I mentioned tying some flies in the last post. That sort of came about from thinking about and reading about our dream of traveling in the coach to Alaska. While we may or may not be able to pull that notion off this coming year, we surely have established that as a goal. So it WILL happen, we are just still not too sure when. Too many variables with “properties owned” that have us concerned about the wisdom of trying to manage them from that much of a distance. But that’s another story.
Not too long after pulling into Bonita, we got out the Alaska Planning magazines and began diving in- realizing that the time to plan was NOW or there would be no shot at a successful trip at all. And not long after the intense research began, I developed a powerful hankering for a taste of the smoked salmon that I was reading about catching and preparing. I was sitting outside under the awning when this thought came over me and I mentioned it to Marilyn, not so anyone would do anything about it, but only to demonstrate that the “getting into it” mode was in full gear. She got up moments later from her chair and came back into the coach. I didn’t think anything of it and read on. But a few minutes later, she came back out carrying a platter with some Rosemary Triscuits and smoked salmon. Back quite a while Derek and Karin had sent us some of the highly prized smoked salmon from the Seattle area where they reside. It is some truly choice material, and we always save it for special occasions only. And especially since I didn’t even know we had it with us on the coach- this was one! It was the perfect snack at the perfect moment and believe you me it was finger-licking good.
A couple days later, we picked up the mail from the house where Sandy and Waylon are holding down the fort. In snail mail from my parents there was the cartoon pictured above. How appropriate. My dad likes almost everything in life, but given a ranking sheet he might be likely to put fishing dead last. Didn’t matter! He signed on when I was knee high to a grasshopper kind of age to take me to Canada on a fishing trip with Doc Zackon and his boys of the same age (Doc was my collie’s veterinarian when I was a kid and he and his family have become lifelong dear friends). Dad was willing to do this for me. That does not imply he was thrilled with the concept, thinking he more than likely would observe nature whenever and wherever he found it and be happy with that- leaving the fishing to me. It was the fist time either of us had taken a fishing trip of any consequence, and as best I can remember the last as well. There were many marvelous adventures; they just didn’t zero in on the fishing end of things. On my ranking sheet of life, fishing comes in number one! Well, maybe number two, but it’s a darn strong two, and we ani’ta gonna discuss number one.
When we got to the fishing camp, the others all rented boats and headed right out. They knew what they were doing, or so it seemed to me. We did not. I recall our boat was a lot like the one in the cartoon in both size and stature. We did not venture far from the dock at first, and if you study the image well you will get a good sense of what happened all day long on day one. The anchor was dropped on the edge of the weed bed just off a small island. In the front of the boat I caught yellow perch after perch. It was not the Great Northern Pike we had traveled there to find but they were good fish and the absolute best for shore lunch. Skin-on perch fried in pure bacon fat in a coffee can on an open fire- now that’s good! In the back of the boat dear old dad had not a bite. I encouraged him to move his line closer to mine, explaining that the spot where the fish were schooling up can be quite specific, but to no avail. After a long time of this pattern playing out, we finally decided that to be fair we should just switch places in the boat. We did. And within minutes I was catching fish after fish in the back of the boat and dad, well, it didn’t go a whole lot better in the front of the boat for him.
Now let’s make this clear: my dad never quit at anything in his life! Not at scrapping his way through the financial hardships of getting a good education in the Depression, not at Army Air Corp flight school where he became a B-17 pilot, not in prison camp with a broken back and no food, and not under the political pressures of running his beloved Reading Public Museum. But on this one day, he did ask me to row him to shore while I “caught a few more” so he could do some birding and investigating on the island.
By later in the week, we had learned some of the lessons of the Canadian Wilderness and were both catching all the fish we could handle.
They say all fishermen are liars. Well, personally, I resemble that remark! But I think I must have this story pretty close to right, otherwise why would my parents send me this cartoon in the mail some 45 years after it happened.
Not too long after pulling into Bonita, we got out the Alaska Planning magazines and began diving in- realizing that the time to plan was NOW or there would be no shot at a successful trip at all. And not long after the intense research began, I developed a powerful hankering for a taste of the smoked salmon that I was reading about catching and preparing. I was sitting outside under the awning when this thought came over me and I mentioned it to Marilyn, not so anyone would do anything about it, but only to demonstrate that the “getting into it” mode was in full gear. She got up moments later from her chair and came back into the coach. I didn’t think anything of it and read on. But a few minutes later, she came back out carrying a platter with some Rosemary Triscuits and smoked salmon. Back quite a while Derek and Karin had sent us some of the highly prized smoked salmon from the Seattle area where they reside. It is some truly choice material, and we always save it for special occasions only. And especially since I didn’t even know we had it with us on the coach- this was one! It was the perfect snack at the perfect moment and believe you me it was finger-licking good.
A couple days later, we picked up the mail from the house where Sandy and Waylon are holding down the fort. In snail mail from my parents there was the cartoon pictured above. How appropriate. My dad likes almost everything in life, but given a ranking sheet he might be likely to put fishing dead last. Didn’t matter! He signed on when I was knee high to a grasshopper kind of age to take me to Canada on a fishing trip with Doc Zackon and his boys of the same age (Doc was my collie’s veterinarian when I was a kid and he and his family have become lifelong dear friends). Dad was willing to do this for me. That does not imply he was thrilled with the concept, thinking he more than likely would observe nature whenever and wherever he found it and be happy with that- leaving the fishing to me. It was the fist time either of us had taken a fishing trip of any consequence, and as best I can remember the last as well. There were many marvelous adventures; they just didn’t zero in on the fishing end of things. On my ranking sheet of life, fishing comes in number one! Well, maybe number two, but it’s a darn strong two, and we ani’ta gonna discuss number one.
When we got to the fishing camp, the others all rented boats and headed right out. They knew what they were doing, or so it seemed to me. We did not. I recall our boat was a lot like the one in the cartoon in both size and stature. We did not venture far from the dock at first, and if you study the image well you will get a good sense of what happened all day long on day one. The anchor was dropped on the edge of the weed bed just off a small island. In the front of the boat I caught yellow perch after perch. It was not the Great Northern Pike we had traveled there to find but they were good fish and the absolute best for shore lunch. Skin-on perch fried in pure bacon fat in a coffee can on an open fire- now that’s good! In the back of the boat dear old dad had not a bite. I encouraged him to move his line closer to mine, explaining that the spot where the fish were schooling up can be quite specific, but to no avail. After a long time of this pattern playing out, we finally decided that to be fair we should just switch places in the boat. We did. And within minutes I was catching fish after fish in the back of the boat and dad, well, it didn’t go a whole lot better in the front of the boat for him.
Now let’s make this clear: my dad never quit at anything in his life! Not at scrapping his way through the financial hardships of getting a good education in the Depression, not at Army Air Corp flight school where he became a B-17 pilot, not in prison camp with a broken back and no food, and not under the political pressures of running his beloved Reading Public Museum. But on this one day, he did ask me to row him to shore while I “caught a few more” so he could do some birding and investigating on the island.
By later in the week, we had learned some of the lessons of the Canadian Wilderness and were both catching all the fish we could handle.
They say all fishermen are liars. Well, personally, I resemble that remark! But I think I must have this story pretty close to right, otherwise why would my parents send me this cartoon in the mail some 45 years after it happened.
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