Today is Father’s Day and John sent me a card with a picture of one of Norman Rockwell’s paintings of a father, son and their dog heading off for a day of fishing. I loved the card and John’s comments on fishing memories.

Fishing does build many pleasant memories and it has always been one of my favorite pastimes. I haven’t done much of it the last few years but I have many wonderful memories that can take me to a stream or lake pretty much at will. Not as good as actually doing something, but it is a whole lot easier. I can visit so many places, times and events quickly without even getting into the car.

Along with all of the great memories of fishing in my childhood with friends and relatives and later with Dorie and our children there is an occasional fishing experience that might be better forgotten.

Like most boys of the time growing up in Klamath Falls, I first learned to fish for chubs and yellow perch in Klamath Lake, Link River and Lake Euwana. As I grew into my teens and had access to a vehicle, either my own, the families or a friends I broadened my experience and began fishing for trout in the many streams and rivers in Southern Oregon. I soon became sort of a trout snob and would no longer even consider fishing for a warm water fish, let alone a lowly chub!

Well I got brought up short when I moved to the San Francisco Oakland Bay area in 1959. It was hard to find good trout fishing that was close by and uncrowded. In time I was able to find several nice trout fishing spots close to home but it took awhile.

The big thing in the Bay Area was salt water fishing or black bass. I began to follow Bud Boyd, an outdoor columnist for the Chronicle, who was really talking up the wild sport provided by fresh water bass. The more I read, the more I just had to try it.

But I had no idea where to start.

Then one day I saw an ad for an all day Bass Fishing Clinic that would teach you all the secrets you needed to become an expert bass fisherman. It was sponsored by – guess who? – Bud Boyd, the columnist who had been hooking all of his readers on the thrills of the sport for the past month or so.

Well, I just had to sign up. It was held at a private resort in the foothills above Napa Valley and only cost about $25.00 as I recall. That was in 1961/1962 dollars so it was really quite spendy. But I had to go and learn all of his secrets.

Dorie and I had not been married too long at the time and while I would have like her to go with me, we just couldn’t afford it. So I would go, learn everything I could and then teach her.

The day arrived and I headed up to the resort. After several hours of Bud and one of his buddies demonstrating every technique known to man that was guaranteed to catch bass, we headed to p0nds scattered around the resort. Together with the other students I flailed the water with plugs, spinners, spinner baits and plastic worms for about 4 hours and managed to catch a small bass.

In the afternoon I headed home a little discouraged by my lack of success but confident that given time and more practice I would be able to perfect and put in practice all that I had learned.

I was a great trout fisherman and no stupid bass was about to get the best of me!

When I arrived home, I went to place my magnificent bass (maybe 12 inches long) in our refigerator. I opened the door and my jaw just dropped!

Inside were 4 or 5 beautiful bass, the smallest of which would have made several of mine. I yelled to Dorie to find out where they had come from. Like maybe they had just mysteriously appeared.

It seems that, shortly after I left that morning, my cousin Bill had stopped by to see if I wanted to go fishing. Since I wasn’t there, he took Dorie with him to Lake Berryessa and taught her how to bass fish.

They were gone less time that I was, the trip was free and they both had fun and caught fish!

Dorie and I have fished many times together since that day and I have yet to catch bigger or more bass, crappie or bluegill than she did on any of our trips. But she has never beat me trout fishing.

Maybe that is what I should stick with.

Do you know your great-grandparents? Many people do not and this came as a surprise to me. We take so many things for granted as we grow up. At least, I know I did.

A few days ago, several brethren were talking about relatives and the number of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren they had. Then one asked, “Do you remember your great-grandfather?”

Of the half dozen brethren gathered I was the youngest and the only one who did. None of the others had a memory of any of their great-grandparents and they were surprised that I did.

I admit that the only one I did know was great-grandfather Arthur Duane Cox, my mothers’ maternal grandfather. But what a choice memory.

Great Great Uncle Will A. Cox

He and his brother Will, my great, great uncle, on occasion visited my grandmother on her farm several miles outside of Corvallis, Montana. They arrived pulling a travel trailer and stayed in it for their visit.

I was lucky to be spending a summer vacation with Grandma and Shorty one year when they visited. I believe this was the summer of 1947 between my 5th and 6th grades.

Uncle Will and Granddad (actually great, great granddad, but we called him “Granddad”) often went trout fishing and one day asked if I would like to tag along.

I jumped at the chance. I knew how to fish for chubs and yellow perch and had done that a lot at home in Klamath Falls but I had never fished for, let alone caught, a trout before.

Of course it fell to me to get a shovel and a can to dig some worms for our venture. I learned that the best worm digging was in the dirt irrigation dams that had been made to direct the flow of water onto our fields. I also learned that if the holes I dug were not filled in and tamped down again, I was in trouble.

Well, after I found enough worms, we climbed into the pickup and drove up into the hills for a ways. As I recall we went up past Hamilton. The stream we arrived at followed right along side of the road. Granddad stopped at a place where the stream went over a slight fall, maybe a foot or so, and formed some ripples and a little pool. It was a small stream and the pool wasn’t very big either.

They fixed me up with a pole and some worms for bait and then they headed on up the road and said they would be back later to pick me up.

Like any youngster I couldn’t wait to bait up and get my line in the water. I managed to toss my hook to the head of that little pool and let it sink toward the bottom of the stream and float back down toward me. I did this several times and was finally rewarded with a tug and a solid hit.

Not knowing any of the finer techniques of playing a fish, I am sure I just jerked that fish in as fast as I could. And luck was with me. I had managed to land my first trout ever and it was a beauty about a foot long!

I baited up again and tossed my hook back in right away. And again and again. But no matter how hard I tried for the rest of the day, that was the only fish I caught.

When Granddad and uncle Will came back for me I was disappointed that I had only one fish to show. And I felt really bad when they showed me their fish. They had caught 8 or 9 between them. But then I looked at the size of their fish and my spirits brightened up again.

My fish was bigger than any of theirs!

I tell you I felt on top of the world. Maybe I couldn’t catch as many fish as they could but I could sure catch the biggest! When they admitted that they had dropped my off where they did mainly to keep me out of trouble and had not expected my to catch a fish at all, I was really pleased with myself.

This feeling stayed with me and kept me warm all the way home clear up until the time Granddad said that I still had a lesson to learn that day. I had never cleaned trout before and since they did more work catching, it was only fair that I did my part by doing the cleaning while they rested from their labor.

It took me a long time scaling and cleaning those trout in the cold irrigation ditch and my hands were almost frozen by the time I finished. But I learned a great lesson that day.

It is a lot more fun to catch a fish than it is to dig worms or to clean the catch!