As my kiddo and I gazed at the slab of largemouth bass flexing along the handle of my net, he asked “Dad, is that fish bigger than me?”
I could swear I heard an echo making its way back… of my own voice asking that same question 40 years ago.
Golden are my memories of fishing as a kid. In fact, it seems that my earliest recollections took place on riverbanks of the Oregon coast, watching my dad angle monofilament lines for wild salmon and steelhead.
I’d stretch out in the lawn next to the fish he’d bring home and compare who was bigger. Many of those chinook really were “larger than life”! I recall my dad’s stories of particular fish, and the wonderful details and analogies he’d use to describe heart-pounding battles reeling fish so big and powerful from swollen rivers with overgrown banks.
Fishing was not merely a pastime or hobby for my dad. It was a thrill of life. It occupied dreams both day and night. It filled the schedules of days, off and vacations scant as they were.
LINK (via: Fishpond)
