The Boys and Bass of Summer
“I’m not obsessed with fishing like you are, Dad,” my 14-year-old son, Finn, oft en tells me. And he is right. Unlike his father, Finn chooses not to rise at 4 o’clock in the morning to chase a tide. And he definitely does not linger on a trout river well past dark wiping no-see-ums from his arms by the dozen while waiting for mayflies to hit the water.
My own father, born and raised in New York City, hard by the banks of the East River, is a fully citified non-angler. Perhaps fish-obsession, as they say with musical talent, skips a generation. But for one glorious week each summer, Finn joins me in a 14-foot skiff on Newboro Lake in southern Ontario, where my wife’s family has owned a cottage since the 1980s. For seven delicious days without Wi-Fi, Finn’s Xbox controller is exchanged for a light spinning outfit, and
