Aging Angler Tries Being the Mentor His Family Long Deserved

   My nine grandchildren have no idea how lucky they are to have never fished with me when I was raising their mothers Leah, Elle and Karsyn during the 1990s.

   My wife, Penny, and I led family fishing vacations to northwestern Ontario from 1994 through 2003. After all, I often promote the mental-health benefits of fishing together as a family, especially when you’re on tight budgets and granted only two weeks of vacation annually. Fishing provides unrivaled pleasures and excitement the family can share at affordable prices.

   Then again, cramming five people into a van, truck or station wagon for 10-hour drives, and then wedging those same five people into a boat for eight to 10 hours daily for five days isn’t all giggles and great stories. If your family isn’t healthy emotionally going into such prolonged confinement, I can think of less stressful vacations. Such as? Oh, like a 10-day road trip with your grade-schoolers to Florida and Disney World over Christmas break.

   I read about that one time.

   Now, you might picture a fishing vacation and envision a happy family holding up big walleyes and talking about bigger ones that got away. Yes, that’s part of our family’s picture album, but my daughters also recall Dad imitating Mount Vesuvius when things didn’t go his way.

   And the more fishing “toys” you put in your boat, the faster those frustrations multiply. In August 1997, for example, everything seemed happy at midweek as we trolled for northern pike and lake trout. In fact, we were having the afternoon of our family-fishing lives. In 90 minutes we had landed five northern pike that weighed between 5 and 10 pounds, lost a couple of others, and our downrigger had just tripped again.

Eddie Morse, foreground, and Harvey Von Ruden, hold a largemouth bass and perch they caught while fishing near Empire, Michigan, in mid-August. — Patrick Durkin photo

Fish on! As I helped Elle fight the fish, I told Leah, our oldest daughter, to crank up the downrigger cable and its 8-pound lead ball. Leah did as instructed, but I hadn’t taught her to set the downrigger’s brake, which holds the heavy weight in place. When she let go of the crank, the 8-pound ball screamed for the bottom, the crank handles flying in circles like pedals on a runaway bicycle.

   “No!” I screamed. Too late. When the ball hit bottom 55 feet below, the cable spewed off the downrigger’s reel, snapping wire around everything in sight. Minutes later, Elle landed the 4-pound lake trout that triggered the boat’s wiry bird’s nest.

   I slid the fish into the boat’s live-well, and then retreated to the stern and the fouled downrigger. Penny and the girls kept their distance, knowing one of my many shortcomings is fixing anything mechanical. I sat down, hoping somehow to unravel the tangle before bedtime. I surrendered within seconds and tore into the mess with a wire-cutter, cursing and whining with each cut.

   Our youngest, Karsyn, then 8, took it personally and started crying. Penny then bawled me out as I continued cutting and pulling at the tangled wire. “That stupid downrigger has always been your ‘thing,’” she screamed. “You’ve never shown anyone else how to use it, so quit yelling like it’s somehow our fault!”

   She was right, of course. I had ignorantly assumed that because they had seen me use the downrigger, that they learned to use it through osmosis. My emotional storm soon passed, and I apologized to my clan. Then I taught everyone how to use the downrigger, a lesson that only Leah ever found useful.

   Meanwhile, I vowed to behave better. No boat is big enough to accommodate misdirected anger. In the years since, I like to think my behavior improved but assume the four women closest to me might disagree. And so, I keep trying in my senior years, reminding myself of David Bowie’s thoughts on growing old, including, “Aging is an extraordinary process whereby you become the person you always should have been.”

   All my foul memories of failed family fishing moments flashed through my mind at dawn Thursday, Aug. 14, when a knot broke as I let out line while trolling for salmon on Lake Michigan. It happened offshore of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore near Empire, Michigan. At the boat’s wheel was Harvey Von Ruden, age 9, a buddy of

my grandson Eddie Morse, age 7, Harvey’s co-pilot.

   So, there I was, holding in one hand 180 yards of lead-core line with a leader and lure dragging behind the boat, and a frayed piece of 30-pound braided line in the other hand. Sure, I cursed when the knot broke between the two lines, but I had tied it myself and had to own it. I assured Harvey he was doing a great job keeping the boat straight, and that I’d repair the line in no time.

   Ha! We pause to note this happened in dawn’s gray light, and I was wearing graduated-

lens glasses for my 69-year-old eyes, trying to see clearly enough to tie together two pieces of fishing line aboard a rolling boat on Lake Michigan. Five minutes seemed five hours, and then we resumed setting all our lines and two downriggers.

   And five hours later, Harvey, Eddie and I returned to shore with neither a fish nor strike.

   The next dawn we decided to fish a small nearby lake. Over the next four hours, we caught countless perch and bluegills, all too small to keep.

   Eddie then hooked into a 2-pound largemouth bass. As Eddie fought the bass, it dug in behind a sunken log, stalemating the boy. We eventually worked the line free and the fight continued, with the bass twice launching itself into the air. Right about then, Harvey fired his next cast straight into Eddie’s line. Yes, the line still holding the bass.

  I spun and asked, “What are you doing?” I instantly felt awful. Harvey looked sadder than a homeless puppy. He stopped reeling, leaned forward like a pro, and put his fouled line within reach so I could extract it from Eddie’s line. Seconds later, he and Eddie posed for photos.

   Harvey couldn’t have known he had just received untold grace courtesy of Eddie’s mother, grandmother and two aunts, though they were nowhere near.