THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 18, 1994 TAG: 9409150181
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 34 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Tight Lines
SOURCE: Ford Reid
LENGTH: Medium: 61 lines
Fishing can be a great social experience. I have always suspected that a lot of people use it as an excuse to play poker half the night, drink a little too much and go a week without shaving.
There is nothing wrong with any of that. We all need to break out of our routines, from time to time. Occasional howling is good for the soul.
But besides being a party among friends, fishing can also be a great bonding experience between the old and the young. If you haven't taken a kid fishing in awhile, you owe it to yourself to do that.
Take your son or daughter, a grandchild or a neighbor. It will, among other things, remind you of why you fish. Watch that young face as the kid lands a fish and you will remember all of the pure joy that the sport can bring.
When my three boys were younger, we fished a lot. Tiny farm pond or wide ocean, it didn't matter. If there was water, we fished it. Or at least tried to.
Of course, we did a lot more fishing than catching, but we had our moments.
One morning at Pea Island we ran into a school of small bluefish that seemed determined to be caught down to the last one. They stayed in about the same place for hours, chasing bait and attacking anything that moved in the water. I spent most of my time replacing lures. The fish were so thick that they kept biting through the line about the metal leader.
Although most of the fish were tiny, that remains my sons' measure of a good day's fishing. In my mind I still see their faces and hear their cries as they hooked fish and because of that it remains one of my measures of a good day's fishing, too.
Then there was the time that we went to Cape Point late on an October Sunday afternoon. This time the bluefish were considerably bigger and almost as thick.
The boys, who were 10, 13 and 14 then, were fast to fish almost as soon as they got their lines wet. Everybody on the Point was fast to a fish. Everybody, that is, except me.
I couldn't catch one to save my soul. The blues would chase my lure, snap at it and sometimes knock it clear out of the water with their heads but they couldn't seem to get hooked.
Just as I was getting terminally disgusted, one of my sons hooked a fish, then offered me his rod so that I could land it. I declined and finally caught my own, which brought cheers from the boys and baffled looks from all of the other anglers.
The boys are grown and spread out across the country now and we don't get to fish together very often.
The middle one told me recently that he is moving back east after a few years in California. He said he had figured out how to pack his stereo and his television for shipment but that there was another treasured possession that he was worried about: his fishing rod.
It is good to know that some things don't change. I suspect that within a few weeks we will be fishing together again. by CNB