My fishing obsession started really early, by the time I was approaching my 8th birthday, I was already allowed to fish by myself and I would regularly grab my gear and run out back or ride my bike to a place I wanted to fish. My dad used to marvel at my drive to go. As I grew, people started to notice how maniacal I was about it and would assume out loud to my dad that he must have been the catalyst behind it. He would always say just about the same thing, “I’m no fisherman, but I’m a great fisher-watcher.”
And that he was. The memories of him being completely content to just sit there and watch and ask questions are too numerous to count. I never realized it in the moment, but he was – perhaps unknowingly – setting me up on this career path from the very beginning. His questions forced me to know the answers and all the repetition taught me how to articulate it and use examples to make it easier for someone else understand it. When you’re a kid, you want to show your parents everything and you really want them to be invested in it and to give their approval. As a parent myself, I know that’s not always easy, my 8-year old is constantly asking me to pick a favorite between the two new colors of that infernal substance known as ‘slime’ that she mixed. I’ll admit, sometimes it’s hard to muster the brain impulses to point to the blue one. But when I see her tumbling across the yard to show me the new moves she learned in gymnastics, I find myself transfixed by something I haven’t cared about since Kerri Strug.
When I was 18, my focus switched from freshwater to salt and I was driving to the Cape Cod Canal several nights per week in my mom’s Blazer. She was working the 3 to 11 shift at a nursing home at the time and my dad would step up and go get her at work at 11:30 p.m. so I could fish. Selfless doesn’t begin to describe him.
Once when the Blazer was in the shop, my dad could see the pain of missing a tide in my distant stare. He convinced my mom to get a ride home with a coworker and said, “You still want to go to the Canal? Why don’t we go together?” I quickly reminded him that I didn’t have a second setup for him and that I wouldn’t be done fishing until around 2 a.m. He shrugged and said, “That’s no problem.”
This guy brought a chair and folding table and set it up in flat gravelly spot at Pole 85 on the mainland side and worked on his laptop the whole second half of the dropping tide! This was 1998, cell phones weighed 3 pounds, there were no hotspots or Wi-Fi, he wasn’t watching Netflix he was working on spreadsheets or a proposal for his job the next day. I don’t remember what I caught that night, but I do remember looking back at him sitting there with the glow of his laptop screen illuminating his face and thinking I couldn’t believe that he would actually do this!
When we got back to the car he stepped up and drove. I said something like, “I can’t believe you came, you’re going to be wreck at work tomorrow and you don’t even really like fishing!” He said, “I’d do anything for you Dave and I’m one hell of a fisher-watcher.”
For those that don’t know, my dad, Joel Anderson, passed away on September 18th after a short battle with leukemia. He was my greatest champion, the best friend I’ve ever had in my life and would literally do anything for his kids. When he died, I felt like I didn’t know how I could go on without him, but I’ve since come to realize that I can honor him by trying to be, even half the father that he was.
Love you dad.
