triumphrick
Lieutenant Commander
- Joined
- Jun 26, 2008
- Messages
- 1,737
Got back from the hospital after seeing my Dad this afternoon. He's 86 and pretty sick right now. They have put in a pacemaker and he is struggling to get out of bed to do therapy.
I read mainexile fishing story and it bought back a lot of childhood memories. Many of them were good, however not all of them were. The good seemed to always involve fishing and camping. We were a military family and moved a lot, but spent most of our childhood and then our high school years in the Tampa area. I can remember spending the night out on the causeway between Tampa and Clearwater making a lean-to out of the concrete pavilions. Fishing untill the wee hours. Getting up again at sunrise, catching hermit crabs, breaking the shells and catching the biggest sheepheads I can ever remember.
By that afternoon we were cooking our fish on a charcoal grill, eating corn cooked in the fire and baked potatoes that were cooked on hot rocks.
Or we would go to the end of the catwalk on the Gandy bridge, climb up on the bridge itself and catch so many trout I couldn't keep track. Or cutting a big ladyfish up and tossing out that old Penn 68 with the Dacron line and bringing my first big shark up on the rocks after walking him off the bridge.
Always, I was there with my Dad.
We would leave fishing and he had to go to the bar to stop in and have some beer and a smoked mullet.
He spent a lot of time in those bars.
He was still in a bar last month singin a little karaeoke when he had the seizure and passed out.
Some of those times at the bar were fun, others were coming to drive him home. But he always seemed to remember our fishing trips. We went out often for many a year. And later it was my turn to take the point and show him how to net bait or troll for grouper or how to join in on the fleet in the Boca Grande pass and not **** off the charters with their thousand dollar guide trips.
I guess as I write this I remember more of the good than the bad......
That's a good thing.
I read mainexile fishing story and it bought back a lot of childhood memories. Many of them were good, however not all of them were. The good seemed to always involve fishing and camping. We were a military family and moved a lot, but spent most of our childhood and then our high school years in the Tampa area. I can remember spending the night out on the causeway between Tampa and Clearwater making a lean-to out of the concrete pavilions. Fishing untill the wee hours. Getting up again at sunrise, catching hermit crabs, breaking the shells and catching the biggest sheepheads I can ever remember.
By that afternoon we were cooking our fish on a charcoal grill, eating corn cooked in the fire and baked potatoes that were cooked on hot rocks.
Or we would go to the end of the catwalk on the Gandy bridge, climb up on the bridge itself and catch so many trout I couldn't keep track. Or cutting a big ladyfish up and tossing out that old Penn 68 with the Dacron line and bringing my first big shark up on the rocks after walking him off the bridge.
Always, I was there with my Dad.
We would leave fishing and he had to go to the bar to stop in and have some beer and a smoked mullet.
He spent a lot of time in those bars.
He was still in a bar last month singin a little karaeoke when he had the seizure and passed out.
Some of those times at the bar were fun, others were coming to drive him home. But he always seemed to remember our fishing trips. We went out often for many a year. And later it was my turn to take the point and show him how to net bait or troll for grouper or how to join in on the fleet in the Boca Grande pass and not **** off the charters with their thousand dollar guide trips.
I guess as I write this I remember more of the good than the bad......
That's a good thing.
