It’s the Summer of 1992, and I was a razor thin 14-year-old living my best life. I was fishing off the blinding white Anna Maria Island beaches in between baseball practice and games, Super Nintendo, Shark Week, and beach volleyball. Those were the happiest, most stress-free memories of my teen years. I spent that entire summer on the island that year with my best friends. Looking back as outdoor fanatics, we never fully realized we were more spoiled than the Kardashians.
Fast forward to 2006, and I was a first-year teacher at Summers Elementary, and our first child was on the way. I bought all the supplies to build a pitcher’s mound for my soon to be son, Robert Edwin Chapman the 5th. That name was decided faster than Joey Chestnut devours hot dogs. Just ask my dad, and his dad, and … you get the picture. I was going to coach RC5 from the time he could pick up a ball – left-handed of course, and we wouldn’t throw any curveballs until he was a junior in High School. It was meant to be … Not.
Our little bundle of soon to be joy turned out to be a real-life curveball. We were now planning for a daughter, Lilla Kate Chapman. Lilla is now 14 years old, and a unique blend of both Andrea and I, with a relentless, mind-numbing level pursuit of perfection academically, a giant heart, dimples and blonder hair than Dolly Parton that we saw the second she first entered our world.
I have been determined to have her catch her first snook. She’s caught almost everything else, redfish, trout, bass, even a giant tarpon, but no snook. There aren’t a lot of snook in Lake City. Literally, ZERO! So, any time we travel back to my hometown I grow hopeful. It’s never happened, and our last trip we spent day and night trying, and failing, again, and again. We went to the pier, we went to the bay, we went to the beach. We must have reeked because we were skunked more than the Big 12 and PAC 12 in the College Football Playoff National Championship.
Sometimes they weren’t there, sometimes we saw schools of snook and they still wouldn’t eat, and other times when we finally hooked them, they broke us off. It was torture!
On the last night of our trip the sun was setting and we were going to give it one last try. A total Hail Mary. That relentless academic pursuit had morphed into a relentless snook hunt. To make it even more difficult the beach was packed with sun screen coated vacationers taking sunset photos by the hundreds.
So, what do you do in this situation? You go to your confidence spot and use your confidence bait, regardless of tourists.
So I went to the EXACT SPOT from 30 years previous (Right in front of the Bali Hai Resort) and the memories came flooding back of fishing with Will & Cory Bouziane, Bryan Mattice, Ryan Hackney and so many more great friends. I’m sure she was ready for me to stop telling my old high school stories like Uncle Rico, but that’s the best perk of growing old — lots of stories!
My confidence bait for beach snook is live bait. Pinfish, whiting, white bait, croakers, any will do. I cast netted for 15 minutes and caught a few live baits. A few as in ONLY TWO. That’s it!
So, at the same spot at the same age, she casted her line out (she didn’t want dad’s help at all!), and we waited. And waited. And, then the line came tight. Fish on! She had to dodge swimmers, and loosen the drag because snook will rip off line, and eventually she caught her first ever snook!
How do you celebrate? You move on to the next catch of course, and hope to upgrade. A few minutes later she connected on our only other bait with an even bigger snook. A perfect sunset topped it all off.
As I write this and reminisce, I am fully aware this may be the ultimate bonding (sports) experience I’ll ever share with my daughter. Because, I can promise, I’m never doing gymnastics (I couldn’t even tumble), and she’s never going to be a left handed pitcher throwing circle change-ups from 60’ 6” … and that’s just fine, I wouldn’t trade this experience for any of it.
We will always share the same blood, and now we will always share the same sand.
