[briansnat]

My dad used to go for blowfish with his friends back when they were thick in the bays. He'd come home with a bushel basket full and all summer long we'd be eating blowfish. I was 6ish when he allowed me to come along for the first time. I don't recall if I actually fished or just sat in the boat and watched.

He also liked to go for winter flounder in the spring and that was the first fish that I actually recall fishing for and catching. I remember him teaching me the difference between a bite and the sinker bouncing along the bottom and how to set the hook. I'm guessing I was maybe 8 or so.

Not long after that we started going to my dad's friend's cabin at a lake in Sussex County and dad taught me how to catch sunnies off the dock with a dough ball. We'd literally catch hundreds over the course of a day, but I got bored and wanted to catch big fish. Then one time we went out with his friend, who was a serious freshwater fisherman. He was casting from the boat to the shore. At this age I assumed that shallow water = small fish, deep water = big fish so I asked him why he was casting to shallow water. He explained that the big fish come in to eat the little fish. That made sense to me, it was as if a light went on in my head. By the time I was about 10 I was taking the boat out myself. Dad had bought the cabin from his friend about that time and it is still in the family.

Dad wasn't as an accomplished freshwater fisherman as he was at saltwater so other than that one lesson from his friend and the sunfish lessons from dad I pretty much learned freshwater by myself and by watching what the old timers on the lake used and where they fished. Old Mr Reynolds was my teacher, even though he probably had no clue. I'd row close enough to his boat to see what he had on his rod and watched where he casted to and emulated him.

I'm lucky in that my dad is still around, but his fishing days are pretty much over. He uses a walker and only leaves the house for Dr appts. He still calls me each Friday to tell me what the Asbury Park Press fishing report says (though I rarely fish saltwater) and listens to my fishing tales. But these days he's content with his Fox News, his iPad and his newspapers and books and driving my mom up the wall, and really has no interest in getting out and going fishing. On the positive side he's given me probably a few thousand dollars worth of fishing gear, mostly saltwater, but I'd rather have him in the boat with me than his old gear.