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I guess there were several people who were responsible for making fishing what it has become for me. Though I lived on the water on Long Island and spent my entire summer on Cape Cod, as a kid my father never took a great interest in it so my first fishing rod was basically a bamboo pole with a nut for a weight and whatever hooks I could scrounge up. He was content to dig clams and had a nack for getting fiddler crabs and removing the claws for bait. I used birthday money to buy my own first little rod and reel from Sears. Then one year an uncle presented me with a bigger setup and a tacklebox with a few plugs and jigs and I was off. In any direction from West Dennis I could get to salt water on my (no speed, balloon tire) bike I would. I caught my first striper when I was about 10 on a small Atom, that's probably when I was truly hooked. All the while, my grandfather was an avid fisherman, mostly after myself and the summer crowds had left the Cape, but he would write me long letters telling me about fish he'd caught at places like Bass Hole or Hemenway Landing, even just down by the Fingers, behind the WDYC. I could only imagine the scenes and long to get back. Then as a teenager I think my father finally did realize how I loved to fish and while he still had little desire to fish himself, when he wasn't working his summer job, he'd take me anywhere on the Cape I wanted to go, and showed me a number of "fishy" places I didn't know existed. It wasn't surf fishing to begin with, but that's sort of what set me on my way.
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