In the classic film, “It’s A Wonderful Life”, the main character, George Bailey asks at one point, “Do you know what the three sweetest sounds in the world are?”
Lovable but single-minded Uncle Billy answers, “Sure. ‘Breakfast is served’, ‘Lunch is served’, ‘Dinner is served’”.
Now, while I would generally tend to agree with Uncle Billy, I would also add to the list the phrase, “Uncle Dan, will you take me fishing?” with “…And the winner is…Dan Zambrano” as a close second.
But anyway, the former phrase is the one that caused my heart to race this past weekend as our niece approached me and begged me to take her fishing.
Who am I to deny such a humble request from one so sweet? Especially when it was followed with one of those pleading little faces that kids intuitively seem to know will melt our tough-guy façade like hot…uh… coffee on snow.
So, with only a little bit of scheduling adjustments and some quick conferencing with her mom, we planned for Sunday afternoon as the big adventure day.
I already knew exactly where we would go: Laguna Park in Fullerton. I also knew exactly what sort of rig we would use and I already suspected I could enlist the help of my fishin’ buddy Sean.
Sure enough, when Sunday afternoon rolled around, a certain ten-year old was duly deposited on my doorstop with the motherly advice, “Do exactly what uncle Dan & Sean tell you to do and you will catch a fish”.
Oh.
No pressure there.
Soon, we were at Laguna Park and we quickly fell into the pattern that we would follow pretty much for the rest of the afternoon. Sean led with his 5-wt fly rod
rigged with a hopper-dropper combo while Holly and I used simple bait rigs suspended about eight inches beneath plastic floats.
As Holly tangled or fouled her rig, I would let her use my ultra-light Pen Rod while I reset her gear. I would then fish her pink and yellow Snoopy pole for a while. When she fouled the Pen Rod, we would switch off and I would reset that rig.
In between re-rigging, I did manage to quietly catch a few fish on both poles. Holly however, had her eyes fixed on Sean. His rig was bringing in fish about every other cast.
This strategy, coupled with the steady number of Bluegills that Sean kept pulling in, had the effect of keeping Holly interested, busy and excited at the prospect of her first fish.
We fished for about fifteen minutes (a life time to a ten-year old) but she had not tied into a fish. She was keenly aware however, that Sean was several fish ahead of her and she had some catching up to do.
(How’s that for attitude and positive thinking?)
After a short time, I realized that she was getting bites but she could not pick up on the subtle movement of the traditional round bobber. In the time it took for me to tell her to set the hook, the fish would be off. So, I switched her over to a bright yellow pencil-float and that seemed to telegraph nibbling Bluegill much better.
Sean let her borrow his polarized glasses for a moment and with them she could see the little bluegill attacking her bait.
Suddenly, it all clicked and you could pretty much see the pieces of the puzzle all fall into place within her head.
Soon she was reading the bobber signs quite well and, even better, she was catching fish on a consistent basis.
Before long she was striving for first place in our impromptu catch and release fishing tournament.
So, train whistles, boat whistles and airplane engines may have been the sweetest sounds in the world to George Bailey but that’s probably because he never heard the sound of a kid that has just landed her first fish all by herself.
That sound is one of the sweetest sounds of a wonderful life… that and the phrase, “Your chicken McNuggets are ready, sir?”
…I love this addiction called urban flyfishin
“Serendipity”. A ten dollar word that translates to roughly, ” I had no freakin’ idea that would turn out so totally awesome”. It’s a word to use when you want to throw a kink in the stereotype that brownliners are a step down on the flyfishing/intelligence hierarchy. It is also how I would d escribe our day on the water this past Sunday.
About 3:30 in the afternoon we headed off to La Mirada park to try our luck among the hard core catfish fisher-folk and the innumerable kids that were hurling enough lead at the lake to make it feel like a beach assault. We hop-scotched between the families feeding the predatory ducks, squeezing in just close enough so as not to appear too predatory ourselves but near enough to piggyback on the chum line being laid down by all the two and three year olds emptying their bags of cheetos into the lake. The wind was steady and made for a slight chop on the water, which was good for stealth but bad for anything other than casts made to the East. Our slow but fruitless dance around the lake was interrupted only to give a short lakeside instructional session to a ten-year old who nearly stove in the back of my head with the cannonball he was using for weight.
We had just about decided to move to another lake when my 8 foot, 5-weight “dinked”. I honestly thought I had snagged some algae but played in the line anyway. Sure enough, I had managed to hook up with quite possibly the smallest large mouth bass on the planet. Exhausted from the battle, I forgot to snap a photo but it wouldn’t have a mattered much anyway unless you use a hi-def,=2 0home-theater sized screen for a computer monitor. Still a fish is a fish and it boosted our spirits just to know that we could, in fact catch a fish in an urban lake even amid the barrage of live fire lead and rooster tails.
Knowing that retreat is an effective and honorable strategy, we opted to head over to Laguna Lake, which despite it’s name, is located in the middle of Fullerton — about fifteen minutes away. Now, old-timers who haven’t been there in the last three years or so will hear you say Laguna Lake and simply burst out laughing. Laguna lake recently underwent a multi-million dollar make over and it’s once again a decent place to fish. Prior to the fix up though, the place just stank. The water resembled hospital jello and you didn’t have to fish, you just had to walk along the shore and scoop up dead carcasses from underneath the ducks that lined the shore like day workers at Home Depot.
Now, it is a different story.The place is clean, the number of ducks is regulated, the water flows in a cleansing circular pattern thanks to a series of pumps and jets and there is plenty of space to make decent back casts around most of the lake. Plus you can park along the street for FREE. A good number of families were already set up along the shore mostly bait fishing. We headed over to a clump of rushes that had produced for us in the past and we begin fishin’. Almost immediately we began pulling in small bluegills. ; As we split off in different directions, we each continued to haul in bluegill after bluegill. At one point, my cell phone went off while I was playing a ‘gill and the ID indicated that Sean was calling me. I answered, thinking something was wrong. “Dude, switch to a small dry. You won’t be sorry.” I did and I wasn’t. All told, when it finally got too dark to see what we were doing, we counted close to a hundred bluegills and green sunfish caught and released between the two of us.
And that is what you call serendipity.
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