Father's Day: An afternoon for fishing, family, memories
Jun. 16—OLD LYME — In between rigging friend's fishing lines, Malachi Brown, of Springfield, Mass., explained that he never kept okra around the house while his children were growing up.
"I hated okra," Brown said.
But growing up in the South, he said he had eaten it all the time.
"My kids don't even know what okras are," Brown said.
Brown, a captain for the Hampden County Sheriff's Office in Ludlow, Mass., said the absence of okra from his children's lives is just an example of how fathers remember certain things they didn't like about how they grew up ― and seek to change them for their kids.
He said it as he sat in a chair at the fishing dock at the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection headquarters Sunday. Around him, there were at least 10 other groups of families or friends who had come there on Father's Day to fish, grill, picnic or soak in the sun.
There, Brown and two friends were engaged in a longstanding Father's Day tradition of theirs ― fishing. At least five others were doing the same Sunday.
Brown explained that Father's Day is a day to be proud of the successes of how his two children, a 31-year-old son and 26-year-old daughter, turned out. Brown said they're now beginning to start their own families, and said he measures himself by how good his children are doing.
"And where they are with their families," he said. "And watching them become parents themselves is amazing. So, you kind of chalk it off and say, I guess I did OK."
Brown said fishing offers him a chance to relax and pat himself on the back, both from his work and the successes of raising a family.
"We just kind of bounce around," he said. "This hasn't been a favorable spot. This is our second year coming to this particular place. And you know, it's kind of late in the season for river stripers right here. They're further up, like in Springfield or Chicopee (Mass.)."
Brown, who did not get to catch anything Sunday, said he'll finish his day by going out for dinner with his father, who lives in East Lyme. He said he appreciates him and the lessons he taught him, and tries to do the same for his children.
"That generational-type guidance," Brown said.
His friend, James Jordan, who frequently sought Brown's help rigging his fishing pole, agreed.
"It's a day of reflection. A day of relaxing. A day of being proud of your kids and instilling core (set of) values," he said.
A few yards behind him, the Kozikowski family of East Hampton was just sitting down for a picnic of homemade sandwiches and potato salad. Fishing poles were laid at rest at the sides of the table.
"Stripers are running at this time," father Steve Kozikowski said, referring to the striped bass. "We just got here so we haven't fished yet."
The group has been coming to the dock for the past few Father's Days, they said.
"It's nice to be with my sons on Father's Day, and be outside," Steve Kozikowski said.
Ted Lemelin, whose father owns Ted's Bait and Tackle across the Connecticut River in Old Saybrook, said the bait shop was "jamming" from morning until about 3 p.m. with an influx of Father's Day customers. He said that included fathers going to fish by themselves, or coming in with their families. There were also families stopping in to purchase Father's Day gifts, he said.
"To tell you the truth," Lemelin said, "It's kind of like the hidden gem of Father's Day gifts ― is to take them fishing."
Most fishermen, Lemelin said, are after striped bass, which led Sunday to a lot of sales of bunker, a kind of baitfish striped bass like, or sandworms.
"Everybody wants to come through this area and get a trophy bass," he said, pointing out that the record striped bass, at about 82 pounds, was caught off the coast of Westbrook in 2011.
It hasn't been touched since.