Grandfather, bluegills and a very tolerant friend.
Grandfather says nearly as far back as he can remember, he has loved to fish.
He was on a footbridge over a creek at a family picnic when he was, oh, maybe 4 years old. When he saw minnows in the water, he bent a reed into an “L” and dangled one end in the creek and cried when he couldn’t catch a fish.
When he was 6 or so, he did better — tied one end of a string to a broomstick and the other to a bent pin forming a fishhook and caught bullheads out of a ditch alongside railroad tracks.
Age 12 or so, he rode his bicycle 14 miles to a millpond where he caught bluegills and in years following, he fished for bass on one of Michigan’s inland lakes where his uncle had a cottage. (See photo on right.)
Plus, whatever showed up in the surf on the Hatteras Seashore.
These days, he sometimes flips a popper bug with a fly rod at bluegills in his son’s farm pond.
He and Grandmother-to-be camped out and fished for bass and pike on their honeymoon:
Grandfather, pike, bass and Grandmother
Then, he graduated to trout and salmon:
Grandfather, salmon and friends. Betsie River, Michigan.
Salmon fishing in Alaska yielded the snapshot wife Tatjana used to paint Grandfather’s portrait.
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About the Author: RD Blakeslee is an octogenarian from West Virginia who built his net worth by only investing in that which can be enjoyed during acquisition and throughout life, as opposed to papers in a drawer, like stocks and bonds. You can read more about him here.
Photos: Courtesy of the Blakeslee Family
We all have fish stories, RD, but yours at least have photos! Thanks for sharing.
My favorite was on our summer trip to Dad’s fish and game club about four hours north of Montreal – the last three hours on dirt roads. We had a five-mile-long lake to ourselves. (Well, we did have to share with the moose, and we avoided “gull” island.) Each year one of my brothers would keep a chart for the week of who caught how many of what type of fish and their size.
The year I was 8 or 9, my parents booted me out of their boat (three trolling together means tangled lines), so I fished with the resident guide. I was mad at first, but then I realized he knew where the fish were biting. On the second day, I got me a 36″ wall-eyed pike. I could barely hold it up for the photo.
But my chart-keeping brother? From that point on, he literally fished all day everyday when he wasn’t eating or sleeping, cause he couldn’t allow little sister to have biggest fish honors for the week.
Today? That same brother spends most of each summer on Lake Ontario filling coolers full of salmon for his friends. He never got over it. : )
Good for you, Gee!
Fisherpersons are persistent, aren’t they?
On the wall here, About 6 feet from my left ear, is the stuffed head of a lake trout Grandfather caught sometime in the ’60s, fishing from shore in Crystal Lake, Benzie County Michigan at 1 in the morning in a driving snowstorm.
Well … there’s persistent and then there’s obsessed. In a snowstorm??? That’s when you’re supposed to be snugged up around the fireplace.
And I personally prefer not to have dead critters in the house. I have enough trouble with the live ones. : )
Len has kindly added a more recent photo to this article.
The last photo is a gem, RD. The similarity between the picture and Tatjana’s painting is remarkable!
Tatjana’s painting is becoming quite well known here and she is selling quite a few paintings.
The photo was used with my EHarmony profile, whence I met Tatjana.
She SAYS she prefers the live subject ,,,
That is a great photo, RD. And the guy holding the fish is okay, too. : )
“Three-fourths of the Earth’s surface is water, and one-fourth is land. It is quite clear that the good Lord intended us to spend triple the amount of time fishing as taking care of the lawn!” — Chuck Clark
Right on, Robert!
The underlying sentiment applies to landlubbers, too.
The precursor to “Grandfather Says” was a vignette written for the local newspaper entitled “Uncle Luke Says”.
Uncle Luke says he never mows anything that will die down overwinter and he never rakes up anything that will blow away and he never shovels anything that’s going to melt.