WSJ: In an excerpt from his new book, Jason Gay talks about being drawn, despite himself, into the obsession of his 9-year-old son.
My son Jesse and I learned to fish in the past couple of years—I mean, fishing-fishing, really fishing, the more involved stuff, patience and technique, not (yet) the wizardry of a fly rod but pretty much everything else. We have caught big ones and small ones, and we have lost big and small ones too. Most important, we are now able to bore anyone on earth with a 20-minute story about fishing, which is a true sign we’ve arrived as fishermen.
I know it sounds a little silly when you hear fishermen talk about how fishing changed their lives, because they always talk about how fishing changed their lives, but it changed our lives too. We are out there all the time, fishing, trying to add another fish to the list. Nothing’s ever enough. Jesse, who is 9, likes to say we are addicted, and that’s probably true. We are addicted. We can’t stop. It’s a problem. But it’s probably better than 90 hours of Bravo.
This is a profound detour for me. I was very good at hating fishing for many decades. My hatred was well-known. My father was a recreational fisherman of passion and some repute, and he must have asked me a thousand times to come with him, out to the bays and shallow inlets and roaring surf, and outside of one time I can remember, I don’t think I ever did. more.
h/t Revolver.
My dad was bo fisherman so I can’t relate to that.
I liked everything about fishing but the fish. But they let you rent the boats cheaper in the Park District if you had fishing gear with you for some reason, so me and my buds would go there with tackle and go goof around in a boat for awhile, occasionally throwing a sinkered line with no bait on it in the water for effect.
The fish were not in danger with us around.
I only ever caught one fish, and it turns out you CAN’T reliably kill a fish with a blow to the head from a penkife, as I found out when it started gasping for breath after I had renoved its guts with its head from the rest of its body.
I threw everything in the water in terror and never hooked a fish again.
I still enjoy Long John Silvers tho. I’m not THAT traumatized.
But I still have gear and tackle too. Mostly from my deceased father-in-law. You never know what tomorrow may bring, and I’m not too dainty to learn a new skill set should the Democrats make the 2 chicken and 3 fish platter unobtainable.
But for now, not for me.
But you all enjoy…
Related? SNS length triggered by him…
The last years of my old man’s life he had live-in twenty-four hour a day caregivers. As I recall we went through three or four before he passed and though I can’t be sure the last one being a fisherman and we living on water took advantage.
Of the fishing that was available and believe he also took a couple of large wooden cigar boxes with antique Musky lures in them. When I got around to looking for the lures, long gone and they not only held sentimental but also considerable dollar value.
SNS, be advised what’s in your FIL’s tackle box could have surprising dollar value.
Getting back to the Old Man, he somehow got hooked up with a tackle manufacturing company (believe it was South Bend) that used to send him lures (many years ago). These were new design not made or sold to the public and he along with I suppose others in their “test group” got the lures for free to test/fish. All he had to do was report back his results and make comments to advise the possible manufacture to the general public. So a number of the lures in his tackle boxes were never mass produced and therefore now worth much more to collectors. Kind of like owning “Concept Cars” that never were manufactured. What would Jay Leno give for something like that? Same type of deal.
Pissed me off major league when I found them missing. Believe my son has the large steel “Kennedy Tackle Boxes” from the thirties and I should really go through those to see what might be in them as he’ll not know a daredevil from a Johnson silver minnow.
And the fishing stories I could tell here would not be believed. To lengthy a comment already.
I haven’t fished since my brother tried teaching me when we were kids. I don’t think my dad fished, so my brother must have been learning on his own.
I started hunting for meat only a few years ago and I
wonder what my dad and mom would have thought of it. They both died when I was a young woman.I’m pretty certain my dad would have been proud of me but my mom might have been squeamish and worried. 😁 I had to stop telling about what happened at work but my dad loved hearing about it
I try to learn everything I can about hunting: taking classes, reading and talking to other hunters and my boar hunting guide has turned into a friend who teaches me so much about hunting.
SNS,
If i wanted to fish, Bow Fishing is the ONLY WAY i would do it.
I love archery but it has taken a back seat to the Mountain Biking for a few years now.
As for rod/ice fishing, you’re still much better at it than I am. (NO CLUE)
I envy anyone who can fish in the Florida Gulf or the Atlantic Ocean on a whim.
It’s not all about the fish.
It’s all about the beer.
Anybody can learn ya up about the art of fishing. It’s up to you to have the need to be learned up about fishing….
My Dad wasn’t against fishing, he would, but he would rather spend his weekends working on his beloved cars. Our next-door neighbors (Rob & Grace Brannon) were the fishing people and they belonged to a fishing club right on the Colorado River between Granby and Kremmling Colorado near Parshall. Rob fished, cooked the hash browns in the morning and fished some more. Grace fried the eggs in the morning, baked the trout in the evening, read books and walked her dog in the afternoon. First dog that I knew was Miggs and after Miggs came Bozo.
Rob and Grace were from east Texas and had that beautiful light southern drawl. Rob was a stocky hard scrabble man with a goatee. He looked like Burl Ives. Grace was an itty, bitty slight woman and tougher then a hammered tendon. Rob called her Nubbin…
Rob made an annual fishing trip up to Montana and paid me 5 cents apiece for them. He required 200 and I got to stay up late to get them for him. Bonus for me! I also shoveled their sidewalks. Rob and Grace have been gone from this Earth for 25 plus years now and I’ll never forget them for giving me the love of fishing…
OK, I just described my love of fishing without talking much about fishing….Most of fishing really ain’t about the fishing…
5 cents apiece for night crawlers ^^^^^
The only time I can remember fishing with my father it was ice fishing. I sat on on a 5 gal bucket and froze my ass off. Luckily I had uncles and cousins with access to docks and boats, plus nearby streams and fishing holes within bike/hiking distance. I don’t think I’ve been fishing for at least twenty years now.
Great story Willy
did you use the old car battery method to push the night crawlers out. Pretty effective, but rumor has it, it shortens their life span.
I love bass fishing. Did some two man team tourny stuff for a couple years. It wrecked it for me. Took the fun out of it. Now I just fun fish.
My father loved to fish and we went fishing all the time. We could walk to the swift waters of the Potomac and could catch all the perch and bass we wanted. Sometimes an occasional walleye too.
His idea of a vacation was to go to Ocean City and either fish in the surf or the bay all day, every day for a week. Even I would tire of that after about three days.
When he died I brought one of his favorite lures and a live shell from his 20 gage double barrel shotgun and tucked them in his pocket just before the coffin lid was closed.
You guys are missing the focal point of the whole story; it’s not about fishing, it’s about connecting and bonding with his son. You could substitute hunting, biking, hiking, or bird watching, it is spending time in any activity whatsoever that both can enjoy………together.
Any dad who has a son can completely understand this. Kids today are so easily distracted by their phones, social media, and video games, any activity that gets them outside, preferably getting the heart pumping but anything that a dad can do with his son, no distractions where they can talk, priceless.
This reminds me of one of my favorite movies “A River Runs Thru It”, about a Montana preacher who teaches his 2 sons to fly fish, and how valuable that time alone with each other was.
I took both my sons to Alaska to do some Salmon fishing for their High School graduation present. My thinking is that it would (1) be a great bonding experience, (2) it would make them realize all the opportunities out there for an ambitious young man. It’s possible I got more out of it than they did. But that’s not to say we all have great memories of the trip. I’d like to do it again.
Sounds fishy.
I grew up on a farm that had a 48 acre pond. Fishing was part of farm life. After I was married and had kids I would take them fishing in the pond. I knew all of the honey holes and teaching the kids to fish was easy. My son was 5 when he caught a 8 & 1/4 pound large mouth bass. He spent 20 minutes reeling in the fish. When the fish was in the live well my son informed me that fish wasn’t for eating but he had to be hung on the wall. He was hooked on fishing. When he was in high school when he dated a girl for the first date he would take the girl fishing. He found a keeper his senior year as she was the “total package”.
Some of my favorite childhood memories are of fishing the Sierras with my dad.
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There’s something amazing about fooling a fish into thinking your careful presentation of a bit of feather & hook is something worth eating.
Unfortunately, I’m the only one in the family that stuck with it.