It's All In How You Look At It
by Darby Copenhaver

My son Issac will be 4 in a couple months and asked me last Saturday evening to take him fishing. There is nothing I enjoy more than being on the water, so my immediate answer was yes. Some of my best memories as a kid are those of fishing with my dad, and now being able to take my son fishing makes me happier than words can express.

We got up Sunday morning and started loading the gear into the car after some breakfast. I called my dad to see if he wanted to join us, but he couldn't make it because he was busy getting some work done around the house. He told me my uncle had just dropped off some christmas ornaments that had belonged to my grandmother who recently passed away and asked me if I wanted to come look through them to see if there was anything I wanted. I decided to go to my dad's so Isaac and I jumped in the Explorer and left for my dad's house. Since it's very close to the Wekiwa Marina where we were going to fish, we could dig up some worms from the mulch pile while we were there. My dad and I would launch our canoe from the marina into the Wekiwa River when I was a kid, and spend all day drifting down the river catching countless bream, red breasts and little bass. Just being there now makes me 12 again on the inside, and makes all of the worries of adult life go away. I'll never forget the time the sky opened up shortly after we put the canoe in the water and we were caught in a torrential down pour. We didn't let it spoil our day and spent that day soaked and freezing, bailing water out of the canoe with a bucket and a towel, catching fish as quickly as we could take one off the hook and get the little rapala plug back in the water. Nor will I forget the time my dad paddled the canoe slowly toward a huge gator sunning on the river's edge. Being in the front of the canoe I was 16 feet closer to the gator than my dad as we slowly glided across the top of the water closer and closer to the gator. We got to what seemed like I was close enough to touch him, even though we were probably 25 feet away, and that gator leaped into the water making a huge splash and at that instant I knew I was as good as swallowed whole. As my dad quickly paddled backward we noticed the gator still had about a foot of tail on the river bank. He was just trying to scare us away, and boy did it work. Half an hour later I told my dad I could still feel my heart pounding in my chest. He said he could too.

Isaac and I stopped at the gas station around the corner from my dad's house because the car was all the way on empty. The only credit card I had with me was apparently maxed and was declined. Having no cash on me I was honestly a little worried we might not make it back home. Despite my anger we moved on to my dad's anyway. When we got there we got right to the business of digging worms. I grabbed a pitch fork and as turned the dirt Isaac would dig out the wriggling worms and put them in the plastic container. Once we had enough worms we jumped on the lawn tractor and I let Isaac drive us around the yard a few times. Then I went inside to check out my grandmother's christmas ornaments in hopes of finding something to remember her by. Apparently every one else in my uncles family had already done the same because the only thing left were a bunch of glass balls in very poor condition. So we loaded up the worms, and moved on to the marina.

Upon pulling into the marina, I noticed a big hand-painted sign that said "no fishing from property". Isaac and I had just been here a few months prior and had a great time so I was a little confused. We parked the car and went to find out what was going on. The marina was a busy restaurant, bait and tackle shop, and canoe rental when I was a kid. Now the restaurant is torn down and the tackle shop is boarded up. You can still rent canoes however so I went up to the window of the run down shack to find out why we couldn't fish. Apparently some moron slipped and fell on on the river bank while fishing and tried to sue so they no longer allow fishing. Try explaining that to a 3 year old with a can of worms in one hand and fishing rod in the other. So we loaded up again and moved on. With no gas in the car I couldn't exactly take us to another spot so we headed back to the house and I'm not sure who was more disappointed between Isaac and myself. So far I was not having a whole lot of luck with anything that day and I was becoming very frustrated very quickly so I decided to just shelf the fishing idea for the day and we'd try again another time but I hadn't broken the bad news to Isaac yet.

As we were pulling into my driveway of the house I decided that I wasn't going to let a little bit of bad luck wreck our day. We moved the gear out of the explorer and into my wife's car and pushed on. We have a little park on a good size lake about a mile from the house with a boat ramp and a little dock. We'd never tried it before so I figured this was as good a time as any. After a short drive we pulled up to the entrance only to find the gate closed. The sign said that the boat ramp was closed because the water level was low, and the gate was locked shut. I was beginning to think that this was a lost cause, and was ready to give up. But instead, I put the car in park right in front of the gate. We got out, grabbed our rods, our worms and the tackle box, went around the gate and made our way to the water. By this time it was a little after 3 in the afternoon and the wind was coming off of the water pretty heavily right into our face. I went ahead and rigged up Isaac's spider-man zebco with a hook and bobber. We baited it with one of the worms and Isaac cast it as far as he could without throwing himself off of the dock. I rigged up with a spinner bait and we were determined that we would catch some fish. Apparently the first eye on my rod got cracked at some point and on my second cast it came apart causing my line to break and sending my brand new spinner bait fresh out of the package soaring off into the depths of Lake Orienta. My luck continued. Isaac however was a different story. He was having a blast casting and reeling in his worm over and over. Every time he'd have a nice long cast he'd say' "whoa! dad give me a five" wanting me to give him a high five. Once I convinced him to actually leave it in the water (which still only lasted briefly) he started catching fish. They were only little bream but it didn't matter, they were fish. I'd take them off the hook and he'd chuck them back into the water. I had taken off my sunglasses at one point and laid them on the dock so they wouldn't fall off of my face into the water as I sat on the dock with my feet hanging over the edge and Isaac in my lap. We continued catching little bream for a bit and then Isaac wanted to use my fishing pole. We got up so I could teach him how to cast it and no more than 5 minutes later I accidentally kicked my $100 sunglasses right off of the dock to the watery home of my dearly departed spinner bait. So I went down to the water's edge, stripped down to my underwear and waded into the frigid water to hopefully find my sunglasses. My first bit of luck for the day came when I learned that the icy water was only waist deep at the end of the dock. I rooted around in the muck with my toes and amazingly found the glasses. I used my ape-like toes to pick up the glasses and made my way for shore as quickly as I could. I got out of the water, took off my soaked underwear, put my shorts and t-shirt back on and went back to fishing. We caught a few more bream, Isaac mastered his casting technique, and we drank kool-aid drink pouches together on the dock. I asked Isaac if he was ready to go and he quickly told me no but it was getting late so I told him he had 10 more casts and it was time to go. He looked at me and said, "you know what dad? Today was a great day!" You know what? He could not have been more right.

Posted on Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Darby Copenhaver