AUGUST 27, 2026 – (Cont.) Finally, the big day arrived. We were up at the cabin, and after blowing out the candles on the birthday cake that my grandmother had baked for the celebration after supper, Dad presented the two boxes that I’d espied earlier on the hat shelf in his closet back home. First, I opened the long box, which contained the rod. The shaft was in two-pieces and a beautiful dark aqua in color. The guides were bound to the shaft with tightly bound colorful threads. One design defect that escaped my notice, however, was that the shaft and the plastic handle and reel seat were one piece.
I was duly surprised by the contents of the second box. The main item was a green plastic box containing the reel, a set of six forged fishing hooks, a small package of line weights, two bobbers, several kinds of lures, a scaler, and a stringer. The green box with its white clasp and white handle served as a tackle box.
The crank on the reel, I noticed, had a single knob, which meant Dad had gone one level down from the set I’d designated by an arrow in the Sears Roebuck catalog, but I also noticed that once Dad had slipped the reel into the reel seat for me, the single knob didn’t seem to matter. Dad had come through just fine, and I was thrilled to have at last my very own brand new fishing gear.
The weather was perfect, and before the cake and ice cream dishes were removed from the table—and before I needed to ask—Dad suggested that we try out the new gear. Down the slope on the west side of the cabin we went, and just in case, from the boat box at the top of the staircase leading down to the dock and boat cradle, Dad removed the fishing net—big enough to accommodate a good-sized walleye. He then lowered the boat, and we loaded the fishing equipment, our cushions and the aluminum oars with wooden handles worn smooth by Dad’s powerful strokes over two decades of use.
He rowed us out just past the rock bar that runs parallel to the shoreline below the cabin. “Here’s where the fish are,” he said, citing a fact well known to everyone in the family, given how much we’d watched fishermen troll in that same area and the times Grandpa had reported seeing people land fish while he was sitting out front high up on the bank, smoking a cigar while relaxing in his canvas and wood-frame “chaise longue.”
I don’t remember what I used for bait, if I used any at all, though I suspect we’d dug up a few worms. Dad fashioned a leader to which I attached the shiniest lure from the selection that had been included in the fishing set. With a little practice once we were out on the water, I got the hang of casting and reeling in; casting and reeling in. I was in heaven.
On that first outing, I didn’t expect to catch a fish. For me, it was strictly a training mission; a chance to test my new gear and my ability to use it—or more precisely, my ability to use the rod and reel, not necessarily the stringer and scaler. But then a miracle happened. A fish actually caught itself on my lure. I reeled like crazy, and my eyes nearly popped out when the creature broke the surface and began splashing about. Dad was as shocked as I was. He reached for the net as I kept reeling until the fish was hitting the side of our Alumacraft. Dad then scooped the flipping and flopping fish out of the lake and into the boat.
Stunned, I watched Dad as he attempted to disentangle the catch from the net. Neither fish nor net, however, cooperated. “It’s a smallmouth,” he said, “but he’s throwing a big fight. I think we’re better off managing this back on the dock.”
Dad’s assessment struck me as eminently reasonable. After all, 20 or 30 strokes of the oars and he’d have us back in the boat cradle, and either on the dock proper or on the level ground at the top of the staircase, surely Dad would have the upper hand over the bass. On the other hand . . . it occurred to me that experienced fishermen probably knew how to unhook their catches without returning to terra firma.
In any event, I went with Dad’s plan. I gripped the fishing rod as the fish thrashed around in the loose netting and Dad rowed as fast as he could back to the dock and boat cradle. After alighting from the boat, I handed the fishing rod to Dad, who was already holding the net-with-fish. He then walked quickly off the dock and up the staircase, two steps at a time. About midway up, he tripped. He braced himself with his fists—one gripping the rod, the other, the net—and a knee, which landed hard on the end of the grip where it met the shaft, breaking the plastic at the connection.
“Darn!” he said with such emphasis it worked to the effect of its close relative. But the mishap barely slowed him down. He kept going up the rest of the staircase, stepped off the top onto level ground and there wrestled the fish out of the net and the lure out of the fish. He then clobbered the fish against the corner of the boat box.
A salient feature of Dad’s perfectionism was that he rarely made mistakes when working on anything he chose to undertake. Yet, here in front of my eyes, he’d committed an error—tripping on the steps—which produced the painful consequence of breaking my birthday present barely an hour after it had brought such delight, not only to me in the receiving, but to Dad in the giving.
“I can’t believe I broke your present,” he said, several times on our way up the hill to the cabin. His tone as much as his words revealed how terrible he felt.
And I felt just as sorry—for him. I was old enough to understand the big picture; that the mishap was an accident; that the fishing rod could be replaced but the cloud burst upon Dad’s delight in my delight couldn’t be undone. My pain over his pain swelled when we reached the cabin and Dad explained to my grandparents what had happened.
I had trouble getting past it, and when it came time to say goodnight, I fought to hold back the tears. I knew how bad Dad felt, and I wanted to tell him how sorry I was for him, but somehow, I simply couldn’t organize my emotions and composure to express myself aloud. Upon entering the front porch, where Grandpa was at one end working a crossword puzzle and I was to sleep for the night on the cot at the other end of the room, I was in sniffle-sob mode.
That’s when Grandpa shuffled over to the cot and told me to quit crying. “You need to get over the broken fishing rod,” he said. “Your dad didn’t mean to break it, and he feels bad enough without your crying about what happened to your birthday present. You need to grow up.”
Grandpa’s reprimand angered me. Clearly, he didn’t understand why I was upset. Here he thought I was sobbing out of selfishness, when it was the exact opposite. But I couldn’t explain to Grandpa any more easily than I could to Dad. Until I fell asleep, I dwelled on what I’d later understand as irony. (Cont.)
Blogger’s note: After posting Gone Fishin’ (Part III), I was curious if I could locate Jon Ridge—of the Ridge family highlighted in the post—who was my age and my neighborhood chum when we were young kids. I’d last seen Jon our sophomore year of college. While I was home during Christmas vacation, we’d re-established contact by phone and shortly thereafter got together one afternoon down by the University of Minnesota, where he was a student. That was our last contact. After writing yesterday about our family’s visit at his grandparents’ cabin on Lake George north of Anoka, I thought it would be fun to reach out to Jon after all these years. I found information easily enough, but sadly, it took my breath away. Tragically, last April Jon was killed in a bicycle accident in Montana. He is survived by his wife, a son and a daughter. He’d graduated from the U of MN in public health and later obtained Hamline University in St. Paul, his masters degree in administration of non-profit organizations. By all accounts, Jon was a much-beloved leader of bike and adventure trips to remote areas of the world and many expeditions to the BWCA. He was actively involved in numerous conservation causes and entities. By his passing, the world is now short a very good man.
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© 2026 by Eric Nilsson
