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Thats a very significant question and one that evokes a lot of emotion. I caught my first Bass in the canal when I was six, that would be forty-two years ago fishing with my brothers and my dad from the Scussett Jetty. My oldest Brother and my Dad are gone now and my second oldest brother finds satisfaction on the golf course. I have been lucky and have had a lot of great nights with some really great catches and have fished from Fishers Island New York to Maine for Stripers. I was a commercial bass guy in the early seventies to the mid eighties when my economic standing no longer dictated spending all hours of my "spare" time chasing bass for an extra buck.
I used to think that a fifty or better would be my Holy Grail but after all these years I have come to the realization that no matter how hard you try and how hard you commit yourself to that goal there is a certain amount of luck that plays into the equation no matter how "good" you are.
I would like to be known and remebered as a good bass fisherman who had no problem sharing ideas and methods with all those who would ask and as someone who promoted all that is good about our sport. Maybe my big fish will come and maybe she won't. I don't dwell on that now. My epiphany came in 1993 when I was 37 and was told that in order to live any longer I would need a heart/lung transplant.
I went from healthy as a horse to hours from death in a little over three days that October as a result of a virus. As I laid in the intensive care unit in the hospital it became quite clear to me what was really important and it wasn't fishing, it was my family and I begged God to give me another chance. In the early morning of my birthday as I was lying in that bed, isolated with six IV's and oxygen on me I heard my brothers voice telling me I would be all right.
It was the voice of my brother John, killed in 1969 in Viet Nam. Two days later a number of different doctors came to see me. They tried to explain something they did not know how to, that for some unknown reason I had completely reverted back to normal. Only a Dr. Urbach, whose father was one of Schindlers Jews had a clue. He told me I had received a miracle and that I was saved for a reason. He told me I would spend my life, like his father, searching for the reason God had spared him and like him, might never find the reason why.
I think about this everyday, why? One out of one hundred people survive the viral infection I had to live a normal life. I do know this, when you are out on the beach just don't think of the fish. Think of the beautiful place you are, the sun, the stars and think of the friends you are with and the sum total of it all. The you might see you might that you have caught your prize and you didn't even know it.
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