Fishing memories with my father always treasured

Facebook and Twitter were alive with photos and memories of dads on Sunday.
I didn’t post anything, but the number of memories of fathers got me to thinking about the impact my father had on my life. I remember a saying he often used: “If everyone is thinking and saying the same thing, then someone is not thinking.”
He could play the “devil’s advocate,” taking a contrary view to determine how well thought-out your argument or opinion was.
He was an independent thinker—often looking outside the box for answers. He also was a conciliator who could work to bring differing points of view to an understanding.
My father enjoyed fishing and for the first 11 years of my life, with my brother, Don, our fishing trips were limited to the Point Park dock, the Five-Mile Dock, and the CN lift bridge at the Five-Mile.
We had to walk to the lift bridge from the Five-Mile landing.
Don and I each would carry a rod. As well, one of us would lug the tackle box while the other carried our lunch of sandwiches. My mother would have made cucumber, tomato, and even radish sandwiches for our lunch and “But” cookies.
My father carried the minnow pail and the “Kool Aid” jug of iced-flavoured water.
It always seemed like a long walk on a Saturday morning. I can’t remember much about the fishing, but Don and I had our father to ourselves.
Often on a weeknight, Dad would call Mom in the afternoon and ask her to make up some sandwiches and we would head to the Five-Mile Dock.
Both Don and I had casting rods and reels. It was later that Dad bought us spin-casting reels and later that we had spinning reels. As anyone knows about casting reels, they are prone to operator failure.
It was there that I learned my father had great patience with his sons. He would instruct us on the importance of keeping our thumbs on the spool as we casted out from the dock.
We were encouraged to drop our line over the edge of the dock and just jig it up and down.
But as young boys, we would watch my father successfully use his Shakespeare reel on his steel rod and cast the lure with the minnow out into the bay away from the dock. We then would try to imitate him—and try to prove we were equal to him in skill.
It didn’t take long for us to get backlashes in the reel and be unable to cast or fish. We would bring him our rods and he patiently would sit down and begin untangling the “bird’s nest.”
Never complaining that we were not listening or following his instructions, he would untangle the messes and we would fish again.
He probably spent more time untangling reels than he did fishing.
It was time that Don and I guarded forever.
When Dad bought a wooden cedar skiff in the summer of 1961, the whole family would go up Frog Creek with picnic supplies and head out to Stanjikoming Bay to fish.