My father can't stand me?

My father can't stand me and I kind of don't like him either but in my heart I've always wanted us to be on good terms.

I was the typical "daddy's little girl" but I've had "daddy issues" for a long time now. It began with me believing he favored my brother over me (which he does, but who can compete with male bonding) to believing that he absolutely couldn't stand me. In anger he's said some things along those lines, like I didn't matter or that I was boring or annoying. He would tell me to shut up or turn on the radio when I opened my mouth, trying to have a normal conversation. We were at each others throats until I was in my early twenties and moved out.

Since then we've kept things on the polite side but barely spoken, although he is an absolutely fantastic grandfather to his grandchild. We just kind of rub each other the wrong way but we do our best to keep the peace. A few years back he took me fishing. I thought he was finally reaching out and I was so happy that he actually wanted to spend alone time with me and we had a wonderful, relaxed and tension free time together. I started having hopes of us mending our relationship - until someone revealed to me that he had been forced to reach out. It ruined everything for me and I felt like our time together had been a lie. He was just in a good mood because he liked fishing, not because he was having a good time with me. He doesn't know that I know.

Since then I've tried very hard to accept (and I have) the fact that although he loves me very much and is very proud of my accomplishments that he just doesn't like me as a person and that we will never have the father-daughter relationship I always wanted. Although he is a bit socially disabled, to find a polite term for it, he bonds much better with my siblings and I find it hard not to be jealous of them being able to have actual conversations with him and joke around with him whereas everything I say always seems to be the wrong thing. Somehow my efforts always seem awkward and offensive and I know that it is in part my fault. I've inherited his disdaining tone of voice and I've tried very hard to overcome it but apparently I do not always manage to sound happy enough. It's hard to be myself around him. Once in a social gathering when I had been entertaining people he gave me an awkward compliment/insult, telling me he hadn't known I could be this much fun. I was so baffled that I wanted to shout at him that he had never bothered to get to know me, that's why, but I decided not to make a scene.

Anyway, he recently asked me to go fishing again with him and I have it on good authority that this time it is his initiative. I just broke in tears when I found out. I've spent all this time removing emotions from our relationship and now they seem to be flowing back and I hate it. My dad actually wants to spend time with me. With ME! Alone! I don't know how to handle it. I don't want to say no and set our relationship back many years and bring up to the surface our past issues and arguments when we've tried to hard to keep the peace all these years. I want to take my mother's advice and just take and be happy with the bite that I am given but I find it difficult. It was easier to keep an emotional distance from him and know where I had him - not in a place I liked but a place I had accepted. What do I do now? My mother tells me I always have these expectations of him when I should just accept how he is. Should it even matter what he thinks of me or how he feels about me after all this time?

Any thoughts? Anyone had a similar experience? Please don't be mean.