Like cream, certain youthful memories always rise to the top

By Collins Doughtie CONTRIBUTOR

My angling life began at a very early age, when my dad put a cane pole in my hand and a can of worms by my side. To this day, I can still close my eyes and remember watching that red and white plastic bobber just bobbing along, while the musky smell of worms mixed with the odor of a largemouth bass on my hands.

Without a doubt, my introduction to this wonderful sport changed my life that day. Those of us from the “old school” like to remember those years as being simpler. Sure, we were watching “Leave It to Beaver” and “Superman” in black and white, but if you really think about it, the world was in as much turmoil then as it is today.

If you are old enough, you no doubt remember sitting in school and hearing the wail of sirens that indicated the beginning of a nuclear attack drill. As you huddled under your desk during these civil defense drills, you have to admit that was some pretty spooky stuff especially if you were, like me, in elementary school.

These are the memories that are deeply buried alongside an ocean of great fishing adventures with my dad. When he decided that the Lowcountry was the best place to raise five kids in 1961, for me that meant live shrimp replaced worms and the smell of the pluff mud took the place of the smell of largemouth bass on my hands.

If my memory serves me correctly, our home was the eighth house built in Sea Pines. I can’t speak for my siblings, but for me personally, it was straight out of the “Swiss Family Robinson” book.

Hilton Head Island was mostly dirt roads back then, and to go to school you had to commute to either Bluffton or Savannah. But as soon as I got home from school, I would jump on my Western Flyer bike and go fishing. I was hopelessly hooked on fishing way moreso than book learning.

Always an early riser, mainly because I would have to get up before the sun to get to school in Savannah on time, along with a handful of kids in a “Sea Pines Green” Checker limousine. On weekends all that early rising paid off. All it took was one shake from my dad and I was up and ready to roll, because we were going fishing!

We would head to Palmetto Bay Marina, the island’s only marina, and hop aboard the “Buddy I,” the first charter boat to hit these parts. Its captain, Buddy Hester, pretty much pioneered offshore fishing here.

My memories of those days include the smell of diesel in the pre-dawn hours and watching my dad and his buds organize everything – just as I did with my own son, Logan, as he grew up.

Boats back then weren’t fast like they are now, so it was a good three- to four-hour run to the Gulf Stream. Even now I relive those days each time I watch the sun rise over the ocean. The sight of the sun coming up on the horizon is the same. My youthful anticipation of monster fish might have mellowed with age, but each watery sunrise still brings back a flood of memories from my early years.

One such memory that comes back with great regularity is from a day of marlin fishing with my dad in the Gulf Stream. We are trolling in vivid blue water as I sit in the fighting chair, watching the baits skipping across the water. Using meticulously rigged Spanish mackerel on the outriggers and de-boned swimming mullet closer to the boat, I sit, watching the cobalt blue water while trying my best to will a fish to rise up and inhale one of these baits.

Transfixed on the right outrigger bait (always my lucky bait), I see the water behind the bait turn neon blue as a large blue marlin takes the mackerel in a swirl of water that looks very much like a massive toilet flushing. Then with a loud “snap!” of the line being yanked from the outrigger clip, I watch that huge fish double the rod over, peeling line from the reel so fast it’s a blur.

Then suddenly, off to the side, this 400-pound marlin suddenly explodes from the water and greyhounds across the water with such pure energy that we are frozen in place. For a few moments at least, there is absolutely nothing anyone can do to slow it down, much less stop it.

We finally landed that fish after an hour and a half fight and I remember every second of the battle. I also remember a hundred more fishing experiences that are equally as vivid.

Throughout my lifetime of world events that began with the assassination of President Kennedy, the Vietnam War, 9-11 and others, memories of these fishing experiences always trump those terrifying events. Heck, I even had problems keeping high school sweethearts because they always thought that I put fishing first. (I can now admit, that was absolutely true.)

The point of all this reflection is that today’s kids are faced with their own civil defense drills and their own Vietnams, but if you take the time to get them into fishing, these troubling parts of their lives will be overshadowed by the memories you can help create. Just take the time and get them outside, whether it’s fishing, hunting or just exploring. Did I mention that this is prime season for blue marlin?

Collins Doughtie, a 60-year resident of the Lowcountry, is a sportsman, graphic artist, and lover of nature. collinsdoughtie@icloud.com