20c. This is he who fishes (get the frying pan ready)

I’ve watched enough biography TV shows that I long ago decided you can often see it coming. Evil Knievel comes to mind. Though known for his adult exploits of jumping over as much as possible on a motorcycle, he was doing the same stuff as a kid! Lining up available objects in his neighborhood and sailing over them on his bicycle.

And so it was with Shaving 4 and fishing. The earliest indication that the fish of the world were in mounting danger came in our den. I was organizing the tackle box so it was wide open on the floor; treble hooked lures a-calling. He was around four and came walking over. Now, generally speaking, this is a common scenario with kids and fishing stuff, which is followed by them grabbing sharp things with their tender little hands, i.e. bad. That’s not what he did. Shaving 4 squatted down Indian style, slowly passed both hands over the open tackle box and said…”I want to learn how to use all of this.” (I could feel his Great Grandfather smiling, nodding and spitting some Beechnut tobacco into a Maxwell House coffee can).

Because Tom, a long time grownup fishing buddy, had given up fishing for mountain biking I’d been mostly going it alone when Shaving 4 volunteered…. “big time”. Given the age difference we were a motley team further mottled by the fact that he was not thinking in terms of a “take a kid fishing” outing at the end of a pier in a stocked lake. He was thinking in terms of an ancient and fundamental human activity. Some consideration – although in hindsight probably not always enough – had to be given to the fact that if something went wrong he might need to save us both so I told him “if something goes wrong save yourself and send back help”. (Fortunately by the time he was old enough to figure out the likely inheritance scenario he had his own fishing equipment).

In the early days we fished a lot in Shades Creek right in front of the mall. There were plenty of fish that couldn’t leave a beetle-spin or one inch Rapala alone, and the water wasn’t ever too deep (knee on me, arm pits on him). Being young and filled with the lust-to-catch, Shaving Four went through a brief developmental period where if I was catching more fish than him he wanted my rod or my lure. Then one day, as we are wading up the creek, he says “I want the other side” – the side I was on. He was reading the stream (Great Grandfather & Aunt Bid whispering in his ear).

Skill and experience are good but tenacity is also useful. It was a Tiger Cub fall fishing trip to Oak Mountain State Park (the paddleboat lake, NOT the so called fishing lakes) for Shaving 3’s den and Shaving 4 was along – around ten Tiger Cubs & parents, plenty of cane poles, rods & reels and lots of worms. The standard site action was slow so Shaving Four, for reasons I never discovered, took an interest in the end of a nearby old boat launch in about six inches of water.
Armed with the smallest hook and pinched off worm pieces he proceeds to ‘land’ bream after bream that were lurking under the space between the ramp and the lake bottom. Probably nothing over two inches long and many smaller thereby fulfilling the number one imperative of sawed-off fishing – ANYTHING IS BETTER THAN NOTHING (and for the sake of completeness; big is better than small, edible is better than inedible). Unfortunately Shaving 4 has taken the last imperative too much to heart as he eats fresh water drum.

Of late his tackle box is bigger than mine, his knife longer than mine (he ‘accidently’ threw-out my longer one in the paper after cleaning some crappie), and he throws a bigger cast net – “teach your children well….”

About three years ago he asks “Are there any colleges near the ocean?” Now I know what he’s thinking; he wants to get a part time job on a party boat and end up fishing for a living. I explain to him that that is a probable path to semi-starvation no matter how many fish he catches (you can’t cook ‘em if you can’t pay the gas bill). He appeared to abandon that career choice and declared himself interested in engineering about two years ago (he’s pretty good with numbers) and has held fast to that plan. However through some cunning trickery he is now enrolled in a “3-2” engineering program at Eckerd College (read tip of St. Petersburg’s peninsula, mouth of Tampa Bay).

I guess I could have told him that a burning low employment prospects interest is a poor component of decision making upon which to base your higher education matriculation. But he edits most of these stories and could well have come back with “Oh?”

Ah, what the heck, “everything will work if you just let it”. It has so far.

ML
7/3/08