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One of my favorite childhood memories is fishing with my dad. We would go on vacation, rent a boat, he would throw a worm on a hook for me and boom, we would catch a fish. It was easy!
After catching the fish, I remember my dad, taking it off the hook and at the end of the day he would clean it and cook it up for dinner. I can see it as I type.
Now that I am a father, I decided it was time to take my son out to bond over fishing. He has been asking me and it seemed natural to pass this down to the next generation.
Here’s the rub, come to find out I don’t know a single thing about fishing. Well, I know how to cast, but after that I am clueless.
Looking back on my great memories with my dad, he did all the work, while I was being a five year old boy, looking out at the water, or the boat or a piece of dust.
I know nothing about fishing.
That being said, I couldn’t let on to my son that DAD was clueless, we had already bought the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse pole, we had to keep moving forward.
Before we hit the boat, I had the brilliant idea of going to the Bass Pro Shop in Gurnee. This is the ultimate in outdoors stuff and we needed to pick up supplies.
Not knowing anything and walking into that place is a bad idea. It’s like trying to buy bedding; there are way too many choices.
After a half an hour of walking and looking, I grabbed a salesperson to help us. “I need help, we want to go fishing and need all that stuff.” I said trying to sound like an expert in front of my son.
“What kind of fish are you trying to catch?” He replied.
“The kind in the lake?” I answered, still trying to sound like an authority.
This must have been the clue that I was in fact clueless. He lead us to some starter stuff, bobbers, weights, hooks and wiggly fake purple worm looking things. After grabbing a few snacks and drinks we were on our way. We were off to fish!
We got to the boat and out onto the water, threw the anchor out and looked at each other, with a “what are we supposed to do next” look on our faces.
“Play to your strength” is want went through my head. So I got up and showed him how to cast. In my mind, this would be an all day thing, he would get frustrated, want to quit and we could go swim.
My son, got it in four tries! Proud and pissed, we were back to square one.
“OK,” I announced. “Let’s put a worm on the hook and do this thing!”
I grabbed a worm in one hand, the hook on the other and tried to put the two together. It was only now after 45 years that I realized “worms do not like having a sharp object stuck through the center of their bodies.”
That worm moved, squirmed, shucked, jived and at one point may have head faked away from that hook. He wanted nothing to do with it. My son was looking a little horrified as well.
Channeling my inner “Hannibal”(best killer on TV BTW) I jabbed the hook through the worm and we were ready, once again.
I have no idea if we were in a fishin’ hole or not. My son didn’t seem to care as he kept on casting and throwing out the line over and over, there was no way we were going to catch a fish.
Then “it” happened. The line got tight, the pole bent, we had a fish on the hook.
“Dad, I think we got a fish!” He squealed with excitement.
“Oh $hit!” Was my internal response. “If we pull this sucker in, I have no idea how to grab it, how to take the hook out, how to do anything! Why don’t I watch more OLN! I am a failure as a father! ”
“Cool buddy. Reel him in.” Was what I said.
Before we could do much more, the line went limp, the fish got away and my son reeled in a half eaten worm. “Gross dad!!! That’s so mean to the worms! We can’t hurt animals even worms!” He yelled.
My first thought, was ‘Whew, the odds of him becoming a serial killer just dropped substantially! He doesn’t want to hurt animals! Yea!!! “
Second thought.” This is my escape!” “OK pal, why don’t we fish without worms, that will save them and we can still have fun.”
He bought it. We fished, caught nothing ate too much sugar had a blast.
As we headed back to the dock to release the worms in nature, he asked me “dad can we fish without worms again?”
“Any time pal, any time.”
I may not know anything about fishing, but I am pretty sure we made a memory that he will hopefully have for a long time to come.
PS-If any of you know of a place to actually catch a fish or fishing class for kids, let me know. I would love to send my son and my wife!
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