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Figured I start a thread about Dads and our fishing/hunting/outdoor memories of them. One of my earliest and favourite ones is going fishing one night at my families cottage on Lake Nippising. At the time we lived in North Bay and it was less than a half hour drive door to door, of course as a kid it seemed like a cross country trek (What I would give to be a half hour from the cottage now). I would have been 6-7 at the time and we left home after my dad finished work one summer night. We stopped at the bait shop near the cottage. It was named Charlie's and the person who I took as Charlie had lost an arm below the elbow during the war. I likely asked too many questions about the arm but the only mention of it by my dad was discussing in the car afterwards what should, and shouldn't be asked by 7 year olds. We bought a white styrofoam container with a dozen dew worms and a lure I had never seen before. It was a crawler harness. Red beads, 2 bright silver blades and 3 hooks on wire line. I was sceptical. It was flat calm night in the bay which wasn't always the norm and we used the aluminum painted-to-look-like-birchbark sportspal instead of the boat. We pushed off and my dad rigged up the hardness as I dug out the fattest worm I could find in the container. He flipped the offering out and closed the bail, handing me the rod as he grabbed the paddle and started us towards the rocky shoals near by. We had just passed the first shoal and he said to get ready because the bass that lived there had been waiting all day for us to come by. On cue, my rod bent in half and a bass that was a sure world record in my seven year old eyes' came bursting out of the glass flat surface and the battle was on. After lots of shear panic on my part and laughter on my dad's, he lipped the bass at the side of the canoe. I always claimed it as my "4 pound smallmouth", but knowing what I know now about fishermen, even budding young ones, it might not have been even 3 pounds. I don't remember if we caught another fish so I guess we didn't, but I was sold on the new fangled crawler harness and a few years later it would catch my "4 pound walleye". Ice-cream from the roadside stand or a night sleeping in the bunk bed in the back room at the cottage before my mom and very little brother showed up in the morning... I don't know... ...I just remember the bass and that red harness hanging out of its mouth. What is your favourite memory?