—Lets face it; you got a lot of boat. The Vikings came from Norway, four hundred years ago in smaller boats.

My dad never owned a boat, but he and I, and maybe one other brother would go out to Wilders Resort on Sylvan Lake and rent one for a dollar a day. We had an old three horse Johnson motor that had the gas tank on top and if you wanted to go backwards you just turned the motor around. Dad would have a pocket full of White Owl cigars and it was hard to judge who smoked more, him or the motor. His old rusty lunch box would be full of liver sausage sandwiches and maybe some pickled herring, No beer or pop for him, just an old Mason jar full of well water to drink. But for us, as meager as it sounds, it didn’t get any better than that.

Fishing together with him is one of my favorite memories. It wasn’t the fish we caught that was important to me. The treat was I got to spend a whole day with my dad without working. My wife fills that niche for me now and outside of the fact she usually catches more fish than I, it’s still a good time. That’s what’s missing in so many peoples lives now days.  A time for fathers and sons, or daughters, or the whole family to sit down and fish together. I have a thirteen-year-old grandson who loves to fish but I’m not sure he will this year. You see his father and mother are both working two jobs just to keep their heads above water financially. It’s a hundred and fifty miles away to his house, but I might just have to go get him, it’s that important to me.

So, to all of the fisherman out there this weekend, whether it’s in a launch the size of a small house or an old tin boat with a leak in the stern. Whether it has a motor bigger than most cars, or an old Johnson like we had that smokes like a steam engine and has about the same power as my wife’s mixer, I wish for you a good catch and a safe trip, but most of all I wish that you make a memory that will have your son someday sitting down and writing about it-- and you know what? He’ll not remember the size of the boat, or if you caught any fish at all that day. He won’t remember if he fished with a Zebco, or a Garcia, or a cane pole. He’ll just remember the time he and his dad went fishing.