I am my dad

Driving over the creek bridge near the park in Parsons the other day I noticed a deeper flow of water since the rains. I made the comment that I have always felt the urge to fish that stretch of creek as there surely ought to be some fish in it. My wife agreed wholeheartedly that I should go fish it right away, what a woman.
I soon proceeded to that mecca of shopping nirvana officially known as Wally World and came away with a dozen of Canada’s finest wiggly, squiggly fish slayers. I quickly assembled some fishing gear, my new rod, shhh!!! paired with one of Pflueger’s finest spinning reels called the Patriarch. A two-hundred-dollar reel with which I was graced due to their not being able to fix the hundred dollar reel I bought used for fifty bucks. Who says fishing is expensive?
After tossing my rod, gear bag, chair and landing net in the truck I donned my western style straw fishing hat and roared down the road. I arrived at the park and was immediately faced with the question of where to set up my fish slaying operation. I opted for the narrows on the downstream side of the bridge near where a washed-up island of brush parted the current since common sense told me that’s where the bank was shady.
As I set up my folding chair it hit me that I had become my Dad. I remember my Dad doing the odd thing like fishing a plain Jane stretch of water nobody else would or Deer hunting next to the fence by a busy road all the while with me thinking, “What is he doing”? I sat down in my chair and threaded two Canadian slime rockets on a No.1 bronze bait hook rig complete with a half-ounce slip sinker stopped up against a cigarette butt I scrounged from the grocery store parking lot.
I use No 1 bait hooks because my friend George Elliott told me once decades ago that he used them for Flathead. I never questioned him, I just bought them. I have tried to come up with something more dignified than a nasty old cigarette butt to tie on to the line as a sinker stop but nothing else seems to work as well or as cheaply plus it gives me that survivor feeling like I’m living off the land, like I am tonight in my camo folding chair with convenient drink holder, extending aluminum handled rubber netted landing net just forty yards down the hill from my four-wheel drive pre-bailout Chevy truck. Kind of like my Dad would do. Dang it I wore my good Asics tennis shoes.
After an hour or so of pure fishing pleasure and absolute nothingness I had waved at three dozen carloads of people scared the snot out of two kids who were peering off the low water bridge into the watery abyss when I yelled “DON’T JUMP” from a few feet away just like my Dad would have done. I honestly thought they saw me sitting there in my cream colored straw hat and sun glasses but alas, no. I thought I was going to have to call 911 and mount a rescue mission right then and there but they decided not to beat me up over it.
When the sun finally began to fade away I decided I had had more fun than a man of my advancing arthritis is entitled to and began to pack it in. As I collapsed my chair, shouldered by ditty bag and picked up my rod and net I thought back to fishing and hunting with my Dad and all the stuff he would bring along because we might need it. I smiled and thought how I had advanced beyond that and made my way to the truck where I carefully placed my necessary gear in the bed, being careful not to straddle my new rod with my ahem, twelve-pound ditty bag. Hey, I might have needed larger sinkers, a fish scale, eight bags of plastic baits and a stringer. Yeah, I am my Dad all right.