Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. —Proverb
My dad taught me how to bait a hook, to cast, to take a fish off the line, but my Uncle Bob taught me how to fish. That is, the science — biology, ecology, meteorology, psychology — of catching fish that do not want to be caught.
He had two kids of his own, but they were mostly grown and often justifiably tired of him when I came along. So, several times a year, I became known as "Rent-a-Kid," and the two of us went on an outing.
After a day of fishing, Uncle Bob smelled of cigarettes, aftershave, and acute alcohol sweat. I equated the smell with adulthood and didn't think much of him taking me in the local bar so he could have a sustaining beer for the ride home.
Drink or not, he showed fairly admirable patience by the time he taught this kid to fish. As I learned while taking 3-1/2 year old RK fishing recently, children are not generally suited to things like quietly waiting out hours for a single fish to strike, snagged line, tying intricate knots, etc. Even cutting up bait is a chore with an audience curious about when we're going to catch fish, why they're not biting, where they are, why the lake has weeds, and so forth.
But I digress. Suffice to say, time is scarce, and time away from work even more so, so when the questions start rolling in, it can seem a wonder that any of us survive family fishing expeditions at all.
My uncle and I did have fun though, and as my own kids do on these pages, my antics gave him plenty of fodder for storytelling.
Uncle Bob died a few years ago, after a several-years-long bout with prostate cancer. He didn't go out quite the way he'd have liked (I can't say for sure, but I'm pretty certain he'd have preferred a massive coronary while researching sexual mores with a brace of attractive Swedish nurses), but he had a good run.
Over the course of his life, he managed to reinvent himself several times. After an early start as an engineer (working on early microwaves, answering machines, and ATMs), he moved into banking and became City Treasurer in Philly under Frank Rizzo (yeah, that guy). Eight years and countless martinis later, he became an investment banker — a job in which he occasionally tolerated me as an assistant and editor of sorts.
Among other things, Uncle Bob wrote a weekly column for a local business journal. During college vacations, I became his de facto spellchecker and editor. His columns were ostensibly on finance, but they had far more to do with fishing, and life. He was, effectively, blogging before there was such a word or concept. He wrote to keep in touch with his client base in an age before the interwebs, and because he was a personality in a business in which those with personality, a mind for math, and good common sense could bring in deals.
He was both character and caricature. He wrote a certain way, dressed a certain way, ate at certain places, and conducted business a certain way. He created a personal brand before "branding" entered the corporate lexicon of our everyday lives.
He was a chain smoker — a guy who literally lit a new cigarette off the butt of the previous one, oblivious to the ashes dropping on his pant legs, the desk, the rug, his chair; a third cigarette still smoking in the overflowing ashtray. He smoked in such a way that at least three people quit smoking just from witnessing his addiction.
And yet when he himself finally gave up cigarettes, he did so cold turkey — in large part because he no longer had the stamina to land a Muskie while wading in the Schuylkill River. And in Uncle Bob's world, catching a Muskie was the equivalent of having a martini and a Swedish nurse at the same time.
He fished as often as 100 days a year — sometimes for as little as an hour or two. He fished anywhere he found himself and anywhere there were fish, and he did it as well as anyone. With him, I fished pristine streams and unswimmable city rivers alike. We waded through outlet tunnels; bushwacked through poison ivy and trash; and once, nearly lost a brand new fiberglass rowboat off the top of the car to violent updrafts on the Tacony-Palmyra bridge.
Through it all, a day fishing was a good day.
It still is.
When I fish, I commune not just with nature, but with Uncle Bob. I inherited pounds and pounds of the gear he bought compulsively over years and years — fly gear, spinning gear, surfcasting gear — yet not enough of his knowledge. And so when I find myself nearly skunked (as I was recently) on a weedy Wisconsin lake in which I can see huge northerns breaking the surface, or drifting flies into the perfect trout hole in Montana, or catching bass off a lakeside Vermont dock, or casting for stripers while four-foot-long sturgeon jump entirely out of the water in downeast Maine, I do so with the fishing spirit of Uncle Bob. And I am amazed and humbled that I am so much less able to catch fish that do not want to be caught than I feel I should be.
He did teach me that you have to make choices in life — not just in terms of work, but in terms of play as well — and that doing one thing often means giving up another. He made his leisure choice, and fishing was it. He did little else outside of work. (My aunt can certainly attest that he didn't cook, clean, or do yard work.) But fishing brought him peace — often in places where one could hear car traffic more than rapids.
I don't have the time in my life right now to fish nearly as regularly as I'd like. But I have made my choices, and I am present for my kids in ways that my uncle never was. There will be more time for leisure someday; I'll fish more then. And when I do, I hope to find in it as much peace as Uncle Bob did — and to become half the fisherman he was.
