How I learned to fish.

I love being outside and doing almost any other activity that you can think of that involves the Great Outdoors—camping, hiking, riding on the boat, four-wheeling, and going for long trail rides on horseback. As much as I love doing things outside, I love spending with my dad even more. We usually go together to the mountains, and we share the dream of moving to Montana one day. A desire to hang out with Dad outside led me learn how to fish last April.

Fishing isn’t an activity that I would normally attempt—or even want to do. A good fisherman or hunter is someone who can sit patiently for hours, hunched over in a boat or perched precariously in a tree, waiting for the fish to get hungry or for just the right deer to wander by. I’m not an extraordinarily patient person by nature, so I’ve never had a desire to hunt or fish. Dad, however, is a very patient sportsman, and he wanted to share his love of fishing with his daughter. I agreed to go, and I made Dad believe that I was very excited to sit on that tiny boat under the hot Georgia sun and wait for the fish to bite.

Fishing turned out to be a lot more interesting than I expected. Dad gave me a pole and     taught me how to cast my line and reel it in, over and over in several vain attempts to hook a bass. I learned that you have to be very precise about casting toward the shore without getting your line caught in the trees (which is not as easy as it sounds). Dad caught several enormous fish, one after the other, with his careful, steady casting. By late morning, I was able to cast successfully toward the dock, but I never caught anything more than pond scum and a couple of trees. I’ll probably never become a Bass Pro professional fisherwoman, but I learned the basics of fishing and even more importantly, that fun is not found in what you’re doing so much as the in person you’re with.