We pushed the pedal boat off the beach and headed out of the cove. At its opening was an underwater rock field that dropped from two feet to eight. At the deep edge were several boulders that reached to within a foot of the surface. These boulders usually held large schools of sunfish and a few bass early in the morning.
I had been out at sunrise throwing orange squid flies at pickerel from the canoe. By eight o’clock the bite had shut off. I paddled back to the dock, grabbed a mask and snorkel, and swam out to the boulders. There was a couple dozen sunfish and two good sized smallies. When I swam back in, Abby was up, and I talked her into going out for a few minutes with a worm and bobber on the spinning rod. I grabbed a cup of coffee and assured her we would be back in time to run into town for a slice of gas station breakfast pizza.
I pedaled the boat close to the rocks putting the sun behind us so she could see into the water. She dropped her first cast in between two of the boulders and we watched the bobber. She missed the first few takes as the thieving bastard sunfish would peck bits of the worm off the hook. We rebaited the hook and waited. I sat back sipping coffee watching her face as she told me things about dolphins, the Red Sox and Taylor Swift. She started to tell me that she thought the Kenny Chesney song, "She's From Boston" was written about her when the bobber disappeared and she one-handed the rod.
“It’s a big one, dad!”
It was. Big in the sense that she brought it in the boat and
popped the hook out with little help from me. Then she pinched another worm on
and went right back at it, picking up the Chesney story right where she left
off. She caught another half dozen before we ran out of worms.
I think of this day frequently, particularly now that Abby is making her life in Vermont. It came to mind again a couple of weeks ago while talking with someone about flies and fly fishing. After he downloaded his fishing resume of PB’s and PR’s and showed me the corresponding pictures on his phone, he asked me what my best day on the water was.
In a split-second the memory roulette wheel raced through images of big stripers, baby tarpon, tailing reds, bonefish in a foot of water, gator blues and mangrove snook. The wheel stopped on this day, so I told him the story.
“So, what’d you catch?”
I just smiled and answered, “An unforgettable moment with my daughter.”
We did make it to the gas station in time for pizza.
And another tub of worms.
6 October 2023
