I’m hooked on teaching
Just about every week, I get quite a few phone calls or emails from folks that have read one of my columns, and I always do my best to reply to their comments and questions. When I write about “them good old days,” it seems these stories spark the most interest, and I usually get a ton of emails where people recount their own experiences from their own days gone by. The second most popular stories seem to prove that a picture is indeed worth a thousand words. For instance, if I include a picture of someone holding a big, fat redfish, I nearly always get quite a few comments. If I had to pick the top response to these type articles, it would be, “I went fishing all day yesterday and didn’t catch anything but sharks!” followed by, “what am I doing wrong?”
Most fishermen are for the most part a very secretive lot. If they have a secret honey hole that always seems to produce fish, I swear they will take that secret to their grave. I too have a couple of these spots, but for the most part, I actually like to show people how to catch fish. Call me crazy, but I love to watch folks catch a redfish or a trout for the very first time. Their excitement is contagious and without fail, it always puts a smile on my face.
Here’s a perfect example of just one of these encounters. A husband and wife from Asheville, N.C., Larry and Robin Brooks, had corresponded with me for quite some time, and even though I had never met them in person, there was something immediately endearing about them. Larry and I had talked on the phone on occasion, and it was his slow, southern drawl that got to me. Like so many others, their story was the same. They had a place on Hilton Head, and about once a month, they would come down for a few days at a time, and since they both loved the water, Larry went out and bought a small boat. It was his wife, Robin, that was the avid angler of the two, but they were having a hard time transitioning from fresh water fishing to salt water fishing. Finally, after weeks of correspondence, I agreed to ride along with them the next time they were down here so I could see what they were doing wrong and possibly help them catch a fish worthy of the dinner table.
From the moment I walked down the dock and met the two of them, I knew they were my kind of people. Larry, a lifelong farmer, was exactly like his voice. Instantly, I knew he had a dry sense of humor (the best kind) and his wife, Robin, was equally as southern, yet she had these smiling eyes that instantly made me like her. Festooned with a large, floppy hat, she and I hit it off from the get-go, and I knew that it was going to be Robin and Collins vs. Larry. All good natured, Larry did his best to push our buttons with quips like, “y’all ain’t going to catch any fish, heck, we might outta go to da fish store right now.”
His demeanor only served to make me determined to put them on fish, any fish. So with that, I took them to one of my honey holes, tried and true and full of redfish, but only if the tide was right. I knew they would be there, but we would have an hour wait for the tide to be right, so we dropped anchor and started fishing. Almost immediately, I saw the redfish feeding way back in the shallow part of the creek and pointed them out to Larry and Robin. With tails and backs out of the water, it was fun to watch, but because the tide was so low, our baits couldn’t reach them. I knew if we waited for the tide to start coming in, they would come, but my challenge was to keep Larry entertained until that happened. So for the next hour, it was a “banterfest” between Larry and Robin with me smack dab in the middle. I loved it!
Finally, the tide started moving, and it wasn’t five minutes later that Robin’s rod was darn near yanked from her hand. It was a redfish all right, and it was a monster. Talk about squealing, you would have thought Robin had won the lottery. No sooner had I put the fish in the boat than we hooked another one, and this time, Larry took the rod. As he fought that fish, Robin hooked another big red. It was total mayhem as reds grabbed their baits just about the moment the bait would hit the water. I knew they were dying to take some fish home, but I explained that two per person was enough, and we should leave the rest alone. This is the part of teaching that I love the most, conservation and catch and release. With the fish still chewing, we left. I was so proud of them.
As the tide rose, I took them to another one of my spots hoping the trout would be there. On the very first cast, Robin caught her first saltwater trout, and it would have won just about any tournament around. Once again, I explained that they should release most of the trout because our stocks were hurt bad by and unusual long cold winter spell with water temperatures dipping down in the low 40s, and they were instantly on board. I told them it was fine to keep a couple but release the rest so the trout population might get back to normal. What really warmed my heart was that here were two people that had struggled to catch “eating fish,” and now that they had learned how to catch them, they understood the importance of keeping just enough to eat a meal or two and release the rest. With that, my job as a teacher was a success, and in the process, I had made two life-long friends.
Collins Doughtie is a 60-year resident of the Lowcountry, is a sportsman, graphic artist, and lover of nature. collinsdoughtie@icloud.com
