Have you thanked them? I’m not sure I did, and in a couple of instances, it’s too late.
The earliest recollection I have of fishing came at the Jersey Shore, not too far from where I grew up. I couldn’t have even been school age as I stood at the ocean’s edge, waves lapping at my feet as I tossed a plastic “bait” fish all of a few yards into the Atlantic. No marlin landed that day, but I’m sure Mom and Dad got a kick out of it.
My grandfather Meseroll took me past the “toy” rod and reel stage with night crawlers and bobbers on Farrington Lake in North Jersey.
Pop-Pop Meseroll was a big man. When we would first reach our rented rowboat, he’d bail out the accumulated water with a coffee can and dump it over the side. This was always the scariest part for me as I sat there, strapped into my orange life vest as the boat rocked from side to side under my grandfather’s shifting weight.
My rig included one of those old Zebco reels, the covered ones with a push button. I’m sure it was operator error, but it seemed like Pop-Pop spent an inordinate amount of time untangling the bird’s nests my fishing line became.
But, God bless him, any fish he hooked, he let me reel in.
Thanks, Pop-Pop.
My grandfather Gerber was just as ardent an angler. Pop-Pop Gerber introduced me to saltwater fishing, my earlier experience notwithstanding.
He co-owned a boat, the Gee Whiz, out of Great Bay at the Jersey Shore.
Whenever I could invite myself along, I did. But it often meant leaving a crying cousin at home, a cousin who is now a captain of his own boat on the Gulf Coast of Florida.
The saltwater fish were much more exotic - things like oyster crackers, blow fish and the occasional sand shark. It was either all or nothing for the coveted fish - blues, weakfish, stripers, flounder.
Pop-Pop Gerber put up with an episode of sea sickness - “A helluva way to christen my boat” - and some goofiness between myself and my uncle Ken.
Thanks, Pop-Pop.
Our family took annual summer vacations to Maine for several years. We rented a house on Lake Webb, a crystal clear lake in the interior of the state.
Most every night, my father, my sister and I took out our rented boat until dark. We caught our fill of crappies and trolled around for some of the bigger game fish. There couldn’t be a better way to end a summer’s day.
Thanks, Mom and Dad.
I didn’t come to fly-fishing, though, until fairly late in life, and again I have Mom and Dad to thank. After landing a job at the Idaho Falls Post-Register at the age of 26, they gave me a starter’s fly rod and reel for Christmas.
But if not for the friendship of a colleague, Dale Withington, the equipment might have languished.
Dale got me started with the basics of casting, then filled my head with his years of accumulated knowledge, a difficult task that continues to this day. My lessons came primarily on Idaho’s Henry’s Fork, where the fish are particular and the lessons hard-learned.
But once I got the hang of it with those difficult fish, other rivers seemed like a piece of cake, at least until I went to “grad school” in New Zealand, but that’s another column.
Thanks, Dale.
So as the Montana general season opens this weekend, take someone fishing, maybe that person who first took you. It would be a great way to say thanks.
Sports editor Bob Meseroll can be reached at 523-5265 or at sportsdesk@missoulian.com. His column on fishing will appear each Thursday in Outdoors.
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