I was stringing up rods in the garage one evening after getting hooked up to my boat. I had intended to get out fishing posthaste, but like most fathers in their natural garage habitat, I was puttering around, tying on different lures with the radio on and pleasantly in no hurry to make my departure. Summer evenings stretch on after dinner for a handful of hours before the heavens go dark, so I had the luxury of time to waste.
At dinner some 45 minutes prior I had asked if anyone wanted to join me on the lake for some bass fishing, but I had no takers. My oldest daughter Quinn told me she couldn’t because she had too much she had to do. I bit my tongue, silently questioning what impossible list of tasks she needed to hammer out as a middle school age kid on break from school with a whole summer in front of her to do chores, tasks, and the all-important virtual social upkeep.
Biting my tongue and not prodding the child to come along was a choice. Fatherhood often feels like being in a room with a master control switchboard. You’re constantly trying to push the right buttons and pull the right levers at just the right times. And often, you feel hopelessly overwhelmed or disconnected. You encourage your kids to participate in activities, athletics, arts and hobbies that will stimulate their mind and body, help them meet others and build relationships, and light a fire that will turn into their purpose and passions. And a night of fishing is less about fishing as much as it is about time together, relaxation, breathing deeply of an experience within nature, and getting a chance to talk to each other. My kids get opportunities to get outdoors, but they always have the choice to participate. Forced experiences breed resentment.
The inside garage door opened and closed with its unmistakable weather seal sucking sound. I turned to see who was entering. “I changed my mind,” Quinn announced. “I’ll go.” By virtue of my lethargy in leaving, something had changed. I later asked my wife if she had nudged the young lady, guilted you might say, into joining me. “Nope, I didn’t say anything,” she told me.
We loaded our gear and hopped in the truck bound for the lake. Our evening of fishing started by working shallow to see if there were any early summer straggler largemouth bass still in the skinny water. After a good run of shoreline and no bites and no fish spotted, we took the hint and moved out deeper. In 6 or 7 feet, we started finding fish. Quinn got our catching started when she landed feisty 2- and 3-pound bass on 4 of her first 5 casts. The next hour flitted away as we enjoyed intermittent bass bites. Quinn’s bag of plastic bass bugs was getting chewed up in a hurry. When she was down to her last plastic bait, the sun was hitting the treetops, and it was time to have some topwater fun. We tied on hollow, plastic scum frogs and returned to the shallows on a new stretch of shoreline, hoping some giant bass had moved shallow in the late hours of the day.
It didn’t take long before a bass smashed one of the fake frogs. The surface explosion of ejected water streams and droplets, a shaking bass head, and thrown matted vegetation induces an unparalleled adrenaline spike. Veteran topwater anglers must let the shock of the strike pass for a precious half a second to let the fish get the bait in its mouth, then set the hook. Quinn landed one, then 20 minutes later another. I managed one bass and one pike.
When the sun was behind the trees and the shadows off the shoreline’s cattails stretched long, Quinn was quickly skittering a frog back to the boat to make her next cast. Unbeknownst to her, a giant bass was tracking the bait. The fish leapt at the lure 20 yards from the boat, ejecting itself cleanly from the water and inciting an audible gasp from me as an observer. Quinn reared back and set the hook. The fish became agitated and broke for deep water, pulling drag from the reel. After twenty or third seconds of running, it reversed course and swam towards the boat as Quinn worked quickly to retrieve line. The fish rushed towards the surface, leaped again clear of the water, spit the hook, and landed with a crash. We stood in stunned silence for several seconds. I can still see the fish in the air, head shaking, black against a tangerine sunset. It was a picture made for a bass fishing shirt. “That was a big fish,” I remarked, then regretted the observation. We broke the silence with a few more “one last casts,” then headed back to the access to head home. On some days, the beauty of fishing is a lost fish seared into your memory that leaves you wanting more.
We loaded the boat, pulled drain plugs, and plucked off stray vegetation from the white trailer frame, and as the last streams of sunlight faded towards darkness, we turned the truck wheels towards home. About a half mile from the lake, I stopped and pulled over to take in a beautiful and unanticipated light show. Wisps of fog rose over a grassy meadow. In the graying and faded evening light, beautiful green flashes flickered through the mist as fireflies took to the warm summer evening air to signal potential mates. The emerald strobes continued their blinking, and a stark realization occurred to me. I had done this before with Quinn. This moment, this evening, this short set of a few hours fishing bass and watching fireflies, was part of our past and was a future I’d longed to experience.
I flashed back to a different lake’s access nearly a decade earlier, where the fishing had been tough but the parking lot had a couple fireflies flitting about. As the last party leaving the lot, we had the place to ourselves and made up for a slow night of bass fishing by chasing and catching fireflies in our hands, watching them radiate in our palms, then gently sending them back on their way. Quinn, then preschool age, was transfixed by the fireflies. She loved watching them fly around and blink and seeing them glow in our hands was a delightful magic trick in her young mind. I had hoped I’d have such an intimate moment again with Quinn to share the beauty and wonderment of nature. The flashback was all at once the realization that my prayer had been answered in spades. This evening’s fishing had been great, Mother Nature’s light show was impressive, and it was made all the more special by my daughter simply opting to join me.
As this life goes flashing by and we hurriedly rush from appointment to appointment, job site to home, or place to place, I hope you find some time to relax. In those small moments of peace, the pace slows enough for you to look around and sometimes realize that your dreams did come true. Those dreams can be as simple as an evening of making memories with bass fishing, lightning bugs, and little girls.