Rite of Spring

IF FALL IS THE SEASON of the hunter in Missouri, then spring is undoubtedly the season of the angler. If my grandfather, the late W. L. Dolle of Cape Girardeau, was anything, he was a fisherman. I’m told he fished in the fall, but I only remember fishing with him in the spring.

I remember the first of the many times my grandfather took me fishing before I was old enough to f ish by myself. I was six and remember my father waking me in the predawn darkness of a cool spring morning to get dressed so I would be ready when my grandfather came to pick me up. I fumbled with my clothing in the darkness of my room and had to ask my dad to help me button my shirt and tie my shoes.

The wait seemed like forever as I sat on the back porch with my dad, knowing my grandfather was about to pull up at any moment and honk his horn, letting us know it was time to go. It was dark when my grandfather arrived at our two-story white house on Independence Avenue that morning, and it was dark when we returned.

My grandfather was methodical when it came to organizing his fishing gear in his car. His gear was ready to go as soon as we pulled up; no time was wasted sorting or assembling gear before we started fishing. He used an ancient Pfleuger bait-casting reel and a very stiff rod. He never had a backlash with the reel that I remember. The few times I was allowed to cast with it, well … that’s why it’s called a bird’s nest when a bait-casting reel backlashes.

My grandfather caught fish that day, something I learned to expect of him. In fact, I don’t ever remember him losing one of any size. On the flip side of the fishing coin, I didn’t catch a fish bigger than my small hand on our trip. In my mind’s eye, I can still see his casts hitting their marks, while mine all too often fell short or worse—sailed into a nearby bush or snagged in an overhead tree.

I started skipping rocks when the fishing slowed that day, and my grandfather reminded me I was scaring the fish. I was a young boy with the attention span of a sour gnat, yet somehow, he tolerated my inattentive foolishness on that outing.

During the next two or three years we fished together several times—always in the spring.

A family move from Cape Girardeau to Poplar Bluff when I was nine wasn’t a great distance away, but it was far enough that the fishing trips with my grandfather became few and far between.

During the ensuing years, we vowed to fish together each spring, but the promises were never kept. The social and extracurricular demands of high school, my enlistment in the US Air Force, the academic demands (not to mention the distance) while attending the University of Missouri–Columbia, and then the demands of a real-world job prevented me from keeping my end of the deal. Hindsight being 20/20, I could have skipped a Friday evening date in high school and made the short hour-long drive to take my grandfather fishing on a Saturday morning. His death in late spring of 1977 ended any chance of us fishing together again.

I still fish now and then, mostly in the spring. Surprisingly, I usually catch a fish or two. Sometimes the fishing gods smile upon me, and I catch a fish of bragging size. My casts, for the most part, find their marks, though I still manage to snag a tree or bush if I’m not paying attention. If the fishing is very slow, I still try my hand at skipping rocks across the water. I’m proud to say my rock skipping has improved quite a bit throughout the years.

But none of those things seem nearly as important today as they did when I was six years old, sitting on my back porch with my father in the predawn darkness of a cool spring morning, waiting for my grandfather to take me fishing.

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This column was originally published in the May 2025 edition of Missouri Life magazine.