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| Sea run brown trout on the fly rod! |
It is with sadness that I report the passing of my father, Ralph Pickering at the age of 93. I know many of my readers knew him as we fished together for decades. In fact, everything I know about fishing I attribute to him teaching me. From the days of being a toddler to retirement days, I fished just about every weekend with my father. We went on a lifetime of fishing adventures together.
He was the best I ever saw when it came to fishing for everything. He fished mostly freshwater in the early going. It was generally largemouth bass and trout. He loved plugging the local ponds and lakes for largemouths, and he loved fly fishing for trout with flies he tied himself. He later taught my brothers and me how to tie, and we would frequently spend winter evenings at the kitchen table tying flies. Around the 1960's he began hearing about the great saltwater fishing for striped bass. This piqued his curiosity, and we all began saltwater fishing which would lead to chasing stripers, blues, mackerel and squeteague. It was a chore getting down to the oceanfront in those days with no rt. 95 to guide our way. So, like many others who fished in those days, he looked to getting a camper so we could fish and stay down there on weekends. No one had the fancy campers like you see today. He bought himself a 1950 bread truck and built the inside with beds, a small kitchen and bunks for storage. Our water came from a beer barrel mounted on the roof! He named the camper after my mother and called it "The Connie". For almost a decade, two adults, three kids and a dog would crowd into the camper and head to the oceanfront to fish just about every weekend.
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| The family fishing Beavertail for tautog. |
We got more sophisticated in the 1970's and 1980's as he got rid of the camper and bought a Jeep 4x4 Wagoneer. Now, we could actually go right onto the beach. His friend, Bob Thomas, lived at Orleans at the Cape, and we would stay at their place. For many years we fished Nauset, Race Point and Chatham a lot in those days under star lit nights from sunset to sun up and caught a lot of stripers. It was the best striper fishing on Earth back in those days, and we were part of it.
My father loved the Cape and we began fishing in the spring for trout and smallmouth bass with the fly rods. We later branched out and started exploring some of the outflows for sea run brown trout. We had decent success catching those too.
As he got older, my father tended to fish nearby in Narragansett Bay and along the RI oceanfront. We fished some great squeteague runs in the Bay, epic bluefish years and great striper blitzes. We bought a boat together, a Boston Whaler, which the whole family fished from for years. He fished with the fly rod more and more in his old age as he really enjoyed the experience.
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| Our bread truck camper, the "Coonie" that my father built. |
Several years ago at the age of 90 his fishing greatly decreased. Most of his time now was spent taking care of my mother who was also 90 and suffering from dementia. He was determined to keep her out of the nursing home as long as he could. His health was slowly deteriorating also at this time, and last year it all got to be too much, and he was forced to put my mother into an assisted living/ dementia facility. While she thrived, his health problems mounted. Several months ago he came down with pneumonia which he never could really shake. With worsening COPD, mobility issues and general worsening health, he ended up in and out of the hospital for several months, and grew weaker and weaker. In the end it was a deadly blood infection, sepsis, that got him. It all ended very quickly; really for the best. He did not want to live like he had for the past couple of years in poor health, unable to do anything including fishing and separated from his wife of 72 years.
I was with him the last day of his life and I was the last to talk to him. Like every time I had seen him recently in the hospital, he asked how was mom doing, how are the kids (his grandsons) are doing , and how was the fishing. He passed three hours later.
He lived a great life, and we have fishing memories that will last forever.
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| First stripers at Nauset Beach at the Cape. |
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| Early days along the RI shoreline. |
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| A big blue from the Boston Whaler that we bought together. |
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| Grandpa (in the background) fishing for albies with grandsons and friends. |
