The photo above perfectly captures the reason I’ve always enjoyed creating these outdoors pages.
This newspaper recently ran an ad asking readers to send in their favorite fishing photos. Photos quickly started pouring in.
One photo instantly caught my eye.
I didn’t know the gentleman or the little boy, but it could have easily been a scene from my own life or the lives of many of my friends.
“This picture is very special to me,” wrote Jennifer Bradley. “It is of my Daddy, Neal Thrash, who passed away February 25, 2015 with my little boy, Cayson Bradley.”
Jennifer Bradley described her late father as a man who loved hunting, fishing and anything outdoors.
“This picture captures the thing my Dad loved doing the most – passing his love of the great outdoors on to his grandchildren. If Heaven has ponds, you can bet my Daddy has fished every one of them.”
I am fortunate to have a grandfather who taught me a lot of things about fishing. My grandfather, Walter Richardson Sr., doesn’t get to do as much fishing these days at age 92, but he has always seemed to have a magic touch.
You could be in the same boat using the same bait, and he would always catch more fish. I have never had more fun than fishing bream beds with him.
We sometimes caught fish as fast as the crickets hit the water, and we’d have a cooler full of fish by the time we were done.
If we caught a smaller size fish, Granddaddy often shared some wisdom from his own father.
“If it’s big enough to bite a three cent cricket, it’s big enough to put in the box.”
I’ve found myself sharing that same wisdom with my two oldest children, who at ages seven and four are already crazy about fishing. I take them as often as possible, and a lot of the things I’m teaching them were things that were taught to me by my grandfather, my dad or my uncle.
Now that the weather’s getting cool enough to actually enjoy deer hunting, I’ll soon be taking my oldest son and teaching him some of the same things my dad taught me when I was his age. My daughter is already expressing interest in joining us as well.
I hope that they will value those lessons, and more importantly the memories of the time spent together, as much as I do. I hope I’m able to do as good of a job sharing the things I’ve learned along the way as the men who passed their knowledge on to me.
And I hope that those things are still being shared long after I’ve joined Mr. Thrash for a little fishing on one of those ponds in Heaven.
