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Show Telling Fish Stories My dad said that any time you spend fishing doesn't count against your allotted time in life. If you are destined through fate or divine providence to live for 80 years and you spent five years fishing, you will live to be 85. It was the time spent together that made the difference. differ-ence. He wanted to give us something to remember him by. And it worked. My dad has been gone for about four years. Wc didn't see each other mudi the last few years. In his old age he didn't really enjoy being around kids and I had a lot of them. My mother was distraught, naturally, when he passed away. She started to apologize for the things he hadn't been able to do. . "Mom, it's fine. I have no regrets. I got to say goodbye in the way that meant something some-thing to both of us." Fishing season is starting start-ing up. My kids and I will be chasing Rainbows, not salmon. We'll be hitting the Provo River and Deer Creek Reservoir instead of Puget Sound. And it won't matter mat-ter if we catch a single fish. It's while spending time on a lake shore, or a stream bank with my kids that we will make the greatest catch of all. . ., I t a I didn't go home with a fish that day. I'm sure I told my mother all about it when I got home. And it probably included a version of "It was THIS big." My parents got married when I was eleven. Oh, technically tech-nically he wasn't my "real" dad. He was my step dad. However, when I was fourteen four-teen he adopted me and my older brother. My dad didn't like to camp. (I love camping.) camp-ing.) He didn't play sports (I loved playing basketball.) He wasn't much of a mechanic. (I loved to work on cars.) But, he did like to fish. It's funny, really, I never really considered why fishing fish-ing was different. We lived in Olympia, Washington about 20 minutes from Puget Sound, some of the greatest salmon fishing in the world. My dad bought a boat so we could go fishing. If you've ever been boating you know that when you accelerate, the bow comes up. And the faster you go the higher the bow comes up. The first time we took our little 15 foot tri-hull. out, it was obvious my dad wasn't a boater. He sped up just enough to stick the nose nearly straight up in the air. He was trying to peer around the side to see what was in front of us. "Dad?" "Yeah?" "I think if you go just a little faster the bow will come down." "Really?" "Yeah." He gave it more gas and the boat came up on plane. Why would a man who really didn't like the outdoors buy a boat that he didn't know how to drive and commit to spending the day out on the sound? He liked fishing, but not that much. It took me years to realize the real reason. He did it for me and my brothers. He knew that he couldn't really be part of most of our activities. I think he figured fig-ured fishing was something that he could use to build memories with these strangers who were now his sons. What was ironic about those fishing trips, is that we spent thousands of dollars. We bought special salmon poles and reels. We bought a depth finder. We bought those things that drop your line down to a specific spe-cific depth. We bought lures and hooks and tackle and a whole boatload of gear. And we never caught a single salmon. Well, that's not exactly true. I did catch one small Coho salmon that was under the limit so we threw him back. We spent the summer chasing those fish from the Olympia docks to Anderson Island and back and they beat us every single time. And I wouldn't have traded it for the world. by Rodney Bliss I like to fish. It's a great way to get outside and spend time with my kids. I'm not crazy about it. And I mean I'm not crazy in a crazy way. I have been known to tell a fish tale or two, of course. You're hardly a fisherman (or woman) wom-an) if you don't. My grandfather taught me to fish when I was a kid. The first fish I ever caught was a Rainbow Trout when I was about five years old. I was at Rocky Point in Idaho. I was excited, but not sure I wanted to kill it and eat it. We kept it alive, the way you do when you are still fishing. We started to leave and I had to make a decision on the fish. "Can we take it home and keep it in a tank?" "No, it would die. If you want to keep it alive we'll have to leave it in the lake." |