{"id":10603,"date":"2026-06-28T20:39:52","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T03:39:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/?p=10603"},"modified":"2026-06-28T20:39:52","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T03:39:52","slug":"lessons-part-six-fishing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/2026\/06\/28\/lessons-part-six-fishing\/","title":{"rendered":"Lessons Part Six: Fishing"},"content":{"rendered":"

I never really learned how to fish.<\/span><\/h1>\n

Charlie did.<\/p>\n

That was good enough for me.<\/p>\n

Charlie always had the fishing gear, and I was always willing to carry part of it. We’d head down to Angora Creek with a small tackle box, a handful of salmon eggs, and a few shiny lures that flashed like silver in the mountain sun.<\/p>\n

The creek was full of little trout, and catching them seemed almost too easy.<\/p>\n

Most days we’d make one or two casts before a fish was tugging on the line. They weren’t very big\u2014maybe five inches long\u2014but then again, neither were we. To us, they looked like trophies.<\/p>\n

We’d proudly carry our catch back to Charlie’s house, where we’d clean them as best we could and toss them onto the griddle. They were delicious. Crispy on the outside, tender on the inside, and so small you hardly noticed the bones.<\/p>\n

One afternoon we proudly told an adult how many fish we’d eaten.<\/p>\n

“Oh, about ten or fifteen on one griddle.”<\/p>\n

His eyes grew wide.<\/p>\n

“Ten or fifteen?”<\/p>\n

“Sure.”<\/p>\n

“How big were they?”<\/p>\n

Charlie and I held our fingers apart.<\/p>\n

“About this big.”<\/p>\n

The expression on his face changed immediately.<\/p>\n

“Boys… those were just little trout. They’re too small. You aren’t supposed to keep fish that size.”<\/p>\n

Well…<\/p>\n

That explained why catching them had been so easy.<\/p>\n

It also explained why the bigger trout always seemed smarter.<\/p>\n

There was one trout in particular that lived beneath an undercut bank where the creek bent through a deep pool. I watched him for days. He would dart from the shadows, inspect every lure I threw, and disappear again before I could even twitch the line.<\/p>\n

He wasn’t just a fish.<\/p>\n

He was a genius.<\/p>\n

After losing that contest over and over, I decided I needed a better plan.<\/p>\n

I figured the fish heard me splashing around every time I approached the creek. So one evening I quietly pounded a small stick into the bank, tied my fishing line to it, baited the hook, and left it in the water overnight.<\/p>\n

In my six-year-old mind, it was brilliant.<\/p>\n

The fish would never know I had been there.<\/p>\n

Early the next morning, I hurried back to the creek.<\/p>\n

At first my heart sank.<\/p>\n

The stick was gone.<\/p>\n

So was the fishing line.<\/p>\n

Then I spotted it.<\/p>\n

Far out in the pool, the little stick was skipping across the water.<\/p>\n

Not floating…<\/p>\n

Moving.<\/p>\n

Changing directions.<\/p>\n

Something underneath was towing it around.<\/p>\n

My giant trout!<\/p>\n

I waded into the icy creek, chasing the little piece of wood as it danced just out of reach. Finally the line wrapped around my legs. I grabbed it with both hands and carefully pulled.<\/p>\n

The water exploded.<\/p>\n

The trout fought with everything it had.<\/p>\n

But little by little I worked it toward shore until finally it lay on the bank before me.<\/p>\n

It was enormous.<\/p>\n

At least enormous to a little boy.<\/p>\n

I carried that fish home like a mountain man returning from a great hunt.<\/p>\n

When I showed it to my father, even he looked impressed.<\/p>\n

He cleaned it, laid it across the kitchen counter, and measured it.<\/p>\n

“Twenty-two inches.”<\/p>\n

I thought I had just become the greatest fisherman in all of Tahoe.<\/p>\n

Then Dad asked the question every father asks.<\/p>\n

“So… where did you catch it?”<\/p>\n

I proudly explained my brilliant strategy.<\/p>\n

How I’d tied the line to the stick.<\/p>\n

Left it overnight.<\/p>\n

And come back first thing in the morning.<\/p>\n

He listened patiently.<\/p>\n

Then he smiled.<\/p>\n

“Well, you can’t do that.”<\/p>\n

I looked at him in disbelief.<\/p>\n

“Why not?”<\/p>\n

“It’s illegal. You can’t leave a set line out overnight.”<\/p>\n

There it was again.<\/p>\n

Another lesson.<\/p>\n

First I learned you couldn’t keep the little fish because they needed to grow up.<\/p>\n

Then I learned you couldn’t leave a line staked out because that wasn’t sporting\u2014or legal.<\/p>\n

By the time I was done, I had reached one unavoidable conclusion.<\/p>\n

Catching fish the right way was a whole lot harder than catching them the wrong way.<\/p>\n

Still…<\/p>\n

Dad and I enjoyed every bite of that twenty-two-inch trout.<\/p>\n

Looking back, I realize I caught more than a fish that day.<\/p>\n

I caught another lesson that never left me.<\/p>\n

The mountains were full of unwritten rules, and my father always seemed to know every one of them. He never scolded me for what I didn’t know. He simply explained why the rules existed, then expected me to do better next time.<\/p>\n

It wasn’t all that different from watching Ben Cartwright straighten out Hoss or Little Joe.<\/p>\n

Only my Ponderosa was the meadow outside Meyers.<\/p>\n

And my teacher didn’t wear a Stetson.<\/p>\n

He wore an apron at the Top of the Wheel, smelled faintly of chard meat and wood smoke, and somehow always knew the difference between doing something because you could<\/em>… and doing it because it was right<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I never really learned how to fish. Charlie did. That was good enough for me. Charlie always had<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10604,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[43],"tags":[],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/IMG_20250430_181639-1269x1536-1.jpg",1269,1536,false],"thumbnail":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/IMG_20250430_181639-1269x1536-1-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/IMG_20250430_181639-1269x1536-1-496x600.jpg",496,600,true],"medium_large":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/IMG_20250430_181639-1269x1536-1-768x930.jpg",640,775,true],"large":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/IMG_20250430_181639-1269x1536-1-991x1200.jpg",640,775,true],"1536x1536":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/IMG_20250430_181639-1269x1536-1.jpg",1269,1536,false],"2048x2048":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/IMG_20250430_181639-1269x1536-1.jpg",1269,1536,false],"darknews-slider-full":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/IMG_20250430_181639-1269x1536-1-1269x720.jpg",1269,720,true],"darknews-featured":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/IMG_20250430_181639-1269x1536-1-1024x1239.jpg",1024,1239,true],"darknews-medium":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/IMG_20250430_181639-1269x1536-1-720x530.jpg",720,530,true],"darknews-medium-square":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/IMG_20250430_181639-1269x1536-1-350x350.jpg",350,350,true]},"author_info":{"display_name":"News MoLo","author_link":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/author\/admin\/"},"category_info":"Alarcon<\/a>","tag_info":"Alarcon","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10603"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10603"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10605,"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10603\/revisions\/10605"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}