This week I want to bring you up-to-date on the doings in the Lane family. But before we start, I want to say something about our visit to Douglas Lake. The lake’s a great place to bass fish, the community is hospitable and the fans are knowledgeable and courteous. It was a pleasure to fish there. Everybody in the neighborhood has good reason to be proud and appreciative of what they have.
Now, let’s talk about the family stuff. First, this weekend is my mom and dad’s 40th wedding anniversary. That’s no small thing. It takes commitment and love to last that long in a relationship. All of us in the family — blood relatives and in-laws alike — want to say congratulations, and we all hope you get another 40 years together. We love you!
And my father-in-law, Rick Mottern, turned 60 this week. I can’t say enough good about him. After all, he fathered and helped raise my wife. That pretty much says it all.
It’s also Grandma McClain’s 79th birthday. Happy birthday, grandma! I’ve always thought that Kellie, Arnie, Bobby and I were really lucky to have grandparents like them. They spent time with us when we were kids. We still sit around and tell stories about things that happened when we were with them. It’s funny, you know, the things you remember and laugh about.
We miss Grandpa Bill, though. He passed away a couple of years ago. Somehow things aren’t the same anymore. As you all know, I’m really big on family and family traditions. He was a big part of both.
When we were little kids, we’d go stay with him and fish Rodman Reservoir. He had this old camper we stayed in. It wasn’t much by today’s standards but it was the whole world to us back then. I remember we couldn’t wait for the next trip. He was a pretty good bass fisherman, too.
We’d catch a lot of them and we turned most of them back. That was before catch and release. But even back then grandpa knew we had to take care of the resource. When I say we turned most of them back, that’s exactly what I mean – most. We kept enough to eat. I suppose now if you kept one and ate it you’d be branded for life. But, hey, at the time that was the thing to do, and it didn’t seem to hurt the fishing any.
Grandpa and dad were really the foundations of our bass fishing heritage as a family. It wasn’t just about fishing with them so much as it was about the experience. I think that’s where we developed our love of the outdoors and of fishing. And I mean fishing, not catching. There’s a big difference between those two things.
Next time I’ll tell you a story or two about Grandpa Bill. He only fished with one lure, and it wasn’t a plastic creature bait that he flipped or pitched into the grass.