Things our fathers gave us

[Al Agnew]

I suppose my dad was responsible for me being extremely un-religious and anti-church!  You see, I had an aunt who practically co-raised me along with my parents.  A widow without children, my sister and I (and later my brother) were her kids.  And she was very religious; whenever the Baptist church opened its doors, she was there.  She thought it was her duty to instill in me a love of God and church.  So from the time I was old enough to talk she was dragging me to church and Sunday School and revivals.  My mom was barely a believer, my dad never went to church at all.  He worked 6 days a week as an auto mechanic, and the seventh day was reserved for fishing.  So when I was old enough (about 7 years old) he began to take me fishing with him.  But on the Sundays when he didn't go, for whatever reason (usually because the weather sucked), my aunt Evelyn would come and take me to church.  So...every Sunday morning I would wake up before daylight and pray...pray that Dad was going to come into my room and say, "Get up, let's go fishin'".  I grew to hate church with a passion.  And those Sundays on Wappapello Lake, catching big bass, are some of my fondest memories of my whole life.  

Dad also instilled in me a love of creek and river fishing, along with my Grandpa.  He had fished Big River all the time in the years before I was born, often with a fly rod, and he kept telling me stories about the river and smallmouth, so even though he no longer went river fishing, preferring Wappapello (which was an amazing fishery back in those days), the stories he told got me excited about it and I began to ride my bike the mile to the river on hot summer days to wade and fish, often by myself.  I was probably about 8 or 9 years old at the time.  Finally, Dad decided to show me what a float trip was like.  But the only boat he had was his 16 ft. semi-V bottom aluminum johnboat that he used on Wappapello.  The put-in at Bone Hole wasn't TOO bad, just sliding the boat off the edge of the low water bridge.  Paddling that boat down the river in low summer water levels had to be a chore, though.  And wrestling it up the long, high bank at the take-out had to be torture.  But I loved every moment of the day...I didn't have to drag that boat around!  A couple years later he bought a little 12 ft. johnboat so that mostly I and my buddies could go on our own float trips, as long as one of us could talk a parent into putting us in and taking us out.

The way I still love to fish came from my dad.  I like to fish fast-moving lures high in the water column, don't care for fishing stuff low and slow.  It's the way we fished Wappapello back in those days.  Dad was the only person I ever knew that could make more quality casts in a day of fishing than I can.

As for material things he left me...not many.  A bunch of cheap guns.  A few old lures.  A few rods, but I broke them.  Dad bought stuff to use it, not to admire it, and used it until it wore out.  I have some of his old reels from back in the day, Ambassadeurs and direct drive Shakespeare casting reels, the kind that didn't have a free spool button--when you made a cast the handles turned backwards (very fast).  None of them actually work.  Same with some of the guns.  Mainly he left me memories and life lessons.  Some of my most cherished memories were from later years, when I was able to take HIM fishing my way, float trips and river fishing from the jetboat.  The March day when he caught the 21 inch Meramec River smallmouth, the biggest one he ever caught--the look on his face sticks with me to this day.