#2: Go Flyfishing With My Dad

Last year on my birthday, my dad and I had an early 4:30 am wake-up call to board a Florida-bound plane together.  The experience of traveling together to complete a huge milestone in my life (Ironman Florida) was unique and special because he was there.  In life, it's these experiences that stand the test of time.  For my birthday this year, I wanted to spend my day with him, in his element, not mine.  It was still a 4:30 am wake-up call, except this time there were no bikes or wetsuits.  Just flyrods and float tubes.

Growing up, I had fond memories of fishing with my dad at San Pablo Reservoir, Lake Chabot, and Mammoth Lakes.  I think Trace Adkins got it right...

 

We headed up to Lake Amador and made our way through the fog, arriving just in time to witness the sunrise over the lake.

Mother Nature's way of saying, "Good morning."

To watch someone work or play in their true element is a beautiful thing.  It all seems so smooth, so seamless.  I am always in awe of those who have truly mastered a craft.  He threaded our rods, pumped up our float tubes and carefully chose our bait.  Once on the water, he gave me directions for trolling the lake in my fins, lifting my rod and moving at a steady pace to make my bait look realistic.  He kept directing me to stay in a straight line, but if you've ever witnessed my inability to swim straight in the open water, you know that I love to zigzag.  So with huge fins and kicking backwards on a tube, this was nearly impossible.  After catching my first 2 fish, I told my dad that the irregular line pattern must have intrigued them enough to bite.

The set-up. With fins that are 5x the normal size I'm used to swimming with.

The limit per person is 5 fish.  We left the water with 8 fish, ate, packed up the tubes, and returned to the dock, where we caught one more and called it a day.  The sun was starting to set.

My first catch of the day.  Dad getting his fishin' on.  With a fish on.

I'm lucky that my dad knows what he's doing.  When we weren't getting bites using a certain bait, he would change it and try a different tactic.  It was a constant adventure of assessing, adjusting, and experimenting.  He also had a 'secret sauce' that we dabbed on the bait to attract the fish.  We ended the day with 9 fish; there were some people who unfortunately went home with nothing. 

My contributions for the day.  I ended up catching the biggest one at 18".

As he was cleaning the fish, my dad commented that one fish probably had been in the lake for a long while.  "How do you know?" I asked.  He explained that when the fish are planted and come from the hatchery, their fins are normally torn and shredded from the tight space they were contained in.  Once they are released, the fins have a chance to grow back and repair.  It was an appropriate analogy of my life and the reparation process of my own fins this past year.  Some things just need time and space to grow.

And some things just need to be filleted and smoked.  The final product- homemade smoked trout!

Days like these are the ones that will always remain ingrained in my heart...being with my father, on the water, on a crisp and sunny November day.  

Driving home with lots of love and lots of fish in the truck.

It was a beautiful reminder that life itself is a constant adventure of trying new things, readjusting and making changes when those things don't quite work out, and being patient enough to trust that the bait you have in the water is the best choice for you at that moment.  And how a dab of 'secret sauce' never hurts.