Tag Archives: fishing

Fishermen Catch My Attention

by Woody

As the sun went down and the tide came up, a lone fisherman stood atop the tallest lava rock where earlier in the day there had been an exposed tidal pool.

Now the waves washed over his ankles, salty mist splashed his face, and even from behind you just knew he was smiling. Watching this scene from a third-floor beachside balcony overlooking Lyman’s Bay in Kona on The Big Island of Hawai’i gave me a smile as well.

After a while, I noticed that his long fishing rod was like a giant metronome moving in a 1-to-4 rhythm with the sea – a new cast going out with every fourth wave that washed in.

At Pu’uhonua o Honaunau and Royal Grounds National Historic Park in South Kona … before seeing the lone fisherman in the bay.

Watching someone else fish is sometimes as much fun as fishing and so for half an hour I spectated, but nary a fish did the fisherman reel in. I imagine he did not care; that catching wasn’t the main point anyway; that just being out there in the fresh sea air was medicine for his soul.

And then something happened that was even better medicine…

…a fisherboy, about age eight or so, came and joined the fisherman on the lava rock, ankle-deep in waves, side-by-side in smiles, casting out with his own pole. It was a Norman Rockwell painting brought to life.

The next day, while visiting the Pu’uhonua o Honaunau and Royal Grounds National Historic Park in South Kona, another angler caught my attention.

The most impressive artifact on the 180-acre grounds, once believed to possess spiritual powers, is “The Great Wall” built more than 400 years ago. Measuring 12 feet high and nearly two feet thick, its workmanship is remarkable. Even without mortar, the lava stones remain perfectly in place with the wall sides rising flat and true and its top edges as square as a brownie pan.

Running 950 feet long in an L shape, The Great Wall divides the Pu’uhonua – meaning “Place of Refuge” – from the rest of the grounds. Lawbreakers, even ones sentenced to death, who managed to flee by foot or swim along the coast to the Place of Refuge would be absolved of their crimes by a priest. Most fugitives did not make it, however, for the distances could be great, the currents strong, the waves angry as they crashed on a beach made treacherous with lava stones sharp as razors.

It was in these waters, on the north edge of the Royal Grounds, that The Great Wall was overshadowed by a small fishing skiff. With a single motor at the stern and a weathered one-person cabin at the bow, it bounced up and down on rough water while chugging towards the shelter of the bay.

I find watching someone performing excellence in most anything to be a thrill, and this lone fisherman thrilled me now. Reaching the shallows near shore, he hopped out into waist-deep water, waded up a cement loading ramp, and jogged away.

In a flash, he was back – backing a pickup truck and boat trailer down the long, narrow ramp with surprising speed. Indeed, with little margin for error and without pause, he guided the trailer into the water and halfway under the skiff. It was poetry in motion. Like watching someone parallel park into a space that seems much too tight.

Wading waist deep again, the solitaire fisherman pushed the skiff fully onto the trailer and secured it before climbing into his truck and driving off. In all, arrival to departure, perhaps six minutes passed.

I don’t know if the fish were biting, but I’m guessing he caught the limit.

 *   *   *

Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

 

Trying To Be Like My Grandpa

by Woody

FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM: @woodywoodburn

*

Still Trying To Be

Like My Grandpa

            October 5 was the birth date of my Grandpa Ansel, the only grandparent I knew, so he is especially on my mind today. I was only 7 when he died, yet he lives on in my memories and core values.

An art assignment when I was in the first grade goes a long way in telling you about my grandpa.

“And who is this?” asked Miss Bower, studying my crayon portrait response to her prompt: “Who is the most important person in the world?”

“My grandpa,” six-year-old-me replied, matter-of-factly, as though it were so obvious no answer should have been required.

“All your classmates drew portraits of President Johnson,” Miss Bower noted, adding: “Your grandpa must be very special.”

Me: “Yeah, he’s pretty ginchy.”

To be honest, the thought of drawing a portrait of the President of the United States never crossed my mind. In truth, I wondered why my friends had not drawn pictures of their grandpas.

Grandpa Ansel with me (red shirt) and my two brothers.

After all, it wasn’t the President who patiently showed me how to bait a fishhook. Certainly the President had never set down his fly rod to calmly help me untangle a bird’s nest of fishing line in a backlashed spinning reel.

It wasn’t the President who taught me other important things a boy needs to know, like how to skip flat stones across the water; how to whistle; and how to pound nails without bending them.

The President never gave me a ginchy handcrafted wooden toolbox for my fifth birthday – or taught me funny old-fashioned words like “ginchy” which means “cool.”

“Grandpa, how come you don’t use worms like I do?” I once asked while “helping” him tie a fly in his basement fantasyland workshop of tools and endless jars filled with fishhooks, feathers, fur and other paraphernalia.

“Oh, it takes a mighty skillful fisherman like yourself to catch a fish with a worm,” he answered. “That’s why you always catch big fish while I catch the little ones. I’d better stick to using flies if I want to have a chance to keep up with you.”

“Okay, Grandpa – but if you change your mind, I’ll share my worms with you.”

Grandpa shared lots of important things with me, like how to look a man in the eye when you shake hands; The Golden Rule; and that little boys in Russia are the same as little boys in America, this being during the Cold War.

“Which way is the wind blowing?” I would ask Grandpa whenever we went fishing. Before answering, he would moisten his index finger in his mouth and then dramatically extend it high in the air as I mimicked him.

Upon seeing which side of his finger-turned-weather-vane dried first, Grandpa would whistle-hum happily before responding: “I do believe it’s blowing from the west.”

Always, the wind was blowing from the west.

Always, this excited me and I would then recite by heart a poem Grandpa had taught me:

“When the wind is from the north, / The wise fisherman does not go forth.

“When the wind is from the south, / It blows the hook into the fish’s mouth.

“When the wind is from the east, / ’Tis not fit for man nor beast.

“But when the wind is from the west, / The fishing is the very best.”

Growing up, I wanted to be like Grandpa Ansel; ten months ago, I truly became like him – a grandpa. With fishing as a metaphor, I want my granddaughter Maya to always feel like the wind is blowing from the west when we’re spending time together.

*

FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM: @woodywoodburn

Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Check out my memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and my essay collection “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” …

Dads Forge Memories

by Woody

 My new memoir WOODEN & ME is available here at Amazon

*   *   *  

One Role of Dads is to Forge Memories

Dads have countless roles and surely one of the most important is to forge lasting childhood memories for their kids. In honor of Father’s Day, here is one of mine.

1dadsdayThe summer of 1969, a month before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin would walk on the moon and two months before Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin rocked at Woodstock, my dad planned to take my two older brothers on an epic fishing adventure in Canada. Having just turned 9, I was deemed too young to tag along.

I felt more left out than Apollo 11’s third astronaut, Michael Collins, orbiting the moon in the Command Module.

T-minus two nights before our family Plymouth station wagon with faux wood side panels was to blast off, Pop’s friend, Mel Olex, who was to fill out the travel party, fell ill. It was not the first time Dr. Olex had come to my rescue: after separate accidents he put plaster casts on my broken leg and fractured wrist.

Now, he healed my broken heart because in his absence there was room for me. After all, food for four had already been packed. For me it was Christmas in June.

For Pop, now the only driver, it was a long haul from Columbus, Ohio, north across the border to Canada’s Lake Heron. We then hopped a motorboat to an isolated island where we stayed in a one-room rustic cabin at the Westwind Lodge. The name was fortuitous for it brought to mind a poem my Grandpa Ansel used to recite when he took us three boys fishing at farm ponds:

When the wind is from the north, / The wise fisherman does not go forth.

When the wind is from the south, / It blows the hook into the fish’s mouth.

When the wind is from the east, / `Tis not fit for man nor beast.

But when the wind is from the west, / The fishing is the very best.

Fishing at the Westwind Lodge thus promised to be the very best.

In the chill of dawn we would head out on the lake in a small boat with a temperamental outboard motor that leaked an ironically beautiful rainbow of ugly gasoline on the water’s surface.

By late afternoon we would have a collection of pike, walleye, perch and bass which the lodge cook filleted, breaded, fried and served us for dinner.

The first three days we returned to the Lodge for lunch before heading out for a second round of angling. This limited how far we could venture, so when Pop learned about a distant “Secret Cove” – doesn’t every lake have a “Secret Cove” that isn’t really a secret? – where northern pike the size of VW Beetles were reported to lurk, he got the cook to pack us lunches.

Next morning, Pop gave us our assignments: Jim was to make sure the rods and reels were all in the boat; Doug was in charge of the lunches and the cooler with the sodas; and I was told to put on my life jacket and try not to fall in the lake. Again.

We were starving by the time we finally found “Secret Cove” and decided to go ashore for lunch before catching some VWs with gills. We three boys bolted from the boat and soon learned an important lesson: when standing on an uprising smooth rock landscape, don’t pee facing uphill.

Pop (still in the boat): Hey, Dougie, where’d you put the lunches?

Doug (sneakers getting wet on land): I think they’re by the life jackets.

Pop: Nope. I don’t see them or the ice cooler anywhere. Dougie, you didn’t leave the lunches on the dock did you?

Doug: Stone silence.

Pop: (We boys would have gotten our mouths washed out with soap if we repeated what Pop said next.)

While I cannot state this as fact, I am convinced the true native name of that “Secret Cove” was “There Ain’t No Fish Here Cove.”

I am convinced of this, too: hippies at Woodstock didn’t have a more wonderfully memorable summer of ’69 than my big brothers and I did at Westwind.

* * *

Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Wooden-&-Me-cover-mock-upCheck out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”