The earth had just completed its 55th orbit of the sun since my coming into existence, and there seemed no better way to celebrate my entering my 56th year than to spend it fishing with my son. I find myself musing on the meaning of fatherhood far more now than I ever did when both of my now adult children were small. As they have become increasingly less dependent on me (my daughter married and a home owner, my son a firefighter who towers over me in stature) my happiness has become increasingly dependant on theirs. I have had my adventures, made my mistakes, momentarily basked in my mini-triumphs, but while I hope that there's still quite a bit of life in the old dog, it is their flourishing that means most to me now. In my own imperfect way while they were children I tried to provide the shade under which they could grow, one day in the future as I enter my dotage I may come to rely on them to provide the shade that protects an enfeebled version of me, but now in the early autumn of my life and the springtime of theirs we meet as friends and equals.
We had elected to fish a local small commercial lake, largely for the sake of convenience and for its pleasant facilities. This was to be a day when the fishing would be casual and as much a backdrop to conversation and each other's company as a frenzied pursuit of fish, and while commercials are often much maligned, they have their place and the fishery we had opted for is clean, well managed and provides a pleasant angling experience.
We opted to share a swim, happy to sacrifice efficiency on the altar of sociability and following the obligatory depth plumbing rituals began fishing in the margins, the bait no more complicated than double maggot. We were each employing the use of a centre pin, mine matched with a very light split cane float rod, while my son favoured a rod of the less romantic but arguably more efficient carbon variety. My first cast saw my float disappear and a brief tussle resulted in an F1 of maybe a couple of pounds being drawn into the waiting folds of the landing net. A couple of small perch followed before my son connected with his first fish of the day. By lunchtime we had landed a catholic selection of fish, with gudgeon, perch, roach, rudd, bream and small carp forming the supporting cast with the majority of fish being F1s. Lunch, which consisted of large breakfast rolls, was hurriedly taken in the onsite cafe before we resumed our piscatorial activity.
The weather, although mercifully dry, was cold and a brisk wind caused the lakes surface to be a rolling mass of small but constant waves, while beneath its surface an undertow moved briskly from right to left. Despite the challenging conditions a procession of fish continued to make their way to the bank, with numbers being roughly equal although my son's fish were consistently of a larger size than mine and included this diminutive but rather beautiful dark-backed little mirror.
As we entered the last half hour we noticed that fish had begun boiling near the surface as our loose fed maggots entered the water, and so despite the cold temperature we decided to experiment with fishing "summer style" and shallowed our floats to about a foot and a half's depth and intensified the feeding, which resulted in a bite a cast and an increase in the rate of fish caught, prompting us to wonder how many more fish we might have caught if we had fished counter-intuitively from the start.
After four and a half windswept hours and with an estimated forty fish between us we decided to cheat the forecast rain, pack our tackle away and head for home. It had been a wonderful slice of father and son time and a fitting start to my birthday celebrations. Under my tutelage my son caught his first fish when he was just three years old, and I hope that there will be plenty more opportunities over how ever many years I have left for us to share a swim, enjoy each other's company, exchange thoughts and opinions and (occasionally) catch the odd fish.
A friend once told me that fishing is his favourite way of wasting time. I disagree. Time spent fishing is never wasted, time spent with one's children even more so, which -by means of logical extension - leads me to conclude that time spent fishing with one's child has few qualitative equals. Today I feel like the luckiest of men.
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