Father’s Day is this Sunday, June 21. Two years ago I wrote about my version of The Perfect Day based on an opening day fluke trip with my father and namesake, Jim Hutchinson. Regrettably, Hutch, Sr. wasn’t available to fish this season’s opener as he and my stepmother were in the process of buying a new house in Little Egg Harbor.
“Rain check,” was what I got on May 4th. No worries, I knew there’d be plenty of time this summer to get in a couple of drifts together.
On the actual moving day, pop was apparently working at a pace not exactly befitting a man who turns 84 in September, and he had a bit of a fall. It took two people, stepmom Bonnie and my nephew Alex, to help him into a chair. But as Bonnie turned to make a phone call – presumably to the paramedics – Coach Hutch stubbornly tried to walk it off, only to find himself back on the floor again. A torn quadriceps tendon will do that that to a man of any age!
He’s going to be just fine of course, but following surgery in late May and six weeks with the leg fully extended in a brace, it looks as though fluke season is out for the Hutchinson Sr. and Jr. crew. Hopefully he’ll be ready for the fall striper run and a couple of late summer Phils games!
Sitting here in a Florida airport following a Quantum tackle event, I got to thinking of dad and all the great times we’ve had fishing over the years, at home along the Jersey Shore as well as our road games – chasing tarpon near his winter place in Pine Island, FL, our family “rockfish” trips to Tilghman Island on the Chesapeake, and East River blues and stripers in the shadow of the U.N. Building in Manhattan immediately come to mind.
Some refer to fishing as a hobby, but I tend to think it’s in my familial DNA, both the Hutchinson side and mom’s Becotte lineage in Cape May County. If you look closely on the bookshelf behind my head when I’m doing the Thursday video fishing forecast at my desk, there’s an old black and white photo from along the dock behind the Ocean City Fishing Center in the 70s; it’s me holding up a bluefish while my grandfather, Capt. Jim Becotte kneels beside me. I must’ve been around 9 years old, but I remember that day as vividly as if it happened yesterday. I may not remember birthdays or the next item up on the “honeydo” list, but if it has to do with fish it’s probably at the forefront of my mind.
For all of the fish he caught over the years, in all the trips he captained, grandpop Becotte never caught a striped bass. And now, like doing my weekly video in front of that old framed picture, I can sense my grandfather’s presence over my shoulder with every striper I catch; considering the copious amount of bluefish we ate in those days, I can also hear him wince each time I release another fish!
But hobby? Heck no, it’s hardwired and passed along through the genes, sort of like how I wear dad’s gnarled hands or push the cheaters back on my Becotte nose. I’m truly blessed to come from a family of fishermen, and women for that matter – the tree don’t grow very far from the apple.
So dad and I won’t be wetting a line this Father’s Day; that’s okay, because I still have the “rain check” in my pocket. And I’m sure while drifting the channel edges this Sunday, I’ll have two great men riding shotgun on my shoulder, no doubt wincing with every 17-3/4-inch summer flounder that I release back into the Barnegat Bay.
