I sat in my dining room with an old friend a few autumns ago and we hashed over memories of all the old fishing adventures we shared together. All too few included full creels and monster catches but somehow ribbing each other about our failures seemed to tie our friendship knot that much tighter. Eventually he spoke of his illness, financial burdens, and family problems and how life just wasn\u2019t all he had hoped it would be. I spoke of some of my own troubles and frustrations and also questioned my future and whether the tread mill would ever slow down. After a few minutes of silence he looked up and softly said, \u201cThat\u2019s why we go fishin\u2019 my friend.\u201d He was right of course. Throughout the entire previous fishing season one problem or obligation after another kept us from opening day trout than opening day pike than opening day bass. Somehow my priorities didn\u2019t include taking time to go fishin\u2019 with an old and good friend because I\u2019d forgotten what fishin\u2019 was really all about. I decided then and there to reassess my priorities and make it up to him next season. So, early in the morning of, Opening Day,\u201d 2007, I regretfully had to visit my friend at his grave, apologizing for being too late. Leaving the cemetery on my way to work I could still hear him saying, \u201cThat\u2019s why we go fishin\u2019 my friend.\u201d \u00a0 Priorities. We all have them. Do yours include an opening day here or there? To your wife, maybe opening day is your anniversary. Maybe your daughter\u2019s opening day is her dance recital. Maybe you\u2019re lucky enough to have a son looking for an opening day of fishin\u2019 with you, just building memories. Or, like me, maybe a dear old friend could have lived his last fishin\u2019 adventure and you would have gotten those good memories forever. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I sat in my dining room with an old friend a few autumns ago and we hashed over memories of all the old fishing adventures we shared together. All too few included full creels and monster catches but somehow ribbing each other about our failures seemed to tie our friendship knot that much tighter. Eventually […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-member-and-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/claysportsmansclub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/claysportsmansclub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/claysportsmansclub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/claysportsmansclub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/claysportsmansclub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=313"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/claysportsmansclub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":324,"href":"https:\/\/claysportsmansclub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313\/revisions\/324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/claysportsmansclub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/claysportsmansclub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/claysportsmansclub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}