My seventeen year-old son, Tommy, was a busy guy during the summer. With his first job and his first car to keep him occupied, it was hard to hook up with him for fishing trips. I got him for a couple days in the Spring on Banks Lake but otherwise we hadn’t done a whole lot together. So when we both had a day off in July, we agreed it was a good opportunity to go fishing, just the two of us, somewhere near home where we could fish for a few hours and still make it home by dinner.
I thought about it and told him I’d take him where I learned to fly fish, the South Fork of the Snoqualmie River near North Bend, Washington. This little stream hasn’t held a decent sized fish in a very long time but it never matters. I love every stretch of it and since the Cascade Mountains will always be my home, I am “returning” when I go there, not visiting.
So, armed with the understanding that four to eight inch fish would be a victory, we headed off. I parked the Tahoe at a turn-out on a dirt road that runs parallel to part of the river and we walked off through the woods to find the stream. Tom was wearing shorts, wading boots, my old fly vest, and the cowboy hat he brought back from his trip to Cambodia the previous summer.
I told him he looked like a throw-back to an earlier time. In fact, he is. He prefers fly vests, leather fly wallets, mountain streams, and dry flies. A William & Joseph fanny pack replaced my fly vest years ago and I’ve been distracted by any new product or destination that offers any hope of big fish—compromise in aesthetics, no problem. Tom is a traditionalist in every sense of the word and, hence, a reminder of my old self and a source of pride to a father who sees the old ways being upheld.
As I stood ankle deep in a riffle, the warm sun made me squint slightly. Tom was making a twenty foot cast to the edge of a current seam along the far bank of the stream. A monster four-inch Rainbow took his Caddis pattern and did its best to put a bend in his 5-weight rod. Tom pulled him in and slipped the hook to let the little guy escape, turning to look upstream to the next lie.
He didn’t know it but he’d just landed a fish on the first hole in which I ever dipped a fly line. The years melted and the scene blurred as I thought I saw myself, young and fit, wading upstream to find the next trout…
I thought about it and told him I’d take him where I learned to fly fish, the South Fork of the Snoqualmie River near North Bend, Washington. This little stream hasn’t held a decent sized fish in a very long time but it never matters. I love every stretch of it and since the Cascade Mountains will always be my home, I am “returning” when I go there, not visiting.
So, armed with the understanding that four to eight inch fish would be a victory, we headed off. I parked the Tahoe at a turn-out on a dirt road that runs parallel to part of the river and we walked off through the woods to find the stream. Tom was wearing shorts, wading boots, my old fly vest, and the cowboy hat he brought back from his trip to Cambodia the previous summer.
I told him he looked like a throw-back to an earlier time. In fact, he is. He prefers fly vests, leather fly wallets, mountain streams, and dry flies. A William & Joseph fanny pack replaced my fly vest years ago and I’ve been distracted by any new product or destination that offers any hope of big fish—compromise in aesthetics, no problem. Tom is a traditionalist in every sense of the word and, hence, a reminder of my old self and a source of pride to a father who sees the old ways being upheld.
As I stood ankle deep in a riffle, the warm sun made me squint slightly. Tom was making a twenty foot cast to the edge of a current seam along the far bank of the stream. A monster four-inch Rainbow took his Caddis pattern and did its best to put a bend in his 5-weight rod. Tom pulled him in and slipped the hook to let the little guy escape, turning to look upstream to the next lie.
He didn’t know it but he’d just landed a fish on the first hole in which I ever dipped a fly line. The years melted and the scene blurred as I thought I saw myself, young and fit, wading upstream to find the next trout…
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