A Recollection of Fishing

I got up that Sunday morning a little after 5 o'clock.  During these long summer days it’s more or less my usual time.  Has to be early.  It’s the only time I can take my dog Rainey for a run.  Rainey is day blind; can’t see the paw in front of her nose once the sun starts to peek out so we have to hit it while it’s still dark.  And so when I staggered out of bed Rainey jumped out of her's, did her happy laps around the bedroom while I shushed her lest she wake the little woman and then she rumbled down the stairs. 

“Sorry Rainey, I’ll let you out to do your business but then it’s back to bed."  She wasn't getting it yet.  While she was outside I crawled into my clothes and threw the camp chairs into the truck.  Rainey came back inside, wagging her hind quarters expecting me to grab the leash until I sent her up the stairs.  “Back to bed girl,” as she sulked up the stairs

My son Matt came downstairs, “Ready?” I asked.  “What the hell, let’s be optimistic and throw the cooler in the truck.”  I tossed the cooler in the bed of the red Dakota pickup and we headed out – fishing.  It’d been many years since we had been fishing together.  I just didn't realize how many.  

 

Father and Son Fishing.  Painting by Joyce Lapp

The previous afternoon I’d checked the aged gear hanging from a hook in the garage; dusty and cocooned in cobwebs.  One of the reels seemed fine albeit filthy; the other had gone kaput on some previous fishing trip.  I found the plastic tackle box in a corner near the garage door, laced by a network of cobwebs to an old jug of anti-freeze.  Before picking it up I muttered, “Please don’t let there be any old bait in there."  Grabbed the handle and the lid swung open; broken latch – but no old bait.  I sorted through the little compartments in the tiered trays, picked up and inspected the various gadgets and angling paraphernalia that looked vaguely familiar, pulled some trash out of the box and figured we had a lot of what we needed.  I went through a stack of bungee cords and found one that fit well enough to keep the box closed.  Buy another one some other time.  We went to the local Big 5 where Matt bought a rod and we got our licenses.  The last time I got a license I had to hand write the form. Now I just handed the woman my driver's license and all my information was downloaded into the Department of Fish and Game and became a new fishing license.  I suppose that now even the NSA and President Obama know about my new license.  

We fell into the line of cars waiting for the gates at San Pablo Reservoir to open.  San Pablo is a 23 square mile suburban lake about 20 minutes from my house.  Fishing with all kinds of nasty smelling bait is allowed but no swimming.  Is that a commentary on the sanitary habits of people?  The woman ramrodding the little concession store/snack bar/bait shop showed me a sample of the proper rig to use in the shallow bottomed lake.  I looked at it, scratched my head a bit, gave the woman a completely false impression that I understood perfectly and left the store allowing that we’d figure it out. 

Back at the truck we went to setting up our rigs.  I squinted in the low morning light and realized that threading monofilament through the tiny eye of a hook is not as easy as it was when my eyes were younger.  “Judas Priest,” I snarled as I stabbed at the little opening.  It took a couple tries but we got it right and headed for the shoreline.  “Let’s go kill some fish,” I said in an overstatement of optimism.  While we walked I noted that Matt had slung both camp chairs over his shoulders carrying the heavier load.  Many years ago I’d have been the one doing the lifting.  

We found a spot just to the right of a downed tree that extended well into the lake and had snag written all over it.  Time to cast; something I hadn't done in years.  Casting is fishing's version of the carnival games of skill where everyone watches to see if you'll break any of the plates or just bang the baseball off the wood frame.  You flip over the bail, pull the rod back and fling it forward, feeling the eyes of a dozen fishermen judging your effort. My first cast went - nowhere.  Forgot to flip over the bail.  I looked around.  Nobody but Matt saw it.  Second cast.  Not bad, I’ll take it.  Next it was Matt’s turn and I was more nervous for his first cast then mine.  He let fly; wizzzzzzzzzzzzzz-plup.  Nice cast. 

It’s a great quote; apparently misattributed to Henry David Thoreau, “Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.”  If I were Thoreau I’d have claimed it.  Because I get it.  More often than not I've gone out to wet a line and returned home sleepy, a little dirty and carrying an empty creel and a big appetite.  But I don’t think I've ever come home disappointed.  Even when the best I did was to watch the guy down the bank pull in the fish that were rightfully mine. 

This particular morning started off overcast, breezy and a little chilly but not so much that it was uncomfortable.  We sat in our camp chairs, kept our eyes on our lines, warded off the slight chill and took in the calm and talked.  That’s often what you do when you’re lake fishing; you talk.  Matt and I don’t often talk as we did on this morning.  There are always distractions.  At a game, or in the living room there are distractions; the TV, some electronic device or one or more of the grandchildren.  This morning we talked about family, vacation plans, movies, books, baseball, and football and, well, fishing.  No distractions; just fishing and conversation.  I don’t guess that a father and son fishing is an official tradition, like a beer and a dog at the ball game, or pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving.  But it should be.  Maybe Congress should pass some bill that funds opportunities for all dads to take their sons fishing.  It couldn't hurt.  I've seen tax dollars spent on nonsense that's a damn site less worthy. 

For years fishing with my dad was a tradition.  We fished lakes, rivers, creeks, bays and the ocean.  Yellowstone Lake, The Sacramento River, San Francisco Bay, Lake Merced on the fog shrouded western fringe of San Francisco and a maze of delta sloughs.  Our favorite place was little Pescadero Creek in Memorial Park, about a 90 minute drive southwest of our home in San Mateo. 

Dad would get home from work at 5 on a Friday, pack the ugly gold Mercury station wagon, take the twisting narrow country road out to Memorial Park, set up camp and cook.  The next morning we would get up early enough to take the dark, chilly hike to the creek so that we could start fishing at the legal, one hour before sunrise.  We had some favorite pools we would hit first. We would arrive at the creek and quietly, carefully creep to the bank and speak only in low tones so as not to scare the fish.  If those first pools came up empty we hiked the winding shoreline trail, ducking branches and clambering over logs to find other pools or maybe some promising little riffles. 

When I was little he would set up my gear, toss in my line, unhook my fish and give me some pointers.  In a few years I was able to get myself set up and do for myself.  As I got older I passed on to my dad the things that I’d picked up from friends and from some articles I’d read.  I got myself some waders and scouted out choice places for us.  Our lines in the water, dad and I would talk.  Always in whisper of course; can’t scare the fish. When Matt was little I would set up his gear, toss in his line, unhook his fish and give him some pointers; only not often enough.    

I hit my twenties and moved out of the house and after that I guess I only went fishing with dad once or twice more.  I was too busy; buddies, girls, playing around, and general self-absorbed stupidity. It never occurred to me that he might miss sitting on a log, just he and I in the brisk predawn; the sounds of the rippling stream, the soft rush of a morning breeze through the redwoods at Memorial and our own whispers. By the time I’d settled down a bit I was busy with my own family.  By then dad was tormented by Alzheimer’s. I don’t suppose that it would have been too much for me to take him to a stream, set up his gear and toss in his line. 

Matt and I had been at it for about 4 hours and it seemed clear that on this morning the fish weren't biting; at least not in our little section of the lake.  And so we decided to cash in and head for home.  As we walked I observed the obvious; that we were going home empty handed.  “Yeah but it was fun,” he said.  Fun.  We didn't do anything really; did we?   We sat and watched our fishing rods; got a little chilly and briefly luxuriated in some fleeting sunlight.  We watched the waterfowl, ducks and herons swooping, diving and swimming; a little one footed goose that we watched limp past us to the water where free of it's handicap it swam gracefully in the shallows near the bank.  And between periods of silence but for the lapping water and soft gusts flickering the tree leaves, we just talked.  It was fun.  The simplest, purest fun.  

Since that Sunday morning I’d wondered on and off; how long has it really been since we’d last fished together?  A few days ago I was rooting through some shoe boxes filled with envelopes of photos.  I would pull a few pictures out and if it wasn't what I was looking for I would quickly put them back and move on to the next envelope.  I was looking for Civil War reenactment pictures for some blog entries.  Envelope after envelope; box after box. I came to yet another envelope, pulled out a random photo and there it was; a picture of Matt, sitting on a boulder by the Stanislaus River, fishing rod in hand.  It’s a poor photo really, taken in the dim light of dusk, just before the fishing would heat up for the evening.  I turned the photo over.  Date stamped – 1998.  15 years.  He’s 30 now.  Since the last time we’d been fishing he’s graduated high school and college and become a senior analyst.  He’s married his high school sweetheart and now has a daughter headed for first grade.  The last time we fished he was living at home in the downstairs bedroom.  He and our Gordon Setter, Phantom slept on the same small bed, Matt squeezed up against the wall and Phantom sprawled with his legs off the edge of the bed.  Now Matt is living in his own home in Santa Clara and Phantom has long since died.   

After I’d moved out of my parent’s house I let myself forget the quiet, simple joy of fishing with my dad.  Over the past few years I’d kept saying to Matt, “We should go fishing one day.”  And of course it never happened.  Why do we let the years go by?  Why are we always too busy?  I enjoyed that recent Sunday as I did those many early mornings with dad.  But I've been dogged by the realization of times lost; of allowing two generations to slip.  The one before and the one after.