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Give a boy a fish, and you will feed him for a day. Teach a boy to fish, and he’ll never stop pestering you to take him again.

Looking back over the past year, I did a lot of stuff and had a lot of fun. But right up at the top of the list was fishing with my boy.

The kid likes fishing. Everything about it from pond to plate. Even the cleaning. (Sharp weapons, severed heads, gut and gore fascinate young males, leaving Mamas to wonder if their offspring will be famous surgeons or serial killers.)

And being young (he’s 12) and full of himself (he’s 12), the boy naturally wants each fishing experience to be better than the last.

(This and his innate ability to make the size of a fish grow from one telling to the next early marked him as a natural for the sport. Countless fathers have watched with pride as son becomes a sportsman and a liar almost simultaneously.)

Like most kids, my boy’s fishing started simple — pole and cork and hook, line, sinker and worm. But before long he began to want for more — spinning reels, rods that can bend over and touch themselves, this lure and that lure. And he began talking about a trip to Bass Pro Shop the way he once talked about going to Six Flags.

Then one day I caught him watching folks fish on ESPN.

That was the point of no return. Watching TV to watch people catch fish. I never saw the attraction in that. Where’s the excitement? Where is the suspense? You know they’re gonna catch one. And then they’re gonna let it go. Maybe that is what turns me off. I don’t belong to the "catch and release" school of angling. I grew up following what Howell Raines calls the "redneck way of fishing" — catch as many as you can, clean ’em, fry ’em, eat ’em. It don’t get no better than that.

But I degress.

Last summer, my son, having caught all sorts of fish in all sorts of places, declared himself ready to make the big leap and go out deep-sea fishing.

I was reluctant. Not only is the sea deep out there, it also rolls and your insides want to come out. I have been seasick only once, but that was enough. I can recall grown men, green around the gills, offering to pay for the whole trip if everyone would agree to let the captain take the boat back to port.

And then there was the question of fish. There was no guarantee we’d catch any. And my son does not take disappointment well (he’s 12). A day of stomach-churning, fishless fishing was not something I looked forward to.

He persisted. I put him off as long as I could. Then I gave in.

So I got in touch with Captain Mike, master of the Huntress out of Destin, Fla. And I explained the situation. It would be me, another father, his two sons and mine. The boys had never been out before. All we asked was that when the day was done, they would want to do it again.

Captain Mike said he understood and would give it his best shot. So we made reservations and our course was set.

We arrived at the dock just before dawn. The boys had already been up for hours, ready and primed. Weather was perfect. Cloudless. Wind from the northwest calmed the Gulf.

Out through the pass and soon the shore disappeared. Just us and horizon all around.

I must go down to the sea again

To the lonely sea and the sky.

And we started catching fish.

If you’ve been there, done that, you know what I mean. If you never have, you should.

With Captain Mike holding the Huntress in place and the first mate bouncing from boy to boy to help and advise, we hauled ’em in.

And my boy landed a black-fin tuna, 23-plus pounds gutted. Won himself a new reel and rod from the fishing rodeo that happened to be going on.

It was a great day.

Captain Mike came through.

I guess we’ll be going again.

About Harvey H. Jackson:

Harvey H. Jackson is a Professor and Chairman of the History Department at Jacksonville State University