James and Ian stood in front of me, looking intently at my hands.
“This is how you bait a hook,” I instructed as I threaded a worm carefully onto a fish hook. This was the first time that we had taken the boys fishing and we stood on a dock in the warm, summer evening.
“This is how you make a cast,” I said, smoothly flinging the baited hook and bobber into the water. “Now, we have to wait for a fish to find the worm. When the bobber goes under water, we pull back on the rod to set the hook and then reel the fish in.”
As we stood on the dock waiting for the fish and the mosquitoes to bite, I wondered if the boys would take to fishing like Patrick, my oldest son.
I took Patrick on his first fishing trip when he was 5. Naively, I thought that I could do a little fishing, too, and took my rig while Patrick used a cane pole with a length of line, a hook and a bobber.
After we got Patrick’s line in the water, I walked down the bank and made a cast.
“Daddy, I’m stuck,” said Patrick. I reeled in, freed his line and made another cast.
“Daddy, I’m stuck,” Patrick said again. I reeled in again, unstuck his line again and made another cast.
“Daddy, I’m stuck,” Patrick said yet again, “I’m sorry, Daddy.”
“It’s OK, son,” I reassured him. The last thing that I wanted to do was give him a bad memory of his first fishing trip. I patiently unsnagged his line and made another cast.
“Daddy, I’m stuck,” Patrick announced again. I reeled in and walked over and freed his line again. Optimistically, I made one more cast. My line had barely hit the water when Patrick struck again.
“Daddy, I’m stuck.” Careful to conceal any impatience, I reeled in one more time, walked over to Patrick and took his pole. With a firm grasp, I pulled hard and the line leaped from the water with a small object on the end. A perch, about four inches long, hung wiggling from Patrick’s hook.
“Patrick,” I said in amazement, “You weren’t stuck, you caught a fish.” Patrick looked at his fish, the only fish we caught that day, and giggled.
Thirty years later, I stood with James and Ian, looking at their bobbers in the water. Ian’s bobber started moving slightly up and down in the water.
“Not yet,” I whispered, “wait until it goes under water.”
Bill Bartlett lives in Belton his wife Sandi and his two sons.