CHARLOTTE — About 45 minutes southeast of Charlotte sits the village of Wingate, close enough to the city to explain its location to out-of-towners, but far enough away to exist in its own world.

Ramble down a two-lane road named for the local church, and you'll come upon a driveway, splitting off to carry one fork towards a house close to the road, sitting behind a small pond, and the other weaving up to a house on a hill shaded by the pecan trees standing sentinel at the corner

"That's my uncle's place," says Patrick Jones II, pointing towards the house near the road as he and his cousin Jaden bounce in a souped up dune buggy down the dirt drive. "We're gonna go down here to my grandmas place. It might not have as many fish, but we'll see."

The buggy tops the hill where Jones' grandparents house sits, and a small pond comes into view. A recently cut hay field, part of the family's 70 acres on just this side of the road, rolls into a knoll, dipping down to the stagnant body of water, moved only by the breeze causing a weeping willow to dance across the surface, and the dragonflies lilting across.

This is Patrick Jones' favorite place to fish in the whole world—and he has fished across the whole world.

He has stood in the rivers in Hokkaido, Japan for the annual salmon run, he has plans to take his deep sea boat out in the Gulf off the coast of Houston for red snapper season, he has explored every lake he could find in Minnesota. If there's a body of water that could feasibly hold marine life, Jones is ready to drop a pole.

"I keep my fishing stuff in the car," he says over his shoulder, keeping his eyes on the line he's methodically casting out and reeling in over and over. "Anytime I see water, I stop."

But this, the tranquil pond at the bottom of the hill, where crickets hum in the hay and the forest hugs the back of the water, is the spot to which he'll always return.

This is where he learned to fish at the hands of his Grandma Carrie, and Uncles Buggs and Terry. While his dad's job in the military took the Jones family all over the world, each summer was spent with his mom's family in the Carolina countryside.

"I stayed in that first room right there," he points towards the window on the back wall facing the pond. "Every summer."

He and Jaden would spend all day together, as first-cousins close in age are apt to do, dropping their fishing poles to square off by the water, as little boys are apt to do, in what would become a peek into their future. Jaden went on to play offensive line at Pembroke and Jones is now an outside linebacker with the Panthers.

One summer, when Pat was around 12 years old, his uncle paid him $5 for every turtle he caught. Turtles eat fish, so getting them away from the pond was paramount. One day, he caught four at once.

"I didn't know what to do with them all," Uncle Buggs laughs, leaning out of the golf cart where he sits by his wife, watching the boys fish in the same way they've done for 20 years now. "Just had to put 'em all in a cage under the carport."

Pat's answering laugh at the shared memory echoes across the water, and it becomes a bit more clear why this is the place he'll always come back to. The pond reset back in the summer of 2019, a heat wave suffocating the oxygen out of the water as Mother Nature employed a natural purification process. The bounty is no longer near as plentiful, so he has to consider weather patterns, temperatures, and time of day a bit more when deciding to fish there, but it's worth it. Because this is not just a fishing hole.

It's his childhood, his home, and his family.

Fishing requires endless patience.

It requires an unwavering focus, an understanding of how to read the subtle cues around you, use the correct tools at your disposal, and embracing the mundane in hopes of one moment of jubilation.

For Pat Jones, fishing is a lot like football.

"I want to come here and make a difference," he said back in March after signing as a free agent with the Panthers from the Vikings.

Making a difference will take time, considering the unit he's joining was tied for fourth-fewest sacks last season. But when one spot is dried up, you don't pack it in for the day; you reevaluate, reassess, and move to a new spot if necessary. Ever the fisherman, Jones is prepared to be patient, be vigilant, and find the right chemistry to change a defense.

"That was last year," Jones said during OTAs of the 2024 struggles. "We just got to move on and we just have to set a new standard and we have to decide what that standard is and we have to chase that standard and do better than we set that standard."

That standard in the outside linebacker room will be set largely by Jones and D.J. Wonnum. The two are the veterans in the unit now, at just 26 and 27-years-old respectively. But the duo has three years of already playing on the same defense together in their favor, having both started their careers with the Minnesota Vikings.

And perhaps just as important, even if only relative to them, they have fishing stories together.

Wonnum has been out to the Wingate house and pond a few times, but they really established their bond in Minnesota.

"So me and Pat, we used to fish at all times; morning, daytime, nighttime," Wonnum begins, sitting back against the locker room wall, his hands hanging languidly from his knees as he settles into a story about the duo's adventures in Minnesota, the land of 10,000 lakes.

"One day we was out Lake Minnetonka—that's like one of the big lakes—and the plan was to go out there for maybe a couple of hours. We ended up being out there through the entire night.

"I'm not gonna blame nobody," Wonnum trails off, cutting his eyes in jest to make his point, "but it wasn't my fault."

The boat was outfitted to make it across Minnesota's ninth-largest lake, and at around 20-feet long, it was to heavy to be rowed back to shore.

"It was terrifying," Wonnum exclaims. "It was terrifying because it was dark, so all you hear was water, waves crashing and stuff.

"Thank God (Pat) had like this little, it's like a trolling motor on the boat, so it kind of controls and navigates the boat (in) like a slow motion. We were moving like two miles per hour in the middle of the lake trying to get back," he throws his hands out with a laugh.

"We didn't even catch anything. It wasn't even worth the trip."

But while Wonnum primarily fishes for sport, Jones steps onto a boat as often and as naturally as he steps into his living room.

He'll often take his iPad with him and watch film, tapping into that endless patience needed when there's a line in the water and using the time to study practice tape, upcoming opponents and the playbook. His life is football and fishing, and any way he can combine the two, he'll take.

"Any day you can go out and fish is better than a day in the crib," he preaches.

Another golf cart bounces over the crest of the hill, wrapping around the field before stopping 50 feet from the edge of the water, carrying Pat's grandparents still in their church clothes—because it is Sunday afternoon after all—save the Panthers hat on his grandad's head. Carrie moseys towards the boys, five-foot-nothing of barely concealed sass.

"I don't do this reel fishing," she informs, before directing Jaden to grab her pole. It's a slightly antiquated way of fishing, but her grandsons are immediately on alert. They haven't caught anything for 20 minutes and now Grandma, who first showed them how to find the honey holes in water, is on site.

While she gently drops her line in the shallow area, Pat fiddles with his lure, switching to a bluegill bait after no luck with the catfish or bass in the pond. No sooner has he skirted the question as to who is the better fisher—"well she taught me so I can't say"—than she calmly pulls up a bluegill of her own.

"Pat I'm leaving the big ones for you," she offers with what should be gentle encouragement but is underlaid with a teasing taunt.

"I was doing the same for you," he lobs back.

Trying a new spot, he casts into shade made by the swaying willow.

"That's a good spot Pat. That's where I caught that catfish," Carrie says, again with that unique grandma blend of prodding and challenging, the message clear; step it up. And maybe this is where the NFL linebacker got his competitive streak?

A tug on the line generates a small whoop of excitement and relief of having finally nabbing something.

"That might be the world's smallest bluegill," Jaden hoots, whipping his phone out to make sure his cousin can't exaggerate this fishing story later.

As a chorus of guffaw's ring out from the circle of family members around the pond, Pat shakes his head in resignation and throws the fish back. After another 20 minutes of the same results, everyone begins to pack up, all to the soundtrack of more teasing at Pat's inability to catch anything bigger than a leaf on this particular Sunday, his content smile soaking up every joke at his expense delivered in a way only family can.

It's OK, though, he can come out and try again next weekend, just as he's done every weekend since signing with the Panthers in March and moving from Minneapolis, and as he will do every weekend he's in Charlotte, even during the season; perks of being so close to home. Maybe he'll bring a teammate again, maybe it'll be just him and his grandmother. It doesn't matter, as long as he can grab his pole and wander down the hill to his favorite spot in the world.

"It's definitely good that the place I call home wanted me down here," he says, looking around at the place that raised him. "That just felt amazing."