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Fishing Buddies
By Ronald G. Taylor
It’s difficult to explain the kindred feelings and sheer delight
shared when fishing with a long-time buddy: the anticipation of the trip;
the satisfaction of hearing an old friend pull into the driveway at 5
a.m.; an unspoken, but knowing exchange over coffee; the friendly banter
about whose turn it is to buy the bait; and the shared thrill when one
or the other lands the day’s prize lunker. With little verbal exchange
and nary a nod of congratulation, what actually passes between two men
who enjoy spending time together is a mutual exchange of respect, an
unspoken promise to invest in the other’s happiness, and a guarantee
and validation of that human quality we call friendship. A friendship
between avid fishermen is one of life’s grander rewards – perhaps
surpassed only by the lasting friendship cemented on some distant battleground.
It doesn’t matter if the trip taken was just yesterday with Kevin
to Bishop’s Harbor or one fifty years ago with Robert Lee – the
night before is spent inspecting the tackle, checking the poles or rods,
making sure the boots and socks are where I can find them in the dark
the next morning, or in the case of one of those earlier ventures, that
there was a fresh can of Prince Albert on the kitchen table for Dad.
Sleep is sporadic at best, never sound, and the clock is checked just
about each hour with the hope that it will be 4:30.
Snook or bream, it doesn’t matter, any newly hooked fish has the
same effect on me – causing me to forget who and where I am. The
thrill of hooking the fish condenses all the cares and mundane worries
of daily living into a timeless celebration! It’s doubly sweet
when there’s someone with you to share the moment.
I had a high school pal, Pete Green, who’d skip class with me to
go up to Sherling’s Lake if the bluegills were bedding or out to
the vast beaver pond if the shellcrackers were feeding. It was with Pete
that I stumbled through those teen-age years and it was the success at
fishing that gave me the courage to face my peers. We shared good times
in a Corvair 500 Spyder, blasting across Langford’s pasture on
the way to our favorite pond. We honed our skills with fly rods and spinning
gear, we learned about Vienna sausage, sardines and deviled ham. We also
perfected making excuses to Miss Hinton for missing trigonometry and,
best of all, swapped stories about Annette and Brenda.
But the magical man who taught me how to live and breathe, how to treat
people, how to pray, how to dig fat, glistening wigglers out of an old
sawdust pile, how to rig a line to a cane pole, and how to enjoy shooting
off fireworks when we knew dang good and well it was against the law – who
holds the most honored spot as the best of all fishing buds – was
my Dad, Robert Lee.
I remember one Christmas like it was last year! My Uncle Mack, who
served in World War II and later moved to Ft. Worth, had brought a box
of bootlegged
bombs and rockets, along with other bootleg spirits, from that mystical
state of Texas. We’d fire off a silence-shattering bomb, shout
with Christmas cheer, and Daddy and Mack would toss back a snort.
After some time, the law descended upon us. We were all carried before
the Chief-of-Police and chastised for disturbing the peace – for
hootin ’n hollerin’! Robert Lee and Mack, naturally, had
to pay a fine. At some point in the proceedings, I remember proudly telling
the Chief, “Don’t really matter none, we done shot off the
best ‘uns.”
As a toddler, before I could keep up the pace, many’s the time
I’d straddle his neck holding on to my pup, Skipper, and Dad would
carry us through the woods to Pigeon Creek. Our tackle consisted of cane
poles, line, hooks, lead and corks in a small brown paper sack with a
can of freshly dug wigglers from Mamaw’s worm bed. It was on one
of those very early trips that I caught the first fish I remember - a
bullhead catfish.
Some years later, Dad and I spent Sunday afternoons at the county lake
fishing for bream or bass. You wouldn’t believe the assortment
of rods and reels he insisted on keeping and using. There was a solid
metal 3’casting rod with an old Pfluger level wind reel, a beat
up spinning rod that had an eye missing with a Mitchell 300-spinning
reel, a fiberglass Shakespeare fly rod with a South Bend ‘automatic’ spring-operated
fly reel and a Johnson combo with the reel built into the butt of the
rod – weirdest looking piece of tackle to this very day.
His tackle box was a beat up ‘Old Buddy’ metal box bent to
fit his seat. He would sit still as a rock on that box till the sun went
down. When asked, “Caught any yet, Robert Lee?” He’d
always reply the same, “Naww, but I’m expecting one any minute
now.”
We probably had more fun together fly-fishing for bass during the spring,
Robert Lee with his ole Shakespeare and me with the only bamboo rod I
ever owned. One afternoon we were ‘bugging’ the same shoreline
that produced many yearling bass of about a pound apiece. Even though
we’d strung our limit, we continued to catch and release. Suddenly,
out of the grass, a doozy whalloped Dad’s bug. He reared back,
set the hook, and let out a primal hoot signaling joy and success. The
first words out of my mouth were: “Play ‘im Robert Lee, play ‘im...” Without
giving me a second thought, he replied: “Play ‘im hell, he’s
had all his life to play.”
That exuberant impatience, to land ‘em quickly at any cost, was
mixed with a rock-solid patience that allowed him to wait ‘em out—and
to teach a son how to become a fisherman. The results of our time spent
together prepared me to share that same respect with the ultimate fishing
companion, my son Joshua. I believe Dad left the creek banks of south
Alabama a happy man after the three of us had the opportunity to share
each other’s company for five good years. I knew I had scored big
time with him when the only message he sent would be “When are
you going to bring the boy again so we can go fishing?”
For the first 20 or so years I lived around the Tampa Bay area, I spent
most of my fishing ventures taking my young son to the bay and gulf trying
to teach him about fish and fishing. I remember on a few of the first
trips he spent more time collecting fish eyeballs and lenses than he
did actually trying to catch fish. Sometimes we were lucky and sometimes
we struck out, but the adventure and the memory of the time spent with
my son is as vivid as if it transpired just yesterday. He was proud of
his ‘operations’ and I was even prouder that he was content
to be with his Dad.
Actually, the fishing ventures and mutual admiration continue today even
though I’m a sexagenarian and he’s pushing 30. Just this
past summer, we were fishing Florida’s southeast Atlantic inlets
together and he taught the teacher – he boated a male tarpon upwards
of 100 pounds and then later added to the insult by putting more lunker
snook in the boat than his ole man. He was quite the gentleman about
it, never once bragged or rubbed it in – all he asked for was a
picture of the two of us together with the prize. They don’t make
words for what moved between the two of us at that moment – a feeling
of mutual admiration, an understanding of each other’s happiness,
the peaceful but mighty spirit of fishing passing between father and
son.
Later this past fall, we joined other family members on an outing to
Panama City, which included a fishing trip aboard a snapper head boat.
On the chosen day, the wind was singing about 15-20 knots and the seas
were so high that it was hard to stand on station and tend the lines.
Josh had never been snapper fishing, and it was easy to see that he reveled
in each legal fish he put on his stringer. At the end of the trip, he
again had out-fished me, actually everyone else as well. What made me
the most proud was that even in the process of out-fishing me, he would
lean over and offer the ‘teacher’ a steadying shoulder. Man
becomes child and child becomes man! It all transpired while sharing
together that magic pursuit of fishing. I offered up a silent hallelujah
for that gift!
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