Where it all started!

DanielOcean

DanielOcean

Fart! : )
It is so easy to forget little things these days. My Dad passed earlier in June this year. I have been making frequent trips to my parents home in Idaho to handle business for my Mom, and do all things a dutiful son should.
My Momma walked up to me the other day while I was cleaning her back porch, and she gave me a gift that I did not know still existed. It was my first "true" reel. I mean i have played with reels in the past but this was my first "baby".
My goodness, I caught an enormous bass in the Lynden KOA pond with a banjo minnow and this reel. Most likely still dirt from the local creek I fished what feels like everyday now.

My Daddyo was never really a hardcore fisherman, and this was originally his. He bought the quantum at a store in St Louis called Grandpas. He brought it home and told me not to touch it. After an entire year went by and I decided to go against his wishes and would sneak the rod and reel out all the time.
There was one other reel that he would never ever let me touch as it was my Grandfathers on my Dad's side. Every now and then he would let me play with it but I knew very well never to go in THAT drawer.
Now, a new chapter in life starts. Losing a parent seems to "age" you! It is the only way I can describe how it feels. But through all the bad feelings our bodies let us go through, we choose to see through that and find the gratitude, and good memories through the bullshit.

Where did it start for you?

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I started out around the age of 5, dunking worms and salmon eggs in the small creek located just over a mile from our house in Colorado. My Dad was not what you would call an avid angler, but he did fly fish, and I started learning just before we moved to Texas. Didn't pick up a fly rod (or much of anything else) over the next 12 years, and I kind of regret that now, but yeah, that's where it all started.
 
happy for your memories! No pop story myself never having met mine, so always tried to be the pop I never had to my kids, who were introduced to fishing as soon as they could hold a rod, soaking worms and throwing spinners while on vacation because we always camped by water. My youngest boy really loved it, gifted his first fly rod when he was six or so, and so we took many weekend fishing trips together, explore those blue lines in the atlas and pick a new one to try out. We still have a ball fishing together decades later. IMG_20210802_154550046.jpgIMG_20220708_170649043.jpg
 
Daniel - I'm sorry for your loss, yes, it hurts to lose a parent (parents, in my case). Good on you for helping your mom out; that's something you and I share. My mom lived 40 plus years after dad passed and the last few with mom weren't easy for her. I like to think I helped ease her worries and I believe your mom is grateful beyond her ability to express it.

Now, back to dad and early fishing. According to family lore (backed up with a picture), dad took me fishing a small creek that flows into Sequim Bay, this would have been July 4th, 1954 (my fifth birthday). I believe dad cut a willow stick, attached some monofilament and a hook and baited the hook with Pautzke's Balls o Fire. The picture shows me grinning holding five trout caught on my fifth birthday. (I must be a senior citizen.)
 
Daniel, so sorry for your loss. I consider those who grew up around fishing to be lucky. I grew up in a fishing family on Camano Island and have been fishing all of my life. I have shared this picture before and believe that I was around the age of five when this photo was taken.

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Great post Daniel! I've been going through similar stuff this summer, and come up with some neat treasures as well. Just moved mom out of the house I grew up in by Thornton Creek. The neighbor kid and I started fishing that creek the summer we were 5 1/2, and I'm sure we fished more days a year for many years than I even get to now.
 
Daniel I am sorry for your loss. I find my best connection to those passed on in their things and gear, especially fishing gear.

I started just a few cricks downstream of the lynden KOA ponds chasing cutties in bertrand. My best friend Preston and I would wake up early and soak the yard with the hose to bring the worms up. Pick up a dozen or so, grab our spinning rods and bike a mile to the crick. Jump in and wet wade it all the way to the mouth, fishing everything that could hold fish and swimming most of the final stretch as it got too deep.

Preston and I are still the best of friends, and our kids are now fishing buddies. Weve been desperately trying to find the time to get back into bertrand, and I know one day we will. I'm pretty sure I havent left it yet.
 
I don't remember this myself.
My mom told me that the first rod and reel I had only lasted one bite or one hook up to a fish.
She told me I said "weeee" and let go of the rod and it went in the lake never to be seen again.
Other rods and reels were worn out or broken and went in the trash or stolen and never seen again.
My first fly rod got chewed up by my puppy and the reel got borrowed and never returned.
I started fishing more than 70 years ago and I'm still going strong.
 
Long_Rod_Silvers said:
Sorry to hear about your dad @DanielOcean .
My dad's getting older and a couple weeks back gave me a few reels he doesn't use any more. One of which was that same Quantum USA reel in your photo. Still works great.
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Condolences to hear about your Dad, mine taught me how to fish. Passed in 2007 at the age of 92 I still have the same Quantum reel. I also have the IM8 Coldwater rod that goes with it.
 
Sorry about your loss.

My first "rod" was cheap and easily replaceable. My cousin and I would fish small creeks hear his place. We would dig some worms near the chicken coup and then head down to the low swale to cut willow shoots (since my cousin was a year older he had control of the knife for a rod (about 4 feet long), attach a piece of mono about the same length with a hook (the expense part of the outfit) which was in very limited supply and then head to section of creek a short walk from their place to harass those small cutthroat looking for the rare giant that would make the magical 6 inch legal size. Those creeks were roughly 2 feet wide but every corner pool and spots with logs or stumps where the current would carve out a deeper spot would hold a small cutthroat. Even though we would rarely bring a fish home great adventures were had. Happily, we would return scratched and muddy from working our way through the brush and trying to rescue those precious hooks that had become snagged. As with most fishers we had great "tales" to share to anyone that would listen

Great times for a five-year-old!
 
Daniel, sorry to hear about your dad.

I'm lucky enough to have both parents still alive and healthy. Some of my most fun childhood memories revolve around family camping and fishing...
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I'm in the foreground....grossed out at the fish cleaning station...
 
so the where and when I caught my first fish.
Trinity Alps up high, summer I was 10, on a 6 week stint at the Bar 52, a working ranch for kids.
At the ranch we'd get up at dawn, about 20 of us or so, to move irrigation pipe in the hay fields, than spend the mornings on chores, afternoons we'd get to swim in the river.
We'd hike up to the Alps once a week to check on the ranch's summer graze herd, sleeping bags on our back and an issued army style water canteen and boy scout knife, while the honchos rode and led pack horses, our destination a camp cabin that had been built to hold food and gear and where the honchos slept while we landed outside.
Once at elevation, the hands would look for the free graze cattle, see if there had been any losses, lay out salt blocks for the stock to lick, inject the younger steer.
We always had oatmeal for breakfast, PJ's for lunch, and If we wanted to eat more than rice for dinner we needed to catch fish. So we were given hooks and line tied to a cut willow switch.
We'd catch grasshoppers in the morning when the wet dew had them immobile, stick them in shallow hole's we'd dig and cover with leaves. In the afternoons we'd grab a now lively hopper, impale it on a hook, and dap it on the small stream that wandered through the meadows the camp house had been constructed on. It was pretty easy to catch the hand sized trout that would rush the hopper, ate gutted and roasted on a stick over the fire, real tasty when hungry.
I enjoyed those 6 weeks, my first exposure to the outdoors, ignited a love for it that never faded.
 
Sorry for you loss DO, I too lost dad a few year's ago, and I'm still digging through everything I have of his. 9 tackle boxes and about 12 boxes of misalanious crap, not to mention all the tools.

I still remember getting my own steelhead rod n reel for Christmas, a Lamiglas rod and Shimano Bantam reel about 8yrs old, best Christmas ever!
 
DO, sorry for your loss. I lost mine way to early in life.

My fishing started on OP rivers. He would take me camping a couple of times each year for a week at a time. He fly fished as well as gear fished. A few hikes overnight were always taken to fish skinny blue lines. He was the most patient person I have ever met. He taught me read the water, identify bugs and taught me to enjoy nature at its finest. He helped me catch my first steelhead on the DW.

In his later years, when health issues took a toll, I was able to take him to the Kamloops for several years. My final trip with him was to Rivers Inlet. We had never fished for salmon together. I was the guide too. GULP! He slayed it. First time in a long time to see him smile with that glimmer in his eye, almost forgotten.

Remember the good times, the special times, and other times together. They are all special...
 
The first fishing rod I held and actually fished with was in the summer of 1959… I was 6… It was at the old stock yards in a fish tank or an above ground sort of giant sock tank full of trout and water . It was during the Oregon Centennial year celebration…I was
6years old and “caught” my first trout there from a tank. We took it home wrapped in newspaper and had it for dinner that evening
 
From age 1 to 10 years old I lived in the house with the pin in the burbs of Greer, SC. I caught hundreds of bluegill and a few bass and catfish in the ponds on lower right, mostly on canned corn fished under a red and white bobber, cast out with a push button reel. Sometimes I used soft bread. I would ride my bike down there alone to fish all the time. Sometimes I’d meet up with a pal, maybe one who lived along the lake (boy was I envious of that opportunity).
All summer I swam my little hiney off in the pool upper left—swim team, free swim until lunch, run home barefoot over hot asphalt for a bite, then back to the pool for afternoon. Sometimes I’d cut behind backyards to avoid the hot asphalt.

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Sorry about your Dad, DO.
 
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Matt B said:
From age 1 to 10 years old I lived in the house with the pin in the burbs of Greer, SC. I caught hundreds of bluegill and a few bass and catfish in the ponds on lower right, mostly on canned corn fished under a red and white bobber, cast out with a push button reel. Sometimes I used soft bread. I would ride my bike down there alone to fish all the time. Sometimes I’d meet up with a pal, maybe one who lived along the lake (boy was I envious of that opportunity).
All summer I swam my little hiney off in the pool upper left—swim team, free swim until lunch, run home barefoot over hot asphalt for a bite, then back to the pool for afternoon. Sometimes I’d cut behind backyards to avoid the hot asphalt.

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Sorry about your Dad, DO.
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what a great life to have had as a kid...the swimming pool my holy grail starting at 6 when we moved to a neighborhood that had one, swim teams until I found surfing, riding home on my Schwin with blood red eyes from the chlorine...still putting in 1500 yards 3 to 4 days a week.
 
SurfnFish said:
what a great life to have had as a kid...the swimming pool my holy grail starting at 6 when we moved to a neighborhood that had one, swim teams until I found surfing, riding home on my Schwin with blood red eyes from the chlorine...still putting in 1500 yards 3 to 4 days a week.
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It was a great 1980s kid lifestyle. My territory seemed so vast at the time. Going back as an adult, it somehow has shrunk, the ponds seem tiny, and the hills are less steep.

We used to have a real high dive at that pool. I first jumped off at 5 years old. I remember my brothers waiting for me in the deep end, the whole pool cheering me, my toes dripping over the edge.
 
Dad’s father , my granddad was a commercial salmon fisherman in Cathalamet, Wa . Dad grew up on Puget Island and helped his Dad on his fishing boat in the late 1930’s. Consequently, he was a catch and keep mindset guy. So when my brother and I were 7-10 yrs old he bought a New 16’ Starcraft with a 40 hp Evinrude. We fished every opening day of trout season at Lacamas Lake in Camas,Wa. We were allowed 16 trout each. I have cleaned a lot of trout at the end of fishing trips in the kitchen sink. At 12 I got an Eagle Claw fiberglass fly rod in the mid 60’s . That adventure began. And i kept less and less of my catch after that.
 
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