Fishing With Unc

Not all my fishing has been the fresh water fly variety. In my youth Dad and I went ocean fishing every Christmas with Dad's brother-in-law, my Uncle Lester. He was married to Mom's sister, Aunt Grace and was mom to my cousin, Ron. Dad and Unc were best of friends, visiting each other often and always playing pranks on each other.

On one of these trips to see them in Jacksonville, Florida Unc took us king mackerel fishing off the St. Johns River. I soon found out that this was a different type of fishing just in the preparation it took. When Dad and I would go to a local pond, we might take a sandwich or crackers and maybe soft drinks. Not so for ocean fishing. The night before we fueled the boat and packed a cooler with snacks, sandwiches and soft drinks, as the next day's tides required us to leave before daylight. Uncle Lester went through his checklist:

• Food
• Water/soft drinks
• Rods/reels/rigs
• Paddle
• Life jackets
• Extra coolers for fish we catch
• Bait bucket
• Extra 5-gallon bucket
• Old newspaper

With everything pronounced ready and in the boat, off we went -- Dad, Unc, Ron and me. Ron and I had worked ourselves into fever pitch by the time we pulled out of the driveway. Ron and I were as good friends as Dad and Unc were, doing everything together we could on each visit. This included but was not limited to playing baseball, getting into trouble and fishing.

Anyway, off we went in dawn's early light. We put in the river at an old fish camp that had seen better days in the 1930s and '40s near Mayport and headed for the mouth of the river. On the way out we passed the biggest ship I'd ever seen that Unc called 'Connie.' It wasn't until years later when I was in the navy that I'd get to know the aircraft carrier Constellation. He ran us in real close so we were under the curvature of her bow looking up at the massive anchor. Before we were out of her lee, I knew I'd be a sailor one day.

Then we ran out to find a shrimp boat. After locating just the perfect one, Unc passed up to it our bait bucket with a five dollar bill inside. Back it came minus the five dollars but full of by-catch from the shrimp nets. Now we're ready, I thought.

But I was wrong. We had to find sea birds feeding now. They fed on small fish the were chased up to the surface by larger predatory fish. Fish we were after. After sighting the birds, off we went towards them. Dad drove while Unc rigged and baited our hooks. Finally, we got to fish.

We threw out our lines and began the age-old ritual of waiting for a bite. Ron and Dad and I were fishing. Remember the extra bucket and newspaper? Well, Unc was carefully lining that bucket with paper. Afterwards he went to the bow of the boat, dropped his pants, sat on the bucket and proceeded with his daily constitutional.

By now the unanchored boat had settled itself into the swells, wallowing back and forth (port and starboard) every time a wave passed beneath us. Then the wind shifted, and we got a whiff of what Unc was doing. Ron and I started gagging. Pretty soon we were engaged in full-on barfing, one of us on each side of the outboard motor. Dad was laughing near to tears, and Unc laughed so hard he nearly fell off his bucket!

Finally he finished, as did we. Unc cleaned his bucket with seawater (all the while explaining its contents will go into the eco-system) and we quit chumming and went to fishing. Now I don't remember who caught what, but I do remember catching one mackerel. It was far larger than anything I'd ever caught in a pond, so I thought it was huge. It probably wasn't as mackerel go. At day's end we had caught enough to feed us and the next door neighbors that night.

That's a day that neither Dad nor Uncle Lester ever let Ron and me live down. Although it started out pretty crappy (as it were), the day ended by all of us having fun on the water while fishing.

Maybe next time I'll tell you about Dad and Unc raking oysters, fishing and losing their catch to a hammerhead.

Showoff!

And then there's the time the fishing got in the way of showing off. Dad and I were at a small Baptist retreat in the mountains of north Georgia perched on the shores of a beautiful mountain lake named Lake Louise. I was in my mid-teens, so I don't remember whether the lake was stocked. But, there were fish in it.

I know this because I know a lot about Dad. Dad loved to fish. He carried tackle always in the the trunk of the car. When he received a call to pastor a church, he'd always go to the town to check out the fishing and availability of fishing buddies first. He figured if God wanted him there, He'd provide fish for Dad to catch. Shoot, when Dad went to the bathroom for any length of time he'd take a repairable piece of tackle with him. And, he didn't like to fish unless he knew there were fish there to catch. So, when Dad said, "Let's go fishing" that day I knew I'd get to do more than just wet a hook.

Lake Louise is big; in fact it's too big to work the shoreline in just one day. So Dad set out to find us a boat. The retreat had lots of canoes, but no fishing boats. Since Dad a a little pull at the Baptist Convention level, a jonboat appeared for him.

For you yankees, foreigners or both, a jonboat is larger than a canoe, flat-bottomed and usually made of aluminum. Unless you stumble upon a new one, it will be dented and scratched -- generally beat up. It may even have a patch or two on it. This boat was no exception. It had started its life shiny and green, a green caught somewhere between John Deere and Kelly. But that had been a long time ago. Now it was mostly the color of dented and skint aluminum, its paint scratched off by untold encounters with trailers, pickup truck beds, stumps and branches too numerous to count. There even looked to be a couple of patched bullet holes in its bow (snake in the boat?).

Few boats are complete without a motor. This one came with a fairly new-looking fuel tank and hose that was firmly attached to a 10-horse Evinrude that looked as if it had been the auxiliary propulsion system for the Ark. There was no shroud, so we got to hear every noise it made. That also meant we had to manually wind the starter pull rope around the starter every time we pulled it -- that is after we found it lying on the bottom of the boat underneath the fuel tank. Bottom line, though, it ran. It moved the boat through the water out into the lake and away from the bank.

We found a promising looking cove and started to cast. Our flies were the type that enticed either bass or bream, so we felt pretty certain we'd catch fish that day. That's when the trouble started. We were just outside the range to make the fly look as if it had just fallen off a branch into the water. So, Dad asked if I needed the boat closer to the bank. Wrong question to ask a teenager with an ego. I promptly replied that I could handle it by feeding more line on each cast. Dad started to do the same. After a few casts, we had some serious line in the water. Pretty soon Dad said, " See that branch hanging next to that stump? I'm gonna lay my fly right under the branch." Which he promptly did. He raised the tip of the rod, gave it a little flick and forcefully brought the tip back to the 2:00 o'clock position. Without hesitation he cocked his arm over to the right, making it parallel to the water, and flipped the rod tip back to 10:00 o'clock.

It was poetry in motion. It was the perfect balance between man, rod, line and fly. At that moment my dad was the Monet of fly fishing. By placing that fly in the exact spot so far away from the boat, Dad presented the perfect lure to any waiting fish. Unbeknownst to him, he'd also thrown down the gauntlet in front of me.

With a circular motion I executed a near flawless 'pig-tail pickup' with my fly. Doing this can sometimes cause a fish to lunge out of the water to catch the fly as it rises. Not today. I desperately stripped line in the backswing and let it 'shoot' through the rod when my tip went back to 10:00 o'clock. But I was on the other end of the boat, so I had to make both my swings across my chest, making my cast a left-handed one but using my right hand. My fly landed within two feet of Dad's. Luckiest cast I've ever made in my life. Dad let out a whoop to encourage me, but one look from him let me know I was in for a contest.

We both knew that at the end of the day only one of us would have familial bragging rights. That set us both off; no challenge went unanswered. The flies were zipping past our heads on the backswing as we were finishing up our forward swings. Pretty soon we were both standing -- one at each end of the boat.

Did I mention we were in a jonboat? While we were busy trying to outdo each other, we didn't notice how much the boat was 'working.' The ends of the boat were twisting with each cast while the center stayed relatively calm. Remember those patches? It was only when we were ankle deep in water that we noticed something was amiss. But neither of us was willing to stop before the other. Our stubbornness and pride nearly sank us and the boat! Finally we looked at each other in mid-cast and called a truce.

But that's not the end of the story. In all this testosterone-crazed competition we were catching fish.... fish that were just getting in our way or slowing us down. We'd land them and either throw them back or just toss them on the floor of the boat. Well, now the fish had water and they were flippin' and floppin' and splashin' all over the boat.Oh, for a video of that moment!

Dad started the motor and I went to bailing. By the time we got back to the dock we had a relatively dry boat, a mess of fish and no clear-cut winner of the impromptu contest. Oh yeah, we fed a lot of folks fish that night.

Winter Story Telling

Another favorite winter pastime is telling fishing stories. Now you've got to know that a fisherman lies only when his lips are moving. But this is a story I told recently that really (my lips aren't moving) happened to my dad and me. We went fishing and landed a whopper, but neither of us caught it. This is how it happened.

You'd have never heard this story if I hadn't asked Dad to teach me how to fly fish. I wanted to learn mostly because fly fishing is a constantly moving work of art. Stand back and watch a fly fisherman work his rod and line and try to tell me it's not a thing of beauty! Well, I wanted to make this art, too.

Little did I know how much hard work and practice goes into learning to fly fish. The basics are a lot like this:

1. Hold the rod/reel in your dominant hand.
2. Strip out a few feet of line with your other hand.
3. Swing the rod at about eye level, ending each half of the swing at an imaginary 10:00 and 2:00 o'clock.
4. Strip out more line and feed it into the line that's going out in the 10 and 2 movement.
5. On the last swing, let all the stripped line out, hold the tip of the rod at 10:00 and allow the fly to daintily land on the water before the line does.

Sounds easy enough, doesn't it? Well, if you've ever tried it you know how agonizingly frustrating it can be.

Dad 'let' me work on this technique until I could consistently hit a ball cap he'd placed in the front yard about 20 feet from the driveway (where I was standing). I was not allowed to stand in the grass or get any closer to the hat. After about three years of this, he let me try my hand at fly fishing. Don't get me wrong. I was fishing all the time, but I was perfecting my bait casting and cane pole techniques while I waited.

Dad and I had gone to Blackmon's pond. Mr. Blackmon, who owned the pond, was family to me by extension. My best buddy, Charlie, was Mr. Blackmon's nephew. Since Charlie and I were inseparable, he became 'Uncle' to me.

Anyway, Dad and I went to Blackmon's pond for a hands-on lesson on the water. Even though I had practiced lo, these many years, I could still stand improvement in Dad's eyes. That was partly because I was using Dad's split bamboo rod his brother (my real uncle) had brought back from Japan after The War. You know, World War II. It was real limber and thus difficult to control. I just couldn't get the fly to drop first (refer to #5).

Well, I was tired and frustrated. My right arm hurt. Dad couldn't figure out why his excellent instruction hadn't produced a superb fisherman. We began sniping at each other as only a teenager and his father can. He jabbed; I parried. I jabbed; he parried.

Finally I just threw the rod down, proclaiming in my best teenager's angst, "Well, nobody's perfect!" Little did either of know the stars had just aligned, producing the only modern miracle (predating the '69 New York Mets' World Series win by five years). Everybody knows about the Mets because they did it for TV.

The rod lay on the ground. The fly lay on the water's surface, looking for all the world like a real bug. At least it did to one 3 1/2- to 4-pound largemouth bass. The fish came out of the water, mouth agape, swallowing the fly whole.

We both stood there dumbfounded as the fish raced away, taking up the slack line in the water. Did I mention the rod was a split bamboo number (irreplaceable) that had a reel on it that predated my ancient brother?

At the same time we both thought that thought. Dad lunged for the rod; the bass came out of the water and 'danced' on its tail; I ran for the car trunk that had the net in it, as we were using 2-pound test line. Luckily for me Dad caught the rod before it got to the water. He played the fish for a while and then insisted I land it. Almost reverently I took the rod that transferred every twitch the fish made to my hand, up my arm and to the part of my brain that true fishermen posses. Trust me ladies, compared to this feeling sex can be overrated. But that's mainly because the fish don't talk back and we can pretty much go fishing whenever we want. Dad scooped it up with the net as we both let out a whoop Mom might have heard back at the house.

This could have -- and should have-- been the end of the story. But it wasn't. Although Dad would have driven through town with this bass splayed across the hood of the car to show it off, we just took a picture of it and gently released it back into its home, free to fight us on another day. To this day I still don't know how much the fish weighed, but Dad swore the negative weighed two pounds!

But what really happened that day concerns our relationship. That was the day we bonded as men. Fishermen.

Dad's gone now. He lived until almost 94, and we talked about that day every time I saw him. We shared that father/son moment for many years. As an aside, I asked Dad for a motorcycle for my 15th birthday. Instead he gave me a hand-made Heddon rod that has that old reel he bought in the 1940s on it, killing fish even today.

Thanks, Dad.

Winter Rod Building

One of my favorite new things to do in the winter is to build rods. You might ask, "What's so much fun about building a fishing rod?" Well, I did and quickly found out there's an art form to it (which I have yet to master), quite a bit of tedium and whole lot of satisfaction.

Really good custom rod builders leave their touch on almost all aspects of the rod. They build the cork handles from small cork rings, wrap and epoxy the guides, but most of all they show off their skills in wrapping by making all manner of designs and colors in thread just above the handle. Me? I'm still learning to wrap the guides onto the rod blank so they will just stay on; fancy will come much later.

The tedium comes in the wrapping and aligning the guides. I wrap mine loosely enough so I can move them just a hair if they're not in alignment. So far, they've all had to be moved somewhat. Building a rod is a whole lot like learning a new language or how to play an instrument. The builder gets better and better with more practice.

The satisfaction comes from catching fish on a rod built with your own hands. Sure, I can get a whole outfit at Wal-Mart for less than I pay for a rod blank, but somehow the store-bought rod just isn't the same.

I'm just starting out, so I get my rods in kits. They come with a carbon blank, guides, handles and butts, glue, epoxy and thread. The first thing I do is find the rod's spine. This is accomplished by placing the butt on the floor and the tip in the palm of my hand. When I press on the tip, the rod bends and rotates until a beautiful little curve shows itself. The back side of the curve is the spine. I mark it and go to the next step.

Next, I ream the handle to fit the blank and wrap tape around the blank where the reel seat will mount. Then, I ream the cork foregrip to fit. Next, the blank is laid on the floor and positions of the guides are marked in wax pencil on it. I then glue and slip the handle on, then the reel seat and finally the foregrip. This is put in a homemade vice contraption designed to keep all the components aligned and tight until the glue dries.

After all this dries, I mount the rod on the rod supports and wrap the guides onto the spots specified by the wax pencil marks. This is what takes the longest, as I sometimes have to stop and start all over again, especially on the smallest of guides. The rod in the picture has six guides on it, and I had to wait for my binocular magnifier to arrive so I could see to finish the guides near the tip.

When all the previous steps are accomplished, I chuck the butt in a rotating vise and apply clear epoxy to the windings. This covers them and protects them from the elements as well as strengthens them for a lifetime of hauling fish from the water. After a day of drying, the rod is ready to accept a reel and head out to the local pond for testing. When it passes with flying colors (catches fish) I sign it and apply an American flag decal.

So far I've made spinning and casting rods for other people. My next one will be for me -- a travel fly rod. And I'll build it, too, if FBC lets me stay off the water long enough.