Fisherman's Spring by Roderick L. Haig-Brown

Author:Roderick L. Haig-Brown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse
Published: 2013-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

A Boy and a Fish Pole

I HAVE BEEN ASKED MANY TIMES BY anxious parents, usually fathers, “How do you start a boy out fishing?”

As it stands there, the question is a fair one and it shall have its answer. But far too often it is accompanied by some revealing addition, such as, “I never had a chance to learn it right and I’d like to see him do better,” or, “A boy needs some good healthy sport like fishing to keep him out of trouble.”

Anyone who hopes to push a boy into fishing “because it’s good for him” or “to keep him out of trouble” is probably doomed to disappointment. So is the man who hopes to realize in his son his own frustrated ambition to become a fine fisherman. Boys go fishing because they want to go, and they become good fishermen because they enjoy fishing—not because being so will be a help in business or a valuable hobby or a useful relaxation. And no one is quicker than a boy to recognize the fact that something is being wished on to him.

Going fishing with the old man, being made to pay attention and pack the landing net and struggle to keep up is, for most six-, eight- or even ten-year-old boys, a form of purgatory sufficiently horrible to put them off fishing for the rest of their lives. Small boys like to roust around in their own way and in their own time. They may or may not like to go along with the old man and pay attention; let them choose, and don’t let anything but their own inclinations guide the choice.

My own thought with my own son so far—he is now nine—has been to play the thing as honestly as I know how. If I am going fishing he is more than welcome to come so long as he looks after himself and keeps happy. I often warn him that it may be cold and dull and miserable, and I may not catch anything. He usually comes, he usually has a wonderful time fussing with his own affairs alone beside the river, and pays only occasional attention to me. He sticks out discomfort with remarkable stoicism, and for the past three or four years has been able to take himself off home ahead of me from anywhere within walking distance.

But his happiest fishing times, and the times that teach him most at this stage, are not with me, but when he goes off on his own or with friends of his own age to poke around beaver dams or small creeks, dabble flies or spinners or worms, and catch occasional tiny fish. This is how a boy gets the feel of fishing and water and fish, how he finds the interest and grows into the enthusiasm.

It would not be true to say that I do not want him to be a fisherman. I believe fly-fishing to be the richest and most rewarding sport there is, and I should like him to find it as rich as I have found it and as rewarding.

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