Carp, Trains & Ugly Junk

When does a boy become a man? Or a better question asked, primarily by women, when does a man stop acting like a boy? Honest men will answer, “When a man is dead.” For me personally I hope the day never comes when the boy inside the nearly 50-year-old human named John Engel puts away his childish ways and behaves like an adult.

Would fishing be as fun for a man, if he acts like a man instead of behaving like a boy? I shudder to even think of finding the answer. When I get together with friends go on a fishing trip, commonly referred to as “Man Time.” But honestly it’s time to be a boy, and to let the boy bust out of the house and run wild in the fields for a bit.

Playing football on summer nights pushing past dinner time, knowing you will catch hell from your parents, but doing it anyhow, burns deeply into your boyish fibers. Wading up to your hips to get your lure out of a snag in the river, almost getting swept up; carves into the genetic fibers of a boy’s life. Jumping your bike over a huge puddle of a burning gas; while friends cheer you on, etches into how a boy is going to act for the rest of his life.

So when that boy turns 49, and he spends hours going after gigantic stinking carp with a fly rod, you can trace, what he does back to those formative moments when he technically was a boy. When he drinks whiskey at the campfire, spitting and swearing, when he’s camping and wakes his friend up in the morning by farting in his face—you guessed it, trace in right back to the juvenile years. When grown men take pictures of ghastly nether regions, then send those pic’s to friends to wish them happy birthday—oh yeah you guessed it, its man love with origins trailing back to his high school days.

So, here’s to the guys who joined the Magnificent 7 fall boyish fishing trip 2015. Go on, keep acting like boy’s forever!