“The only reason I played golf was so that I could afford to go hunting and fishing.”
Sam Snead
I tried my best to interest my son in fly fishing, thinking it was something we could enjoy together, an avocation I could pass down the family line. When Chris showed some interest and eagerness early on, I bought him an Orvis 6 weight fly rod and reel outfit, a vest, waders, and took him on a few trips but after only a few ventures out, I could tell he just didn’t have the passion, or perhaps “my passion”. My wife contends I pushed him too hard, which is fair. But all of the die-hard fish heads out there know what I’m talking about: the mojo, moxie, and absolute drive to excel in something so much that time itself stands still. Chris does, thankfully, fish with me at the shore on the party boats out of Barnegat Inlet for blues, fluke, and stripers. It’s a tradition thing mostly, a father-son “bonding” event, if you will. But back in my youth, if I had a backyard pond stocked with hungry bass, as once existed just 100 yards out the back door of our home on Grippen Hill, I’d be bankside every chance I got. Chris never wet a line there.
My wife and I stood by Chris in his search for a hobby that would capture his mind and heart, one that would make use of his abundant talents, and possibly turn into a labor of love. There were guitar, lacrosse, paintball, biking, and wrestling, but all of these things were not much more than tossing gas on a baseless fire, producing white-hot flames that burned bright at first but left no enduring embers.
But then along came golf…
Chris picked up a driver like he did a fly rod, and in no time was clipping balls 225 yards. He has natural talent of which most of us can only dream. He also has the build conducive to the physics of golf – long arms, long torso, and decent height. I remember once casting a new fly rod on the lawn of a local fly shop with him, back when I was trying to cuddle him up to the sport. The owner bluntly told me that my son, at 13, cast better than I did, 10+ years into the game. As is often said, youth is often wasted on the young.
So, one April day years ago when he was in high school, we bought him a junior membership at a public course just a few hills over from where we lived at the time and ever since he started that “good walk spoiled”, a funny thing happened – I found golf balls wherever I fished. It began with our pond, which wasn’t too surprising since Chris was constantly practicing on the lawn under our #1 ground rule, “away from the house – toward the pond”. I’d paddle out on the pond and in the shallows, WAY down from where he’d tee off, see these white things on the pond bottom. Once I was fishing in the stillness of the evening, casting poppers, and nearly jumped out of the kayak when what appeared to be a big bass exploded from the water only feet away. Later, having returned from my back-yard expedition, a smiling Chris asked me how I liked his driving.
But soon after that, more golf balls appeared in remote and very un-golf like places. I found one in the upper Susquehanna River near Windsor where the river is secluded in deep woods and vast tracts of farmland. I found another in the Chemung, downstream from the towering dikes that shoulder the river from the town of Athens. I found still more in the Tioughnioga and the lower Susquehanna, and even, of all places, remote Cayuta Creek.
And I would bring them back, every one of them, as proof…
Serendipity? Chance? Divine intervention? Could it be the Big Man’s way of tying the seemingly disparate fires burning deep within us together? I’ve pondered this at length, concluding that, whether chance discovery or breadcrumbs from above, it was indeed a sign that these two great avocations could be shared over the years and vowed I’d someday throw my 8-weight in the back of the golf cart. There had to be some real hawg bass in some of those beautiful water obstacles…
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