After an early dinner this past Saturday night, my wife, daughter and I took a ride to a nearby beach to enjoy the calm warmth of midsummer, to get our toes wet and to take that rare opportunity to do nothing else but relax. It delivered on all fronts, a perfect evening, a sparsely attended beach and even a vivid rainbow arcing out of the ocean thanks to a line of offshore storms.
As we walked back to our vehicle we saw a couple younger teenagers setting up to fish. As the daughter of a hardcore surfcaster and fishing editor, Lila knows the gear and she knows fishing and fishermen. She spotted these anglers and said, “Those guys don’t look like they know what they’re doing.” She wasn’t saying this to make fun of them, it was just an innocent observation. And she was right.
I turned to assess these two young men and what they were up to. They had two rods set in spikes, lines not yet in the water. The area immediately in front of them was a soup of that infernal red weed commonly known as mung, and their gear was definitely the type that was tucked away in the rafters of a garage or barn, probably purchased at a bargain store years before these two casters were even born!
I felt a twinge of compassion, I thought about stepping in, I thought about pointing them to the short stretch of rocks at the other end of the beach lot. I wanted to warn them not to cast into that reddish-brown slop. I wanted to look over their line and leaders and make sure they were set up for success, should it find its’ way to their hooks. But like a nature photographer shooting for NatGeo, I opted not to intervene, letting them learn on their own. Because I realized that I was seeing something that has become truly rare in the YouTube era; two young kids who were figuring it out on their own. And I really respected that.
I also envied them.
I thought about the two major changes in my life that set me up for the long process of learning this sport on my own. When I was 7, we moved to a new house that was situated on the shoreline of one of central Massachusetts’ best bass lakes. To a 7-year-old and to the teenager I would become, that lake was like an ocean and my trusty red canoe was like freedom cast in fiberglass. And as small as that canoe was, it was never too small to carry my hopes and dreams, heck, it kept my daydreams afloat all the way through high school! It also served as the platform for many highlight catches and memorable days spent fishing and learning.
And then, of course, I thought of my biggest move, from central-Mass to the shores of Buzzards Bay. I remember the day I stood with my Ugly Stik surf rod and looked out across the water to the Elizabeth Islands. I remember surveying the whole scene and having no idea how much those shorelines would come to mean to me. Having no idea what kinds of catches were possible or the potential that was waiting out there for me to find it.
It’s that first step of the journey that I envy. Seeing the ocean both as a towering mystery and as a wild and boundless expanse of untold potential. I’ve said it many times to many people, “fishing is not for everyone” and I know and believe this to be true. But after my nearly 40 years of fishing obsession, and what it has meant to me so far, I sure hope that those boys find what I found and ride it out for as long as they can!
