"Anticipation", taken with a 1st-generation Olympus 1.2 megapixel point-and-shoot camera, Circa 2001: Digitally enhanced and fussed over for years.

This is one of my favorite fisherperson photos. The little girl is the daughter of one of my friends, whose family was spending a few days at the lake midway through an East Coast drive to Key West, Florida. The evening before, "Susanna" had caught her first-ever fish off the end of the dock. She insisted on baiting her own hook and removing the fish from the hook after she'd caught it. I was impressed. Here she is early the next morning. While the rest of us were waiting in the kitchen, hot pancakes, sausage and steaming scrambled eggs dished out at the table, Susanna was already immersed in a newfound hobby. Hadn't even bothered to slip into a pair of shorts.

"Anyone seen Susanna?" asked her mother.

I tiptoed down to the dock and snapped this picture. Susanna was concentrating so hard she didn't even know I was there. A fisherwoman for life.

Priceless.

Used as Parting Shot in the Daily Herald's Lake Magazine.

All of which reminds me of a column I wrote years ago:

LITTLE GIRL FISHING

The other day while sitting on a deck overlooking Lake Gaston, I saw a bass boat stepping down off its plane way up at the mouth of my cove. After a while the boat trolled into view around a weedy point. Sitting in the rear seat was a young girl, maybe six or seven years old. She was so small her pink tennis shoes dangled a foot above the raised carpeted platform of the boat. While her dad manipulated the trolling motor and cast his lure into the edges of the weeds, the little girl was casting her own lure in and out of tight areas of cover.

She was quite good at it.

As a young boy I remember how excited I became when Grandfather Brandt announced he'd be going fishing on the following morning and invited me to come along. I recall the long hours leading up to sunrise in a similar way that late night Christmas Eve dragged on and on into Christmas morning, with the promise of presents -- like uncaught fish -- dancing in my head.

For a brief moment I touched something infinitely pure while watching the girl tirelessly cast out her spinner bait, retrieving it slowly while patiently waiting for an ambitious strike; and for a split second I could recall the exact same excitement that she surely felt earlier that morning when her dad plopped her down safely beside him and headed out into a day that would be profoundly remembered years later when, perhaps she, herself, prepares her own young child for a glorious day of fishing with Mom.

 

P.S.

I have had the opportunity on several occasions to introduce young folks to the pleasures of fishing. If you have never been privy to watching a child (or adult, for that matter) catch their first fish, and if you're able, give it a try. Trust me, you'll be smiling for years to come.