“What are you catching them on,” the mother across the pond hollered to me as my youngest boy Jackson landed a feisty stocked rainbow for my older son AJ.

With a wave that I was on my way, and a scamper up the embankment of the small community water with my tacklebox in hand, I told the boys I’d be right back and we’d soon be on our way to a victory meal at McDonald’s. I had been amazed at how they both had taken to the hour or so of afternoon fishing, and amidst the flipping silver trout and the orange-finned perch they caught on nearly every cast, they became more and more independent with each landing. Jackson, who was reluctant to even touch a fish in past seasons, was grabbing perch from the net, tweaking the small, dressed gold jig from their jaws, setting them back in the net and then releasing them gently into the water.

I’ve never forced fishing on my kids, which probably sounds weird coming from an outdoors writer of 25 years, but I’ve had my reasons. I’ve taken them with when they’ve wanted to go, had a few requests to pop holes in the ice, or search for springtime crappies here and there, but when I’ve asked and they’ve said no, I let it go at that and headed out on my own. I had similar activities forced on me as a child, and fear that if I did the same, fishing for them would become what golf, or even worse, piano lessons became for me in my youth — torture. Looking back now, I wish I had a love for the latter, or any kind of music which would have developed some skill; besides the howl-at-the-moon midnight karaoke I manage at the garage at my mother-in-law’s house each Fourth of July weekend.

This outing was different though. They were talking about how to cast, where to cast, what was biting in each spot — the trout further out and higher in the column, the perch just off shore and near the bottom. It was as if they had taken all the tidbits they had been exposed to in those previous brief outings prior to complaints about sun, or mosquitoes, or a slow bite, and put it all together in just a few minutes to turn out what to them was an epic afternoon in the outdoors. I barely recognized them as I looked up from my small tacklebox, handing the young angler a couple of my hand-tied jigs for his fishing efforts.

But there they were, both of my boys arched intensely over the rocky shoreline, my older battling a large trout toward the rubberized landing net in my younger son’s hand as they yelled with excitement which brought my pace to a sprint. By the time I got there, the fish was in and they were hollering, having done it all on their own, from cast, to battle to landing.

“It’s a cutthroat,” Jackson exclaimed as he lifted the net up around the colorful body of the fish as I approached.

It would be AJ’s first cutty and make one for all three of us now in our fishing careers with my first coming last spring, and Jackson’s of course being the very first fish he had ever landed. They paused for a picture with the fish in the net, and I helped unhook it before Jackson let it wiggle its way out of the rubber basket and back into the catch-and-release pond. Both agreeing to cap the outing with that grand finale, we hooked the jigs up on their two rods, stashed the tacklebox in the net and headed back to the car. The moment couldn’t have been more complete until Jackson said: “I never knew fishing could be this fun!”

I’d imagine what I felt is the same feeling that a musical parent experiences when their child picks up how to play any instrument and can jam with them, or the golfing parent watches their youngster make that first birdie putt and realize they have their own competition for life. Elated, I promised that — after a celebration of nuggets and fries, of course — there would be more opportunities to come this spring and summer to fish for a variety of species in all the waters we frequent, and hopefully many seasons down the road together … in our outdoors.