The kids call him the
”
Trout Man.
”
For avid fisherman John Williams, it’s a compliment of the
highest order.
The kids call him the “Trout Man.”
For avid fisherman John Williams, it’s a compliment of the highest order.
Williams began frequenting the San Justo Reservoir when he moved to Hollister three years ago from the East Coast.
At first his trips to the reservoir were simply to do what he loves – fish – but they turned into much more.
While he was fishing for trout one day, a mother arrived with her two young boys whom had never been fishing before. The woman was trying, without much success, to teach her sons to fish.
“I just volunteered to show them how,” Williams said. “After I got the boys out with a line then they started catching fish, and the look on the kids’ faces was great.”
After that it became something of a routine – whenever Williams was at the reservoir children seemed to flock to him for advice on what fishing lines to use or how to cast correctly.
“I like working with the kids,” he said. “If a kid’s interested in something and wants to try something, even if it’s just one time, it’s worth it.”
Fishing has been a long tradition in Williams’ family – something his grandfather taught his father, and his father taught him. Originally from Oakland, growing up John would frequent the lakes in the East Bay Area with his father and grandfather.
He taught his three grown sons how to fish, and the proliferation of the relaxing sport onto impressionable minds just seems natural to him.
If he can help just one child to become interested in something positive and constructive such as fishing, he is making a difference in that child’s life, he said.
“I’ll show them and encourage them, and it keeps them out of trouble,” he said. “It’s like you’re molding them. So far, the kids I’ve taught up there how to fish, I see them almost every other weekend. They come looking for the Trout Man.”
When he’s not teaching a neophyte fisherman the tricks of the trade, Williams also spends his free time cleaning up the reservoir.
After noticing people leaving their garbage around the reservoir, despoiling its scenic beauty, Williams decided to do something about the problem.
When the fish aren’t biting, or he just feels the need to get up and move around, he will traverse areas of the reservoir with a garbage bag in hand, picking up scattered pieces of waste.
“It takes a strain off the people who run the place,” he said. “I’ve seen lakes close because people leave a mess and they can’t open them up again. I don’t want to see it happen to this one. I love this little reservoir.”
Williams is currently on disability because of a heart condition, but before his medical complications arose he did maintenance work at the apartment complex where he lives with his wife in Hollister.
Never the sedentary sort, until his doctor allows him to go back to work the reservoir has become somewhat of a workplace for Williams to accomplish something constructive.
Other than teaching children how to fish and keeping the reservoir garbage-free, he brings a taste of the reservoir home to the tenants in his building every once in a while as well.
“If I catch more than my share I’ll clean them and I’ll give them to the people where I’m living,” he said. “They’re grateful because they like trout, but a lot of them can’t get up there and do a lot of fishing.”
Williams doesn’t expect any recognition from his actions because it’s simply something he enjoys doing.
If he can do what he enjoys doing and help another person, in any small way possible, to enjoy themselves or learn something new, he’s satisfied, he said.
“It makes me feel really good when I can see a kid actually catch a fish,” he said. “Seeing a kid with a big smile on his face is worth a million bucks as far as I’m concerned.”
