Some Fishing Memories

Autumn is nearly here.

Hunters look forward to this time of year because most of the game seasons begin. I look forward to Fall because most of the anglers crowding the waters are also hunters and their leaving for forests and fields brings peace and often solitude for those who prefer fishing when the air begins to chill.

Perhaps it's this chill that has me conjuring up old memories of rivers, streams and lakes of my past. I can't begin a recounting them though, without stating clearly that I hope my best fishing memories are waiting for me in the future.

My Earliest Memory

This experience happened so long ago that I am not sure my memory is of the event itself or of the various retelling of the story by the adults who were there with me. I wish it were more vivid because I feel wonderful thinking of it, even through the mists of my mind.

I was very young, not yet in school. Thinking of this now humbles me a little because I am not sure I would have taken someone so young on this kind of fishing trip. If I am not mistaken, there were three adult men and me. Two of the men were my uncles Tom and Walt. The other man was probably by biological father as this event occurred before my parents divorced. His face, however, is unrecognizable in my memory. Perhaps because he left when I was 4 and I never saw him again until I was 27.

I remember leaving in the late afternoon from Pueblo, Colorado, where we all lived at the time. Gear and people were loaded in my Uncle Walt's Army Surplus Jeep and we headed toward the mountains.

Anyone who has ever been to Pueblo knows it is not the kind of town shown in the travel brochures that entice tourists to Colorado. For years the main industry in town consisted of a Nabisco plant and a steel mill (pictured above). For Mormon history buffs, Pueblo was a layover town for the Mormon Battalion and the first white baby born there was born to the wife of the presiding elder in the area.

It sits in the desert. The mountains, on clear days, can be seen in the far distance. It is almost never green.

Bisected by the Arkansas River, one side of town, in those days, was reserved for the whites and the other for the Latinos. Only rarely did one tribe venture onto the land of the other. There was a large Italian contingent then. My mother told me that Pueblo was a hide-out for mobsters on the run but I suspect that was more legend than reality.

My bio-father, at the time, recently furloughed from the Navy, was working for the National Biscuit Company, as he calls it. Even today he won't refer to the plant as a Nabisco factory. I don't know why unless he's a little ashamed he ever made crackers.

Uncle Walt worked at the mill and my Uncle Tom was a roofing contractor. I am much closer to my uncles because they didn't leave when my bio-father did.

I am careful to differentiate between my dad and my biological father. Bio-dad's name is Fred Ferguson. He is a good man. I know him pretty well. After he left us, he remarried and raised 8 kids. My dad was Bob Quantz. He adopted me when I was 7 and never left. He wasn't a perfect father but he was there.

I seem to remember sitting in the back seat of the Jeep as the sun began to set and as we entered some canyon pass on some two-track road. I remember it being very dark and I was convinced we were traveling on the edge of some deep and dangerous ravine where, with one mistake by my Uncle Walt, we would careen to a fiery death. I am sure I fell asleep before we arrived at the cabin.

I really don't remember arriving at the cabin but I think I remember waking up to the aroma of frying bacon. Only one adult was in the place and I can't remember which one. The other two were in the stream trying to augment the bacon with freshly-caught trout. I headed to the stream all by myself.

Now this is something I would have never let a 4 year-old of mine do; run off alone in the wilds of the Rocky Mountains, but it was a different time.

I found one of the men as he was landing a small Rainbow trout. He let me take the rod and reel the fish to the net. I remember being excited but knowing somehow, this was not really my first fish. It wasn't my fish at all.

Later that day, I was carried to a rock in the middle of a stream whose name is not part of the shadows. There I fished with my own Zebco rod and reel and there I caught my first fish.

Somewhere in the books of remembrance either in the Ferguson garage or the Quantz attic, there is a snapshot of me holding that fish. The look on my face was really no different than it is now when I land a fish. I am still 4 years old, on a rock, in the middle of the stream.

The First Time with Dad

My dad - that is my real father; the man who raised me... Bob Quantz - was more a hunter than a fisherman and he wasn't all that great a hunter. From the first time he took me hunting - rabbits on the ranch in Lampasas - to the last time, just a year or so before he died, on a dear hunt in Central Michigan, I was much more successful a hunter. When I was in college in Kansas, he and I went pheasant hunting 5 times and I never saw him take a bird. I remember him killing exactly two deer in 30 years and one of them was with the Plymouth.

I was always confused that he couldn't seem to hit the side of a barn because, as a professional soldier, he has competed on rifle and pistol teams and won most of them. It was only after his death that it came to me that he really loved being in the outdoors but found no thrill in the kill. When I figured that out, I all but gave up hunting because I have never found it either.

As lousy a hunter my dad was, he was worse as a fisherman except when it came to pure, cane-pole, baitfishing. He tried flyfishing and just couldn't get the timing down. He tried using all the hot lures with spinning gear and he would, on the first or second cast, get hung up and have to snap the line. Give him a cane pole, with a hook, bobber and a worm and he was happy and successful.

Shortly after he and my mother were married and we all moved to Fort Hood, Texas, on one sweaty Saturday, he asked me if I wanted to go fishing with him. I grabbed my little tackle box and my rod and reel as I cheered my answer. I was happy to go fishing, of course, but also elated that I would not be doing my normal Saturday chores as barked out by my mother.

I remember we drove down a country road somewhere outside Lampasas where we lived, and parked at the side of the road where a bridge crossed a river. We then walked down the bank to the shoreline. He found a comfortable perch and swung his line into the water. "Go ahead." he said, "But watch out for snakes."

It was a worthy warning as the place was crawling with Cottonmouths and Daimondbacks. The river was also crawling with fish. It didn't matter what lure I threw, something took it. I caught fish, one after another, for two hours and found my way back to my dad, who had also collected a nice stringer.

He asked me if I was ready to go. I remember clearly that my brain wanted to stay but I wasn't feeling all that well for some reason, so I sad I was. We packed up and I mentally prepared myself for the fish-cleaning that would happen when we got home.

Once back at the house, my dad said I wasn't looking good and told me to wash up and go to bed. If I had not been so sick, I would have been happy I didn't have to share in the fish-cleaning. I went immediately to sleep.

I awoke to the sound of my mother screaming and pointing at my face. My dad came into my room and got a look of his face that scared me. I finally stumbled to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. My head was the size and shape of a basketball. Something was seriously wrong.

My folks rushed me to the emergency room at the base hospital where I was immediately admitted. A few hours later my parents were told I had something called Nephritis; a deadly kidney disease. The doctors explained that it would take two weeks of heavy antibiotics before they could even tell if I was going to live and that, if I did, I would be years in recovery and rehabilitation.

My folks had only recently become active again in the Church and my dad didn't have the priesthood yet. Two GI's who were returned missionaries in our branch were summoned to give me a blessing. They did. I was out of the hospital in 6 weeks and have never had a single problem since because of the illness.

The next time my dad and I went fishing was in Hawaii. On our way to the home of the man who would take us my dad made me promise I wouldn't get some fatal disease.