My parents are fond of telling the story of my first fishing trip. I was about 3 years old and my dad rigged me up with a cane pole and a piece of shrimp in the Stono River. While he was rigging up another rod he noticed I was taking my cane pole and slapping it on the water. He glanced over and told me not to beat the pole on the water. A few seconds later I was back at it again. My dad was looked up to tell me that beating the pole on the water was going to scare away the fish, when he saw the confused look on my face and realized I had a fish and the fish was the one making me slap the pole on the water. I was holding on for dear life. He reached over and helped me pull the fish in. It was a small shark, but probably the fish that got me hooked for life. Over the years our family has enjoyed some great times on the water fishing and actually has some really successful days and memories along the way.
Last week my son kept telling my wife that I was taking the next day off to take him fishing on the boat with my father (he calls him pops). Somehow he got it in his head that Pops and I were taking him fishing and he was quite adamant about it. My wife called me at work to ask if I was taking him and while we had never discussed it, I thought it was a great idea. This was his first trip on a boat and I wanted to make sure that he would get to see some really neat things that I was able to experience as a boy growing up here in Charleston. We went out in the habor and he was quite excited to see the Yorktown and the big ships moving in and out of the harbor and I probably answered at least a thousand questions about all of the things he was seeing for the first time on the water.
The highlight of the day, however, came when he hooked a nice size trout on his rod and Pops helped him reel it to the boat, while I took a few moments to snap a couple of pictures. The moment for me was about much more than catching the fish. Some 34 years after he helped me bring my first fish to the boat, there was Pop