“It was a warm early March day. I had been telling my son if he didn’t get any conduct marks in school all week I would let him play hookie and we would go fishing instead. I had been watching the weather waiting on the perfect storm to align. Just a few days before his 7th birthday, I was hoping I would time it right to have a productive day if he were to miss school to go fishing.
I was hooked to my boat the morning of March 4 and got him ready for school and he asked where I was going fishing today and I told him D’Arbonne, which I’m a very avid fishermen so it wasn’t unusual to him for me to be going. He begged and pleaded to go with me and I told him no, not today and he pouted all the way to school until I passed the turn he knew we made every morning. He said ‘Dad you missed the turn.’ I said ‘whoops, well you want to just go to D’Arbonne with me?’ He grinned ear to ear, sweet crooked little smile. ‘I sure do!’ he said.
We got to the ramp and the wind was a little stronger than I would have liked but it was a warm south wind. We headed to the big lake end on to a stump flat with some grass in about 5 feet of water I had found the summer before. When I tell you I timed it perfectly, you could not have drawn it up any better. My third flip onto a stump with a Zoom magnum lizard I landed a 9 1/2 pounder. Ten minutes later, an 11.19 hit the deck, and for the next two hours we orchestrated the best day of fishing I’ve ever had. O ur best five went 37 pounds and some change. And in today’s world 37 pounds isn’t unheard of anymore, but I have to note no LiveScope was used and I have no graphs on my boat. So to do that “traditionally fishing” and with my son, I’ll be playing that memory back when I’m 80. I’ll never forget he just kept opening the livewell and saying, ‘Dad, I’ve never seen fish this big. They’re almost as big as me!’
We took the two biggest and had them weighed and all of them were released right back where they came from. I explained to him the importance of being a good steward regarding the conservation of trophy size fish. He told his mother when we got home he got to skip school and had been catching “fat girls” all day!
