27. In-seine Fishing
Today is 13 days from the first anniversary of Dad’s passing. I’ve committed to writing 40 stories about him as that day approaches. Forty Steady Stories.
I’m having a hard time picking out a story tonight. I’m realizing that I have so many more ideas than I have slots left in this stack of forty stories about Dad. Three weeks ago, it was easy to pick from the list I made on a plane. Now, it’s getting tougher choosing what to leave out. As I look over the phrases I wrote down a few weeks ago when beginning this project, I can’t not talk about fishing.
I saw a movie about forty years ago that had a great line: “Half of fishing is who you’re fishing with.” I think it was from Stand By Me, but I can’t track it down. The quote, however, stands on its own and it’s definitely how I felt when Dad took me fishing.
He loved fishing. He loved thinking about fishing. He loved fishing gear and clothes. When I was a kid, I remember fishing with Dad a lot. We’d go driving down a country road and stop at a fence or a gate. That’s back when I assumed from Dad that the black and red signs saying, “NO TRESPASSING” actually meant “WELCOME TO OUR FISHING HOLE!” when translated into English.
We didn’t have fancy tackle boxes, and sometimes all I used was a cane pole. In fact, one of my favorite memories is catching a bass, a bream, and a trout on the same cane pole one day in the mountains. Dad taught me how to bait a hook, how to use a spinning rod, how to set the hook and the drag, and how to keep the line taught when a fish was on. And whenever I reeled a fish in, he got just as excited as I did. That’s when you know you’re fishing with someone you love being with: when you both get excited about the fish on the other person’s line more than your own.
One of my very first memories of seeing fish outside of an aquarium was down at Myrtle Beach where we went every summer growing up. I don’t know where Dad got the idea — perhaps it was from his dad — but he took a seine net every time we went to the beach. In the picture, that’s me on the left looking up at Dad holding the seine.
We’d walk down to the beach with the seine, a bucket, and a little shovel. My job was to start digging the pool to put the fish in. It had to be close enough to the tide so that we could get the water and the fish back and forth from the ocean but far enough away not to have it wash out. The best was when you dug just far enough for the incoming tide to begin filling the edge as the fish were put in.
Dad taught me to be careful with the fish. We weren’t catching them to eat or to use as bait. He was teaching me about them. I learned the difference between a Whiting, a Spot, and a Pompano. I learned where to hold a crab… and where not to. I learned to take care of living things and then to set them free back where they came from. Every single time I go to the beach — even now at 57 years old — I take a seine. My kids and their cousins have all held one end while I hold the other and we start dragging it to the shore — never knowing what you’re going to pull in when you raise the net up out of the water. Sometimes you get nothing, and sometimes you get a bunch of surprises.
Those little life lessons you learn during simple things like fishing are so important. I learned from Dad how to treat animals. I learned how to get excited for other people’s success. I learned how to deal with disappointment when the lines or nets came back empty.
Most of all, I learned that doing something worthwhile with somebody you love is a pretty good way to spend an afternoon. Even if you don’t catch anything, you learn to love who you are with more than the thing you’re doing.
My dad taught me that.
