The Codfather

Up until now I’d been convinced that no one in my family other than me cared at all about fishing.

• My parents took us to Guatemala and had a good time, but I could tell it wasn’t their cup of tea.

• I took my brother to El Salto. He caught an 8-pounder and enjoyed himself, but clearly has no desire to go back.

• I took my nephew trolling for musky at St. Clair, where he caught his first fish, a 46” musky. He immediately went back to playing Madden on his phone.

• I wanted to take his younger sister to Lake Picachos, but was warned by everyone with a pulse that it was a bad idea, so I dropped it.

So you can imagine my surprise when the above picture showed up in my text stream over this weekend. It’s my oldest niece. I have no idea what kind of fish they are (not bad for a non-angler – a double), but the attached caption was “Fishing for cod dinner in the Arctic.” She’s the family member who I considered least likely to become an angler, but based on the big smile maybe that presumption was wrong. Maybe there’s still hope that someone else in the Robbins family will pick up the sport and that our genetic link will be proven.

While I’m happy about that possibility, I’m also a bit sad. The picture came from Iceland. Hanna and I have spent a year and a half blogging about our love of fishing travel, both places we’ve been and places we want to go, and yet Iceland never hit our radar. Maybe we’ll head there at some point, preferably with a young relative in tow to show us the ropes.