My Father, the Fisherman

It became evident to me in 1955 that my dad was either already or definitely becoming a very serious fisherman.  That summer I had just finished the fifth grade and our usual family outings changed from going to the mountains or a local swimming lake for picnicking to going to Bull Shoals Lake to fish. (But we did take our sandwiches to eat in the boat.)  It is the first time I ever remember being near water for any purpose other than wading or swimming.  I was given a rod and reel and expected to sit forever in the little boat waiting for a tug on my line.  It was just too much.  My brother and I finally convinced Daddy that we should be able to swim, at least part of the time.  But then, the fun was over and we needed to get back in the boat and stop scaring the fish away.  Just as I was sure the day was a total waste, there was a strong pull on my line.  Now what?  Daddy just said “reel him in!”.  I kept winding and winding the reel, but it seemed I must have had a whale on my hook.  I said, “Daddy, he’s breaking my arm!”, but Daddy wanted me to catch this monster all by myself.  After what seemed like an eternity, I could finally see the fish nearing the crest of the water.  However, something happened between the time the fish attached itself to my hook and the time he was flopped into the boat.  He had transformed himself from a monstrous whale to a dinky shrimp of a fish that was only a few inches long.  That was, also, the last time I remember going fishing with Daddy for a very long time.

Throughout the next forty-five years, I would travel with both my parents to various places where he would fish, but I always found something more fun to do.  To me, anything else was more fun to do.  Then in the spring of 2000, my parents decided they needed to leave their long time home and be nearer their children to make things easier on all of them as they began to increase in years.  My brother and I were both very pleased to have them make that decision on their own because we knew Daddy should not be going out fishing by himself.   A few weeks before the move, my husband and I drove down to help them pack and I was allowed to drive his truck with boat and trailer the six hours back to park at our house until the move.  The move was bad enough for him, so we did not dare suggest that he no longer needed the boat and trailer, even in his mid 80’s.    We immediately found a storage place for him to keep his boat and trailer so they would not have a permanent home on the street in front of our house.

Now that he was here with his boat and trailer, and we didn’t want him going out by himself, who was going to go with him??  My brother had fished with him a few times in the interim, but he was very busy and did not have many free days.  It became evident that I was the new fishing partner, especially since it was summer and I was out of school for a couple of months. 

Of course no fisherman worth a crappie would wait until the sun was up before getting on the lake!  At 4:30 Daddy would be out front waiting for me to drag myself out the door.  We would have to stop at the bait shop to get some “shiners”, which made us excruciatingly late because the fish were surely no longer biting.  He was patient with me. 

That first trip (note there must be others to follow), he strained and grunted to get the trailer backed down the lake and just far enough into the water to let the boat float away.   At eighty-four, it is not surprising that he might have forgotten one of the ties to the trailer.  The boat was partially floating away, but was not leaving the trailer completely.  Being the more agile of the two of us, I volunteered to climb into the bed of the truck, lean over the downed tailgate to undo the missed tie.  To help ease my 88 year-old mother’s mind, we had my trusty cell phone to keep her posted on our progress, however, just as I reached down to grab the boat chain, both my sunglasses and my cell phone slipped from my shirt pocket and into the lake.  Fortunately I was able to retrieve both, but only my sunglasses survived unscathed.  We no longer would have communication with the outside world. 

Daddy pulled the truck up into a parking space while I towed the boat from the shore to a shallow place for us to embark with all our paraphernalia which included our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.   We headed out to sea on Beaver Lake and began to look for the best possible place to catch the most fish.  Daddy was partial to coves where there are a lot of trees and underbrush.  I think he liked to see if those with whom he fishes could keep from using their time untangling their lines from the brush while he spent his time catching one fish after another.  If there were no bites within a short time, it was time to get out the map of the lake and find another likely spot.  (Since he was new to the area, he was not familiar with the best places, yet, so relied on the map.) 

While he was busy moving the boat from one place to the other, I was busy trying to keep my rod and reel from falling out of the boat while also trying to keep my bait alive so I would not have to put another one on the hook.  I couldn’t stand the way they looked at me when I put the hook through their lower lips, but Daddy assured me that it did not hurt them.  I chose to believe him.

At last we moved into the shade of a tall bluff and began to have some bites.  I was so excited, I didn’t care what they were, but I’m sure he was disappointed that all we were catching were Sunfish.  We would catch one after another and throw them back in.  Actually, I think they were just very hungry fish and that we were just catching the same few over and over again.  We did have a good time.  It was getting close to lunch time and the peanut butter sandwiches were long gone.  Time to leave.  We motored back up to the shore where the truck was.  He got out of the boat to go back the trailer down the ramp while I pulled the boat over to be loaded.   Mother was relieved to see that we both survived, so it was a good day.

A few days later, another invitation.  How could I possibly resist?  Again, up at 4:00, threw on my clothes, made some sandwiches, got some water and Diet Doctor Peppers for the little cooler, and out the door with shoes in hand.  Back to the bait shop, back down the ramp, but this time the boat floated right off.  It was going to be a great day!  We went a different way this time and passed by a bluff with a family of raccoons stopped to see what we were doing.  We stopped to see what they were doing.  For a good long time, we just watched each other to see what we were doing.  Finally it became evident that neither of us were doing anything, so they went on their way and we motored on down the lake.    Again, we found a little cove, and again, I spent my time trying to get out of the limbs.  I did spot a Bald Eagle up in a tree and it was majestic.  Again, we caught some Sunfish, ate our peanut butter sandwiches and headed home about noon time.  As we headed back out of the cove, the motor died.  I found out that I didn’t have to worry about keeping my fishing rod from falling out of a boat when using a trolling motor.  We finally got back to shore, but now the question was how to get the boat up on the trailer with no real power.  Daddy decided to try the motor one more time.  This time it worked, but he didn’t want to stop it.  We slowed down just enough for him to get out of the boat to get the truck in position and now it was up to me to drive the boat up onto the ramp!!!  That was a whole new experience that was not particularly fun.  After several times around the cove, I finally decided I was in the right position.  You have to aim at the trailer while going fairly fast and then cut off the motor just in time to keep from ending up in the bed of the truck.  I did it!

Once we got back on the road, Daddy said he wanted to take the boat to have it fixed, but he wanted to unload his fishing gear first into the storage unit.  We pulled into the storage area, unlocked the door, heaved it open, and unloaded all his stuff for safe keeping.  As he pulled back out through the gate to go up the hill to the boat shop (he didn’t have good vision in his right eye – but Mother did.  She just couldn’t see much out of her left, so she tried to make sure that she was with him when he was out without either my brother or me.  That way, between them, they had one good pair of eyes.), he hit a metal post with the right rear portion of the trailer.  He never felt it and got out to close the gate.  Surely enough as we pulled out on the highway, the right trailer tire began to go flat.  For some reason Daddy decided he could make a shoulder on the road between the highway and the ditch where none existed.  I was nearer the ditch and knew about his right eye.  I kept saying, we’re going in the ditch, we’re going in the ditch, but he kept pulling over.  We made it, amazingly.  We got out of the truck just as three or four big Doberman type dogs headed our way from the house up on the hill.  I just hoped they were friendly.   While Daddy was trying to find the tools to remove the tire, I was saying “hi, puppy, how are you doing?”   Again there he was straining and grunting from under the trailer.  I looked to see what was going on.  He was still trying to find where to place the jack.  Fortunately, the owner of the dogs came to join the party. He took care of removing the flat tire and putting on the spare.  Now, Daddy also had a new tire to buy.   (All I could think about was how much cheaper and easier it would be to go to the store and buy the fish.)

During the next few days, Daddy managed to have the new tire put on the trailer and the repairs made to the boat motor, so we were set to go again.  And we did.  This time, we went to an entirely new part of the lake.  Surely there would be some fish to catch here.  After going to a couple of nice tree filled coves, we settled in to see what we could find.   This time, we did not get a bite.  I finally convinced him that I had something else I wanted to catch.  Beaver Lake is lined with shale.  A lot of nice flat stones lay all along the shoreline, so I began to fill up the boat with stepping stones for my back yard.  This time we would not come home empty handed!  We had our catch for the day, sandwiches were gone and it was time to go.  It was a good day.

A few days later, my brother decided to take Daddy out to a different area of the lake.  I never did hear if his experience was as eventful as mine, but he did go out and buy Daddy a new trolling motor!.  They apparently did find a good “fishing hole” and caught what Daddy called a “mess” of fish.  It was later that day that I realized the true meaning of that word.   The next thing I knew, he and Mother were on their way over to my house.  Boning and scaling knives in hand, within a flash, they had a cleaning table set up right off the edge of my back porch with fish scales flying everywhere.  I spent my whole time trying to make sure that my back porch and yard didn’t smell like dead fish.  For some reason, they thought I didn’t like having them clean fish at my back door and I was wondering why they were not at my brother’s house cleaning those fish.  It was, after all, his fishing trip.  Of course, I knew why.  There was no way he would want that mess in his back yard.  After spending quite a while trying to find a place in our hard packed clay soil to bury the remains of the fish, I guess Daddy realized it had not been a good idea to clean them at my house either and it was the last time they did.

A year or so later, it was evident that I didn’t have much time to go fishing with him.  He, also, realizing that we did not want him to go alone, Daddy decided to sell his boat.  I think it was the most difficult decision he had ever made.  He had waited a long time to be able to afford his own fishing boat, and now he felt he was giving up a great portion of his life.  My brother and I assured him that we would be able to find a rental boat for less than it cost him to house his in the storage place.  So the next time we went was to a place quite a bit farther away that had relatively cheap rental boats to use.  This happened to also be near the place where the “mess” of fish had been caught.   It was our only time to go there, and I could tell it was not the same for Daddy.  He missed his own boat.  It was the last time we went.  I don’t even remember much about that trip other than the fact that nothing out of the ordinary happened.  Maybe that is also why it is not very memorable.  But it was a good day, because I spent it with Daddy doing what he loved to do. 

Later, after he died just a week or so ago, as I think about Daddy, I realize he was a true fisherman in so many ways.  Just as the Disciples were told they were to be “Fishers of Men”, I believe Daddy was a “Fisher of young people”.  There have been so many stories of how he touched so many lives over the years.  So many students he helped go to college, even on his public school salary.  As I think about the number of fish he caught, cleaned, and cooked in his special fryer as no one else could possibly do, I also think of the number of lives he touched that far surpass that number of fish.  My father was truly a fisherman.