POLETAP SMARTROD SLAB HUNTER raffle fishing story submission...

My first fish I can remember catching was when I was about 7 or 8 years old. My mother who was severely disabled with Rheumatoid Arthritis starting around 1959 until her death in 2018 took me fishing at Strouds Run State Park in Athens County, Ohio. Mom could barely walk, get out of chairs, drive or do anything yet that day she took this you boy to the lake. I remember carrying a lawn chair and helping her best I could from the parking lot to the place she could get to. I was a marsh area that looking back was the only place she could get to and probably wasn’t the best place anyone could hope to catch anything. I had an old tin tool box with some hooks, bobbers, an old green Zebco metal reel on some kind of pole and night crawlers I had dug from the yard. We didn't stay long due to Moms health but I caught I good sized largemouth bass which was the first fish I ever caught and the only fish that day. I lost my mother in 2019 at age 91 and she was such a good mother. Even when the RA was raging she took on adopting a little boy who by my own self admittance was hard to raise and didn’t make life easy for sure. I think of this outing often when I am fishing, doing maintenance on my gear, cleaning fish or just reflecting on her incredible life and the chance at a good life she gave me back in 1968.

Mom is with Jesus now and she knows no sorrow or the pain she lived with. I am thankful for the time God gave her to me and all our family and friends. I miss her so but she isn’t really gone and never will be......