Given enough time and distance, you begin to see more clearly those events that shaped your fishing life. They appear to me now as 60-year-old memories that evoke the same feelings as on the days the actual episodes occurred. My recollections are wrapped as tightly as tarred marline around the wooden frame of a handline and include a dock, a lighthouse, an old skiff and various mentors — a professor, a lobsterman and a tall, lanky outdoorsman from Campbell County, Tennessee.

The emotional essence of such touchstones gives our early memories enduring and propulsive power. They enable us to look back and connect the many dots that steered us toward a lifetime devotion to chasing fish. My earliest ones stretch so far back that it often feels as if I was “born” to be a fisherman. Silly perhaps, but I’m certain some of you feel the same way.

In a college class, I studied the existentialist philosophers — Sartre, Camus, Nietzsche, Buber and others. A quote by Camus sent me down this contemplative path: “A man’s work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.” For me, it was the fishy happenings that occurred on a town dock — home to a trio of aging, old-school charter captains — that served up the many delights and wonders that a boy smitten by the salty world came to internalize.

I sat between my father and my older brother, and learned to handline cunners, or bergalls, which were plentiful 60 years ago around the pilings. I learned to smash the shells of surf clams on the raised heads of the spikes holding the splintered planks in place, while herring gulls bawled for our catch. This kindling ignited the fire. A lifetime accumulation of experiences with fish, adventure, partners, friends and mentors fed the flames.

My friends and I graduated from cunners and handlines to spinning tackle and lures, which we used on tinker mackerel and snapper blues. I trapped mummichogs and a smattering of eels in a minnow trap set in a salt marsh a short bicycle ride from my home. I sold the mummies for a penny apiece and the eels for a nickel to the Book & Tackle Shop in Watch Hill, Rhode Island.

Bernard “Bernie” Gordon was the proprietor of this unique shop that sold used books and a smattering of fishing tackle. It was one of my boyhood hangouts when it rained in summer. I remember the shop as pleasantly musty, a mix of the salt air wafting in from the open doors and the mildew emanating from nearly 10,000 books that filled the floor-to-ceiling shelves. I’d disappear for long periods among those tall stacks, sit my butt on the floor and explore any book remotely concerned with fishing. Gordon, an author and bespeckled professor at Northeastern University in Boston, where he taught classes in physical oceanography and marine resources, offered recommendations.

“I certainly made my share of mistakes, but I had youth, enthusiasm and plenty of time and energy on my side,” says writer William Sisson.

My education morphed into higher learning when I got my first proper surf outfit and started fishing at the Watch Hill Lighthouse, a short walk from the dock but miles away in many important ways. The lighthouse represented the adult world. Everything was bigger, stronger and more intimidating, from the waves and currents to the towering adult fishermen with their 12-foot rods. I knew I’d caught a glimpse of the prize the first time I saw a 40-pound striper lying on the rocks.

I kept my eyes open and closely watched how the men who caught regularly went about their business. What lures did they throw, how did they retrieve them and, most important, why did they make the choices they did? I had so much to learn. Striped bass fishing was a particularly guarded world back then, and not many adults were interested in sharing their know-how with a kid. A small group of three or four sharpies would grow quieter when I lingered on the periphery of their discussions.

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As the seasons progressed, the men got used to seeing me and eventually would nod their heads and affirm my existence. Some would even answer my questions if I caught them in the right mood. I addressed them with the respect I reserved back then for teachers — and I knew enough to withhold any of my own half-baked opinions. I was a sponge, with little to offer in the way of original thoughts on the ways of stripers. I gave them the respect they had earned, and they, in turn, showed me just enough.

I certainly made my share of mistakes, but I had youth, enthusiasm and plenty of time and energy on my side. Over the years, I grew “fishy” from this early exposure. I learned the basics from the ground up, from tying good knots to reading the water and a thousand other details, including a ton of hard-won, how-to knowledge.

More than 60 years ago, I willingly started down a path that I am still happily following. Some days, it even feels like I am starting over. I now have plenty to learn from the current crop of skilled younger anglers who are imbued with that curiosity, fish-smarts and stamina inherent to our tribe. And new memories are always in the making.