Over the weekend, I had the pleasure of flying to Nashville with one of my sons for a fishing trip.  My brother lives about an hour’s drive north of Nashville and invited us to camp and fish with him and a friend in the Peabody Wildlife Management Area (PWMA).  The PWMA is a 60,000 acre preserve that was reclaimed after this area was strip-mined for coal in the ’50s and ’60s.

This trip signifies a change in the role that I have in my son’s life.  In our family, we believe that childhood can be broken into three phases:  The focus of the first phase (0-6) is keeping the child alive (two-year olds have a propensity for doing things that could result in death) and teaching them to respect authority.  The second phase (7-14) is focused on character development.  And in the third phase (15-21) the focus is on coaching the child as they “practice” real life.

For each of my kids, I plan a fun trip as they enter the third phase of their childhood.  During the trip, I talk with them about how my role is going to change to that of a coach.  It’s their job to step-up and start to use the things that they’ve been given and conceptualize a life of their own.  These have been some of the best experiences in my life.  Work is important, but to see the same principles and concepts apply to life as a whole brings a deep level of satisfaction.
 
For those of you who love fishing, I’ll throw in a few details about the trip itself.  The PMWA lakes (there are hundreds of them) contain largemouth bass, bluegill, catfish, and other warm water species.  During the two days of fishing, we caught more than 50 bass and large bluegills (1st picure).
 
In timing the trip, we attempt to fish right after the female bass finish spawning.  The female bass are larger than the males, and they don’t eat while they are spawning.  So, right after they finish spawning, they’re particularly hungry which makes the chances of catching a big fish much better.  Because it was a cool spring in this part of Kentucky, we missed this ideal timing by a week or so.

I did this same trip two years ago with my oldest son and we hit the spawning window perfectly.  During that trip, he caught an 11-pound bass from one of the PMWA lakes (2nd picture).  If you click on his picture, you’ll get an enlarged version.  Don’t you think HotJobs should have paid us a royality for wearing that hat?