Many of you grew up crazy about fishing. If you were very lucky, you had an adult relative who was also crazy about fishing and wanted to spend time on the water as much as you did. For me, that was my grandma. But fishing with her meant paddling a jon boat around the lake. If I wanted to fish somewhere else, it was time to pester Dad instead.

It’s not that Dad didn’t enjoy fishing; he did — he just wasn’t cuckoo for it. I was ready to go fishing just about anywhere at just about any moment. I could hold my own bass fishing, but neither of us were any great shakes in salt water. A few memories do stand out: The first saltwater fish I ever caught (a leatherjacket at the Laishley Park point), a trout I hooked and lost on a blue-and-silver spoon at the base of the Laishley pier (the first time I hooked an actual saltwater gamefish), a big Spanish mackerel that ate a shrimp under a popping cork in the channel at El Jobean, and an evening spent catching small snook off the short pier at Placida.