"Just once before I die, I would like to have the perfect fishing trip". I've heard a lot of people make that statement over the years - myself included.
I wonder what their idea of a perfect trip is? Is it catching the biggest fish of your life? Is it catching more fish than you ever have before? Is it having your picture published with some great angling feat? It used to be all of those and more for me, once upon a time.
But, as I have grown older I have changed my perspective. I'm not sure whether it was my own doing or just time that caused the change. Age has a habit of doing things to more than just your fishing perspective!
I had the perfect fishing trip more times than I can count, and never even realized it! Maybe you have had a perfect trip and haven't realized it either.
My sons were about eight and ten years old and we were fishing the Everglades out of Holiday Park in Florida. It was truly a day to write home about. From daybreak until about 10AM we had caught and released over 100 black bass. They weren't huge, but they were plentiful, and all three of us had sore arms!. That was a perfect fishing trip.
On another trip, when they were a little older, we trolled for dolphin (mahi mahi) for eight hours and never got a strike. My sons talked to me about what I thought they should do in school, what my oldest should do about a girl friend, and how they could get along better with their mother. We never caught a fish, but it was another perfect fishing trip. Do you see a pattern?
I took my father on his last fishing trip five months before he died. He could hardly speak because of a previous stroke, could hardly walk because of poor circulation, and I had no business taking him twenty miles into Florida Bay. He didn't catch a fish all day, but he had a smile the whole time. The one coherent thing he said all day was, "Boy this is great", as he sat and looked at the water. It was a struggle for me physically and emotionally. I had prepared myself to try and handle his passing on the water were that to happen. It didn't, but even if it had, it would still have been a perfect fishing trip.
Maybe we place too much emphasis on the fish and not enough on the event itself. Maybe we don't pay enough attention to what is going on around us while we fish. Kids mature, people grow old, and life continues.
One particularly slow day, I said to my middle son, "You know, even though we're not catching anything, it's just great to be out here." Over time I tried to repeat that phrase to him. I would say, "You know son ,even though we're not catching anything", and he would interrupt me with, "I know - it's just great to be out here."
Both my sons are grown and have children now. I wonder how much their perspective has already changed from when they were just kids looking for that perfect fishing trip?
