Pay it Forward

As a father of three, all boys, I take it upon myself to try and instill my children with the values needed to survive to adulthood.  And what better teaching method is there than Fishing.  Fishing teaches all sorts of things ranging from patience and persistence to the joys of success and the humility of defeat.

With this in mind, I woke up early on a Sunday morning, packed my coffee and my middle son, who was the only one interested in waking up with me, and drove to a section of the Perkiomen Creek in Sellersville where I had gotten a tip on decent size trout to be had.

Upon arrival and quietly walking to the streams edge I found the hot tip accurate as there was somewhere around 15 to 20 decent size trout lined up, pretty as can be, just waiting to take our bait.  Standing there with my boy next to me, the sun rising over the trees, and the trout silently calling out to my anglers soul, I felt connected, a part of something larger.  I'll admit, I was having a moment.  A moment my son showed his reverence for by delicately asking me, "Hey, are we gonna fish?" Yes, yes we are.

(Sorry I didn't get a pic of the exact one)

Six hours later of what I like to refer to as lessons in patience and persistence and after going through everything I have in my tackle box I finally got a glimmer of hope.  At this point, my son had moved from youthful hope and enthusiasm to asking which cast will be my last.  I was tying on anything I could think of, hoping to salvage the situation, and had progressed to a Rat-L Trap, much like the one shown.  I had been attempting to coax out a particularly shy rainbow in the range of about 15 inches that had holed up under a rock and would show interest in everything I put past but not enough to commit.  Two casts after tying on the Rat-L the rainbow hits, my heart starts to race and the catch is on.  Reeling in I feel a sense of relief that we aren't getting the skunk and my son won't come away from this experience feeling like fishing is a huge waste of time and dad is weird.  With the boy looking on I reel in the last few feet of line before I have to land her and then the unthinkable happens, she throws the hook and I watch as she smugly swims away.

My crushing defeat that can only be termed as emotional highway robbery is assuaged slightly by my son picking up his rod again and saying, "You almost had him, can I try again?"  After choosing a lure from my box because he "liked the colors" and casting a few times, this happens...

(He didn't want to touch it)

A 13.5 inch rainbow and all smiles.  We called it quits about 5 minutes later, at least one of us got something.