How Fishing Forms a Bond Between Father and Son

“Your dad was a very insightful man. He must have had a premonition that he was going to answer an early call, so he made it his obligation to introduce you to everyone who he believed might be able to help you on the difficult path from boy to man. I bought my shoes and boots from him, and he was always talking about you and how you could read a newspaper and what a good student you were.” 

Matthiew became one of my apostles, a strong yet gentle man whose wife could not bear children, who took me under his wing. Nothing could replace a mother’s love, but a caring father’s guidance was, and still is, priceless.
 
My dad wanted the best for me and encouraged me to follow an honest path with respect for others that would lead my acquaintances to treat me with similar consideration.

One such acquaintance is Paul Duclos, Sr., whom I have known for over 50 years. He is a talented technician who would take on just about any task, and you would consider yourself lucky to call him your friend. His son, Paul, Jr., was introduced to saltwater fishing at an early age while his father and I were engaged in the striped-bass fishery. We took every opportunity to include our sons in that pursuit during their formative years and passed all our hard-won information to them.

After service in the U.S. Coast Guard, where he was stationed along the rugged and often dangerous coasts of Oregon and California, Paul Jr. was planning to return to New England until the warm smile of a woman, who eventually became his wife, led him to adopt the Golden State as his new home. He picked up right where he left off in New England, fishing for the famed black bass in California’s storied largemouth waters.

Before his enlistment, he was an avid freshwater bass fisherman with numerous heavyweights close to 10 pounds to his credit. He never fished with any thought of becoming a competitive bass angler, he just enjoyed testing his skill set in a place where bass had a much longer growing season than his home waters. This was during an era when organized bass fishing was growing by leaps and bounds, and although Paul kept up with the publications and promotions of the BASS Anglers Sportsman Society, he preferred quiet places where he could drift along, trying to get the largest resident bass to attack his outsized lures. While professional bass anglers raced up and down the lakes, Paul was content to fish from his handy 8-foot Swamp Scamper powered by a quiet and efficient Minn-Kota electric motor.

Being new to the California fishing scene, he occasionally launched his Scamp on a new body of water without taking a rod with him, lest he be tempted into making a few casts that would interfere with his goal. Using just his Lowrance X-85 sonar unit, he made mental notes or took a video of the structure he located to prepare him for his first actual fishing trip there. I can assure you that neither his dad nor I had the patience or the willpower to undertake such a mission. 

During those early years, he fooled some jumbo largemouth up to 15 pounds on the larger lures he employed, but he always believed there were much larger bass in the waters he fished that he had not yet persuaded to strike. 

On March 1, 1997, I received a call from Paul’s dad about his son landing the biggest largemouth bass anyone had ever heard of. Duclos was fishing Spring Lake, a 75-acre impoundment outside of his home in Santa Rosa, when he hooked the fish of a lifetime. Up until that notable day, Paul was known as a husband, father, and the owner of a carpet business who had been quietly catching lunker largemouth bass, pretty much under the radar. On that day, he was casting an oversized 9-inch Castaic lure that resembled the rainbow trout bigger largemouth were very fond of. Paul was aware that Spring Lake was stocked with 600 pounds of rainbow trout every month, and the lure he was using was a clone of that fish. 

It was high noon on an overcast day with a falling barometer (the boy had listened well when his dad advised a falling barometer usually produced prime fishing conditions) when the big bass struck. He immediately knew he had hooked a fish of huge proportions, but it did not fight as hard or as long as the 15-pounder. It might have had to do with the fact that this large female was carrying a huge roe sack ripe with an enormous volume of eggs.

As soon as he fought the bass to his boat, he noticed how big she was. His first impression was that he had a bass of 20 pounds, and quite possibly larger than that. His gear consisted of a Lamiglas rod fitted with a Shimano 300 reel spooled with 25-pound Berkley Trilene line and the aforementioned Castaic lure. The fish easily bottomed out Paul’s 15-pound hand scale.

There was another angler who witnessed the battle and came over to offer his congratulations and assistance, affirming what Duclos was aware of: that he might very well be holding the new world-record largemouth bass. The angler called a tackle shop and asked for help with a certified scale, but the shopkeeper was alone and could not leave his business unattended. Duclos called his wife, who arrived shortly after with their bathroom scale and a camera, all while Duclos worked diligently at keeping the fish, which would not fit in his livewell, healthy and calm. 

It was at that point when he made up his mind not to kill the trophy and instead allow it to continue passing on the genes that had produced such a huge specimen. Photos were taken while Duclos stepped on and off the scale, with and without the huge bucketmouth, and each time he held the fish, the number increased by 24 pounds. That was almost 2 pounds heavier than the current world record of 22 pounds, 4 ounces, caught in southern Georgia by George Perry way back in 1932. 

With his wife and the fellow angler as witnesses, the resolute fisherman calmly and carefully worked the big female until it strongly swam away. That was a decision many fishermen have applauded, questioned, and criticized, but it was his decision to make, and he did what he thought was best. This was at a time when $100,000 bass tournament prizes were the norm, and fishing-industry experts I knew estimated the fish could have been worth $500,000 or considerably more.

Profitable product endorsements and public appearances aside, the young man I knew was comfortable with his decision because he decided it was the right thing to do. The IGFA asked for photographs and confirmed the measurements, which were approximately 29 inches in length and 30 inches in girth. Outdoor Life magazine purchased the exclusive rights to his story so that no other first-hand accounts were permitted until its story was published. The exception was the Fall River Herald News because Duclos said he had already given the story to an old friend, who ran it in his hometown newspaper column. 

What do fisherman dream of? The angler is not very different than the golfer who dreams of a hole in one or the bowler who envisions a perfect game. I can’t say for certain what Paul Duclos, after his amazing angling accomplishments, has in mind, but I’ve always believed I might catch a world-record striper and haven’t yet given up on that. The difference is the decision to keep or release that imaginary specimen would no longer be in my hands since current regulations mandate that all stripers over 31 inches must be released unharmed. I can live with that.

Paul and his dad are 3,000 miles away from each other, but because of their warm family bonds and love of fishing, the younger Duclos has guided his father to his personal-best largemouth, halibut, and salmon on visits to the West Coast. 

Whenever my sons, grandson, and granddaughter call or visit me, I think back to the wealthy old-timer who would decry his children’s lack of contact or in-person visits. He informed me that while his children were growing up, he never brought them to the yacht club or took them out in his boat, or for that matter spent any quality time with them. His gifts did not buy their affection because he was always away from home enjoying himself. By taking your kids fishing and spending time with them, you are establishing a relationship and enduring connection that gives special meaning to “the ties that bind.”

Related Content

The History of Largemouth Bass in the Northeast

The Father of New England Bass Fishing

A Timeline of U.S. Bass Fishing

Source: https://onthewater.com/how-fishing-forms-a-bond-between-father-and-son

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