LAKE COUNTY — With California 4-H turning 100 years old, members of the Lake County 4-H Centennial Committee seek stories and help to compile its history in the county.
Names and dates of All Stars and Diamond Stars are needed, as well as photographs if available, according to committee member Peggy Alexander.
To help, call Alexander at 263-1733 or the 4-H office at 263-6838.
One afternoon after school she stood on the shore rocks, cast out a lure, and landed a big one. The glowing smile on her face is etched in my memory.
One weekend Kit and I decided to drive down to the southernmost tip of Rhode Island and spend a quiet, solitary, romantic weekend at the small tourist and fishing village located on Point Judith.
For various logistical reasons we had to take Jonathan, age 7, with us. The three of us checked into a motel a few blocks from the town fishing pier.
I handed a rod, reel, and bait to Jonathan and suggested that he stroll down to the pier and do some fishing.
In earlier days I had instructed him in the fine art of baiting a hook without puncturing his finger and he loved the thrill of hooking a fish of any size.
With Jonathan spending the afternoon happily engaged on the town pier, Kit and I might take advantage of savoring the sort of romantic privacy that is not often available to parents of young children.
Fast forward 15 minutes ? A knock on the door. It was Jonathan with rod in hand and on the hook a very large flounder! Happy times comes in many forms. There is the joy of what the young folks now call “hooking up” surely a central element of marital bliss.
Then there is the delight of seeing the face of a beloved boy radiating pride at displaying the evidence of a manly accomplishment. I took Jonathan”s fish to the chef at the restaurant adjacent to our motel. The fish was cleaned and served to us for dinner.
Of course, the joys of fishing would not be so memorable if they were not punctuated by the disappointment of the big one that got away.
While fishing off shoreline rocks one day, I hooked what must have been a 50 pound striped bass. I froze and passively watched line pay out until it snapped and wrapped itself around my tackle box, which the monster fish towed out to sea at many miles per hour.
The payoff, of course, when it comes to the one that got away is that you get to exaggerate the size of that big one. You can”t do that if you actually land the fish.
One place that the fish never gets away is at Smith”s Trout Farm in the hills south of Middletown.
My granddaughter Kristel loved landing trout at the end a bamboo pole and joining us later cooking and eating her catch.
The past couple of summers I have taken my young grandson Nicholas deep sea fishing aboard a boat out of Santa Barbara.
I was not wearing a gray sweatshirt and old pants as had my dad so many years ago.
The crowd aboard was much more upscale that the group aboard the Brooklyn-based expedition of my youth.
Nicky strained to land a large lingcod and as he faced the camera to proudly display his catch, once again I realized that fishing can make a delightful connection between a man and a boy.
Well, there it is. I love fishing because it is much more than yanking a scaly creature from the water.
Fishing not only has made the connection between me and the layers of family generations, it has helped me to understand that there is not all that much difference between the me who was a grandson and the me who is a grandfather.
Stephen Sloane is a Lake County resident, a retired Naval Officer and a Professor at Saint Mary”s College of California. He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and has earned a Ph.D at the University of California, Berkeley. Reach him at cowboy91671@gmail.com.
