The day before bass season opened, the boy and his father were fishing early in the evening, catching sunfish and perch with worms. Then the boy tied on a small silver lure for some practice casting. As the lure struck the water, it caused colored ripples in the sunset, then silver ripples as the moon rose over the lake.
When his pole suddenly doubled over, the boy knew something huge was on the other end. His father watched with admiration as the boy skillfully worked the fish alongside the dock. Finally, he very gingerly lifted the exhausted fish from the water. It was the largest one he ever had seen. There was just one problem: The fish was a bass, and the season didn't open for two more hours.
"You'll have to put it back, son," said the dad. "There will be other fish," he explained.
"But, Dad!" cried the boy, "not as big as this one."
The boy looked around the lake. No other fishermen or boats were anywhere to be seen in the moonlight. He again looked pleadingly at his father, but he knew from the clarity in his father's voice that the decision wasn't negotiable. So he slowly worked the hook out of the lip of the huge bass and lowered it back into the water.
The creature swished its powerful body and disappeared. The boy suspected that he never again would see such a great fish.
Thirty-four years later, that boy was a successful architect in New York City. His father still lived on the island in the middle of the lake, and the boy took his own son and daughters there to fish from the same dock.
As the boy suspected, he never again saw such a magnificent fish as the one he had landed that night long ago...except when the subject of ethics arose. As his father had taught him, ethics are simple matters of right and wrong. It's only the practice of ethics that is difficult.
Do we do right when no one is looking? Do we refuse to cut corners to get something done on time? Do we always withstand the temptation to be less than honest about all of our dealings? We do if we were taught to do what's right when it comes to something as basic as putting a fish back that had been caught before the season officially opened.
You don't forget something like that. It's a story you proudly tell friends and grandchildren alike...not about how we beat the system but how we did the right thing and forever were strengthened.
As Mark Twain wrote in "A Tramp Abroad," "The most permanent lessons in morals are those which come, not of book teaching, but of experience."
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