Gone Fishin' ... instead of just a wishin'.

My summers growing up were spent in Melbourne, Florida.  Dad worked at Patrick Air Force Base, very near Kennedy Space Center.   When my cousin Donald and his wife moved to Melbourne, I suddenly had the opportunity to do some serious ocean fishing.  We spent a lot of nights drowning bait at Sebastian Inlet off of A1A half way between Melbourne and Vero Beach.  Ocean fishing is fun, because you never know what is biting or what you might catch.  Most of the time was spent eating Chicken in  a Biscuit crackers and drinking Coca Cola, wishin’ we could get a bite.  Lots of folks on the nearby pier were eating and wishing also.  

  Fishing!   Not catching but fishing!   The latter was a big part of my life growing up, and I resolved a long time ago to be comfortable with that fact.  My father-in-law loves going turkey hunting because he mostly enjoys “calling them up.”  He does enjoy when he shoots a turkey, but its pure joy to generate a call that brings in the hens and a strutting tom.

My earliest memory of fishing is going with my dad fishing somewhere around Columbus.  It was early enough in my life that I paid little attention on the way, but was all out when we got to the lake.  He taught me how to cast an open-faced reel, bait my hook and take my fish off the hook.  One time (let me emphasize “ONE TIME”) he took the whole family fishing at the same lake.  He spent most of his time untangling line, baiting hooks and taking fish off of hooks.  We loved it, and Dad swore never to bring us all fishing at ONE TIME again.  That day is cemented in my memory because my Sugar Daddy pulled out one of my filings, which I thought was cool, but Mother did not.  I think that was the last time we all went fishing, and the last time Mother let me have a Black Cow or a Sugar Daddy.  I was relegated to Sugar Babies, which made no difference to me.

My family was avid watchers of Fisherman’s Lodge on WRBL when I was in elementary school.  We watched Rozell religiously every school morning with breakfast.  Ridley Bell and J.R. Richardson on Fisherman’s Lodge preceded breakfast and cartoons on Saturday mornings.  When we moved to the country and television reception via antenna was not good in Waverly Hall and Shiloh, we substituted Cousin Al on weekday mornings.  I can still hear that pedal-steel guitar that was his theme song.  My brother Teddy was actually on Fisherman’s Lodge once, and got a package of plastic worms for the bass he caught (large-mouthed or small-mouth, I can’t remember).   Ridley would always ask J.R., “How’s the fishin’ J.R.?”  And the reply was always , “Jumpin’ in the boat Ridley.  They’re jumpin' in the boat!”

Only once did I face being arrested for fishing.  My half-brother Chuck took me fishing a couple of times at Lake Miccosukee, Florida.  The first time we went was uneventful, except that I caught and released a couple of nice Large-mouth bass.  The second time we went was spur of the moment.  Chuck and I tried to rent a boat to go fishing, and the game warden pulled us aside to talk.  Chuck was a car salesman and a smooth talker.  Mother always said he could sell ice to Eskimos.  Unfortunately the Florida game warden wasn’t an Eskimo, and he didn’t need ice cubes.  When neither of us could produce a valid fishing license,  Chuck looked at the man and said dryly, “Actually I wasn’t going to fish.  I was going to drive the boat and let him fish.”  The game warden wasn’t amused, and neither was I.  We retreated to the car, and made the drive back to Thomasville.  Upset?  Angry?  If you knew Chuck like I did, you knew he would throw you under the bus if it would extricate you both from a situation.

One particular night we were blessed to get on a run of Red Fish from one of the rocky points south of the inlet.  Not before or since have I had so much fun fishing and catching.  All of our fish ran 3-5 pounds, and took the bait as soon as it hit the water.  The rock point was so narrow, we had to slit the throats of the fish to keep them from jumping back in the water.  The fish were in a feeding frenzy, and we were in a catching frenzy.  As I knelt to slit the throat of a 6-pound Red Fish, he flipped, moving my fillet knife to slice a gash between my left thumb and index.   I corrected my aim and sliced his throat cleanly.  A delicate, white wrinkled hand appeared over my right shoulder with a traditional, ladies embroidered handkerchief.  I slapped it on the cut, re-baited my hook, and went back to the Red Fish.  I still remembered the delicate, multicolored flowers embroidered into the fabric.  I kept that handkerchief for many years … without the blood stains. I can still taste the salt spray from the surf and hear the cry of Herring Gulls circling overhead, excited about the fishing frenzy. When we packed up to go home the helpful lady had left without a good bye and her dainty handkerchief.

Sometimes fishing can change your life, or at least your perspective.  In December of my senior year of high school such was the case.  We lived in a house out on Halawakee Creek off the Chattahoochee River.  In the winter time the water level dropped for maintenance on the dam.  I had watched an old man three houses down walk out each day and cast toward a submerged rock marked by a buoy and reel in a bass.  He would release it and go back in the house.  With the water level down that rock was visible and there was still plenty of water around it for a bass to languish in the sun on the cold winter days.  I leaped out of bed one Saturday morning, grabbed my rod & reel, and crept out the back door and down the shoreline to where I could cast to that rock.  After 5 casts with a plastic worm with spinner, I had no bites and my feet were freezing.   I changed to a surface lure, and decided to take a few more casts.   With the first splash there was an eruption of water, and a 5-6 pound Large-mouth Bass came out of the water with my lure in his mouth.  He shook his head from side-to-side and tossed my lure away.  With a loud splash he returned to the murky pool surrounding the rock.

I was motionless, speechless and very cold.  To say I was disheartened would be to say Curly of the Three Stooges had male pattern baldness.  A silence settled back over our little cove off Halawakee Creek.  I reeled my lure into shore, and turned toward our house.  There on the shore below our dock stood my stepfather, Howard. We had butted heads for many years, and had a tenuous relationship even though he and my mother had been married for almost 13 years.  Howard waved, and called to me, “Yep, I saw it!  Come on let’s get some breakfast.”  I smile spread across my face, as I pulled my shoulders back and walked down the shore to our house.  My relationship with Howard changed that day.  We began to work together on construction jobs, and he began to treat me like a man instead of a boy.

Fishin’ is fishin’.  Catchin’ is catchin’.  Catchin’ takes a lot of work.  Fishin’ takes a lot of patience and practice.  I guess all of my practice came to a head that day I caught and lost my biggest fish ever.  But I gained a friend.  A wise man once said, “Time spent fishin’ can’t be subtracted from a man’s years.”  There is a lot in that statement.