What a Smile!

Near as I can tell, I have loved fishing since I was old enough to know what it was. Some of my very earliest memories involve fishing, wanting to go fishing, pretending I was fishing, planning fishing trips. I grew up reading stories about Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer fishing from log rafts or from sand bar islands in the Mighty Mississippi River. I would lay awake a night and thumb through tattered worn out issues of Field and Stream, and Outdoor Life magazines reading about exotic far off fishing wonderlands like Key West FL, and Chesapeake Bay. Stories about Bass lakes in the deep south with names I couldn't even sound out. Yes, I have always loved fishing. But growing up on a dusty corn and wheat farm in Eastern Colorado yielded very little to budding angler ambitions. My dad was and still is a very hard working Farmer/Rancher. And it wasn't that he didn't want to take his son on fishing trips, but a Crops and Cattle don't allow much time for recreation. We went as a family every year to the Free Fishing day event and caught stocked slimy rainbow trout out of a warm water pond. And we usually threw a rod and the tackle box in the truck when we went down to the local reservoir for a beach day. But fishing just wasn't a priority. Until I became a licensed Colorado driver with my own pickup. Suddenly my time was spent evenly shared between moonlight beer guzzling nights with my buddies, working as a cook,waiter, dishwasher, at a diner for minimum wage, and fishing. Notice I didn't mention school work and grades. I focused very little on that. I no longer cared if my dad had time to take me fishing, because I was bound and determined to do it without him anyway. Now let me clarify at this point that I'm not now and never was mad at my father over this. My pops is a great man for whom I owe nearly everything in my world to. He just didn't have time to take a lot of fishing trips. I don't know if I ever said it out loud, but the day my first son Kevin was born I can remember thinking to myself, "I will always find a way to make time " not just for fishing, but all things that matter to little kids. I'm now in my late thirties. We have four amazing children. And if this blog has shown nothing else to anyone who has read it, I love taking my kids fishing. In one of my entries several years ago I talked about "Firsts". Well last week I got to experience a first and a last at the same exact moment. My youngest and last child Javen caught his very first fish. It also was the Last, First fish I will get to celebrate with my children. Kind of a sobering moment really. But man. Look at that smile. His excitement. That's one of the all time greatest "First Fish" faces I've ever seen. 

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