Gone Fishin'

Gone fishin'

Instead of just a wishin'."

The song from the 1960s television show, The Sportsman's Friend, kept floating through my head as we headed toward the pasture at the Ninnescah. That little snippet was all I could remember of the lyrics (which, by the way, got a little annoying as it played over and over and over in my mind).

Believe me, I wasn't perched in front of the TV watching the show. I didn't grow up fishing. Sports time with our dad was much more likely to involve throwing or hitting a softball and dribbling or shooting a basketball.

 

But I live with a guy who has loved fishing all his life. Randy says that the TV show's host, Harold Ensley, came to Rock Springs 4-H Camp for a fishing program one year. The impressionable young 4-Hers went fishing every day after The Sportsman's Friend came to call.

I let my favorite fisherman do the "icky" stuff. Yes, he baited my hook with the beef liver we'd pulled from the freezer. (Just a side note: That's the only acceptable use for liver, in my book. No amount of onions can redeem it.)

Randy caught two fish.

 

I was one of those fishermen with a story about "the one who got away." Yes, I really had a big one on my line, but the line broke before Randy could scoop him into the net.

He lost a few, too. That's our story, and we're sticking to it - just like fishermen have been doing for time immemorial.

After my fish swam down the river, I was less interested in catching fish than "catching" the beauty of the evening on my camera. Patience is not one of my virtues. 

But clicking the shutter button on my camera is.

After Randy was done wielding the fishing pole, we took our 4-wheelers and checked on the cattle that we'd just delivered to the pasture earlier in the week.

They seemed to be enjoying their new summer digs.

What's not to like?