Fishing in the Central Valley: Life on a turkey ranch taught hard-won but fun values

I grew up on my family’s west side turkey ranch, and looking back I would say that the unspoken motto of our lifestyle was “Work hard, play hard.”

That motto has been the foundation that’s served me well throughout my life, both as a person and an angler.

Growing up on a ranch, I was expected to do whatever we needed done. I worked hard as the oldest child and my dad always found another task to keep me busy if I appeared to be “taking it easy.”

I realized that the trick was to never act unengaged around my dad to avoid being drafted into doing one of the endless chores that a ranch needs done.

However, I could always expect one of my father’s fishing buddies to call him to discuss the latest “hot bite” every so often. When he got one of these calls, I would try to stay within ear shot because I knew there was a good chance that my dad would tell me to go hook up the boat.

I lived for those moments.

This allowed me to learn from some of the best anglers in the Valley at an early age.

Even though I was young, these fishing buddies expected me to hold up my end of whatever trip we were on.

The early impact of working on a ranch and going fishing with my father and his buddies hooked me on living a simple way of life.

I loved it.

It’s hard to imagine these days – but my father would call my little grammar school principal and see if he could pick me up at school and take me fishing. I vividly recall him pulling up in front of the school with the boat in tow as I ran out to jump in.

The principal had the old fashioned idea that spending quality time with your dad doing something like fishing just might be the best thing a young boy could do. Even if you missed a class or two, and did your homework later.

My early years were spent checking the turkeys three times a day, feeding them, changing a half mile of irrigation pipes before school, working weekends, bucking hay and culling out the weaker birds. Farm stuff!

For fun, I built long tunnels through the thick nasty dirty alkali weed forests growing in the back of the ranch, shot BB guns, rode my bike on long expeditions, swam and fished in the little ditch in the back of our property and caught big lizards.

When city kids came out to the ranch with their parents to visit us I usually broke them in to farm life fun in just a few hours. At first they thought it was boring but by the end of the day they usually were completely dirty and didn’t want to leave. Taking these same kids fishing, seemed to follow the same path of having to break them in.

We accepted the dangers as normal back then, but as farm kids we also learned quickly and became naturally tougher than most. My observation is that many kids today are bubble wrapped and never get to learn some of the hard but valuable life lessons that their parents experienced, the very things that made them who they are.

Working hard never bothered me because I also got to do things, like fishing with my dad, that made it all worthwhile.

We didn’t have much, and there was lots of hard work but we believed in our family, loved fishing and never complained much because we were thankful we got to live a good simple life. I’ll take the fishing life every time.

Never give up.

This story was originally published November 1, 2024 at 12:00 PM with the headline "Fishing in the Central Valley: Life on a turkey ranch taught hard-won but fun values."