My father wasn’t into the outdoors or sports. Luckily, I had relatives and family friends who taught me things like how to throw a spiral or to catch and clean a fish.
Starting first with my Uncle Johnny who first took me fishing in the San Francisco Bay as a pre-teen. (We caught what he called bullheads, but were actually sculpins.)
Later my Grandpa John Unck taught me how to fish for trout with salmon eggs on Moccasin Creek (now buried under Don Pedro Reservoir) in the central Sierra Nevada foothills.
Later, in spite of his lack of personal interest, my dad picked up fishing too and would occasionally take me and one or more of my siblings up to San Mateo Memorial Park to fish for trout.
And in almost every instance, I would come home having caught at least one fish. And as a young/new angler, that’s the key: catching fish.
Now that I’m older, catching fish (let alone catching and eating fish) is less important than actually getting out on the water, away from the crazy hyper-interconnected world for a couple of hours and slowing way, way down.
As a young father preparing to take my kids fishing (whether for the first time or on subsequent trips), however, I remembered I was reminded of the importance of A) going fishing (particularly with my dad), and B) catching fish.
Hence, I always start young anglers out on waters planted frequently with hatchery trout and I almost always use bait. Why? Because I want them to catch fish — it’s that simple.
That’s why this Saturday morning I’ll be taking Jonathan Bacon (one of my employees at Politis Communications) fishing this Saturday at Tibble Fork Reservoir up American Fork Canyon past Timpanogos Cave National Monument.
In more than 20 years of living here in the Salt Lake metroplex along the Wasatch Front Mountain Range, I don’t remember ever being skunked when fishing at Tibble Fork. And when you’re taking a kid or a new angler fishing, that’s critical.
For Bacon’s part, I’ve told him all he has to do is get his fishing license and show up — I’ll provide the rest.
So this Saturday, good weather or bad, we’ll be on the water by 9:30 a.m. (We’d go earlier, but I’ve got a softball game at 7 a.m.)
If you’re up American Canyon come Saturday morning, we should be on the northeast end of the lake. Come by and say “Hi.”
As I wrote on Wednesday, 9/6/07 (“Teaching someone to fish”), Jonathan Bacon and I headed up to Tibble Fork Reservoir this morning.