The opportunity for a father and son to go fly fishing for a trout is always a good thing, but in this case, it was for so much more.
My own dad had died not even five days before, in the season of COVID-19. While his death was not caused by this particular coronavirus, still it meant that I was not allowed to be with him when he passed over. And it meant that my family of six could only participate in Dad’s funeral through Zoom and a livestream, it seeming unwise to drive to an outbreak hotspot across seven states in the days of ‘stay at home’ orders and ‘shelter in place’ during the peak of a pandemic. On a Saturday we all dressed up, lit a candle, and gathered around a computer screen to see my dad lying in state and then laid to rest. It was not ideal.
As providence would have it, the next day, Sunday, my 16-year-old son, Liam, and I had already planned to go fishing and, specifically, fly fishing. Falling into the category of allowable “outdoor recreation,” to hit the water seemed not only legitimate but was even legal in spite of a state-wide lockdown. As the owner of the place we were going told me when I called to see if he was still open, “We were socially distancing before there was social distancing.”
To keep that fishing date with my own son seemed a way to remember and honor my dad who loved fishing, and especially with those he loved.
Actually, Dad only fished with those he loved. While he instilled a love in me of having a rod in the hand and a fish on the other end of the line, he was not a fisherman in the purest sense of the word. While he enjoyed it, I don’t ever remember a time when Dad went fishing alone. He always had somebody he loved with him, whether his own dad, or his kids, or his grandkids, or his great-grandkids. Dad fished because he loved kin, not because he loved to fish. Some of my most treasured memories will be the couple of week-long trips in the Boundary Waters we took together, fishing from a canoe for smallmouth bass with small jigs and for northern pike with big spinners in those lakes that straddle Minnesota and Ontario.
Somehow those times and trips translated into a love of fishing for me, or at least fly-fishing. Having discovered it in my mid-30s, since then I’ve picked up a fly rod and hunted trout many times alone as a way of getting away and praying and finding peace, having my mind forced to be unoccupied with the things that usually occupy it. While I love to catch a fish on a fly, that’s actually not the ultimate point. As the saying goes, “That’s why it’s called ‘fishing’ and not ‘catching’.”
But like my dad, on this Sunday I would not fish alone. I would go with my own son, a fitting tribute for Dad. And Liam and I would come away from a couple of intense and painful days made all the weirder by coronavirus, and be together, and honor Grandpa together.
I said, “Bud, the first fish we catch is in honor of Grandpa.” I’m not good enough with a fly rod to guarantee a trout, but where we were going gave me enough confidence to think we’d at least catch one if not quite a few.
We left before dawn and by the time the sun was breaking over the mountains of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, we were talking about Grandpa and what was good about him and what we learned from the prior day’s truly surreal experience of hearing eulogies over the internet for your dad and your grandpa.
I recounted one story to Liam about how I once came into the backyard of my boyhood home only to discover Dad heaving up a bunch of grass with a shovel in order to build a fire pit in the dirt. Some of the younger grandkids were coming to visit.
“But, Dad, that grass will never grow back!” I exclaimed.
“Bill, around here we grow kids, not grass,” was his simple reply, and I obviously never forgot it.
After two hours in the car, Liam and I got to the river, the past night’s frost still on the ground. We got our waders on, scouted the stream, and saw that even though the water was clean, it was high and very fast. I was accustomed to sight fishing for trout at this location, but there would be none of that today. Rigging-up with a double nymph setup with tungsten bead heads and an indicator set deep seemed a good way to start.
Before we cast a line, though, we began with something I always do after I’m rigged up but before I’m wet. We paused for some time in the quiet and the silence, and breathed deeply, and looked at the beauty we were incarnate in. We took in the blue sky, the new buds on the trees, the green of spring, the rocks rising above the river, and of course the water. To begin like this each time is a way for me to stay grounded in the deepest reasons I fly fish– to be with God, to be in nature, to stop and be still and receive and find strength. And hopefully to catch that gorgeous creature we call trout, or as one fellow fly-fisherman put it, ‘to have an encounter.’
It’s been a long time since I’ve asked God to help me catch a fish on the fly. The times I’ve prayed that prayer and then got skunked raises too many theological questions.
But on this occasion, in that silence before stepping into the stream, I did pray this without words: “Dear God, please help Liam get one to honor Dad.”
“Amen,” and we stepped into the river that had water-flow levels higher and stronger than I’ve seen at this place before. This was not going to be easy, and catching a trout was no sure thing.
After a little while it became clear that the nymph rigs weren’t working, so I sent Liam– with a streamer that looked like a very small fish– over to a submerged undercut ledge where in times past I’d seen trout come out to grab some unsuspecting minnow. Of all the places in this pool, I knew this one had the best chance of success, and within a couple of minutes, Liam was into a fish.
“Fish on! Fish on!” he yelled, and I turned to see his rod bent double and a long, gorgeous rainbow flash come high out of the water several times, each time higher than the first.
I ran over with the net ready, and abruptly the rod went straight and the line floated in the wind. The trout had broken off. That one was going to be for Grandpa, and now it wasn’t.
“Please God.”
We weren’t getting anything from that pool, so we moved to another spot where I knew there were fish, but the wading was hard and the water strong, and Liam hooked up another time or two and I had my own hookups, only to have the fish spit the hooks a couple minutes into the fight or break off the nymphs in fast current. Probably it was bad knots, or maybe it was just the strength of the water. Either way, our hands were empty.
So far it had been a couple hours of hard work and heartbreak and no fish for Grandpa. I’ve been here before, a couple hours in and little to show for it, but this time it was different. Liam may not have felt the stress of it, but I sure did, and we kept fishing.
Liam’s nymphs weren’t raising much, and by the time lunch was about to roll around I had a heavy black streamer tied on to my line, and gave my rod to him and said, “Here, try this.”
A couple minutes later there was the joyful shout of alert, “Fish on! Fish on!”
And then, “Holy cow! It’s huge!”
It surfaced once, like a small whale breaching the water. From 40 feet away I could see it, and it was indeed huge.
“Lord, please, let this be the one,” I said in my heart, but out of my mouth came, “Keep your rod tip up, bud! Let it run if it wants too! Not too much tension!” I don’t think Liam needed my guide service at that very moment, but it felt good to offer it.
By the time I got to him with the net at the ready, the fish had settled deep underwater in the middle of a heavy flow of current, unwilling to budge and waiting for the line to break. I was afraid it was going to head to the boulders behind it and scrape through the line. This one had been caught before, and didn’t want to be caught again. It surfaced briefly a couple more times before heading back under, and we could see that it was indeed a big, beautiful slab of a fish. In my house we call these a “pig rainbow”, and this one was a hog.
Fighting both the strength of the fish and the strength of the current, eventually, Liam horsed it over to the net and when I scooped it up we both let out whoops of relief and offered a couple non-socially distanced fist bumps.
I could barely lift the net with the fish in it to get the hook out, but it turns out I didn’t need to. The streamer had popped out of its own accord when the tension of the line was released. Liam had played the fish perfectly, and that fish was by no means guaranteed.
We measured her, and she was all of 24 inches, with a girth as wide almost as my outstretched fingers. No wonder it was a real fight to get this fish in. I hope it wasn’t my son’s fish-of-a-lifetime, he’s only 16. But it could have been. Time will tell, but he’s got time.
We kept her wet, but couldn’t resist one ‘grip and grin’ picture. This fish tale needed the proof of a photo, and that one will go on the wall next to the one of Liam and his grandfather. This fish was for Grandpa.
We didn’t even need to revive her. She swam off quickly, strong and seemingly in a huff, annoyed for the disruption of her otherwise safe feeding lane. Liam must have swung that fly right across the face of the trout holed up in the best feeding channel in the run, reserved for only the biggest of fish. I’m sure that’s where she returned, wise already but now a little bit wiser.
After such an experience, you don’t go right back to fishing. That much adrenalin makes your nerves too jittery to tie something new on or even make a decent cast. And in this case, Liam and I needed to absorb what had just happened.
There was a little bench high up on the bank and we went to it, and sat.
“That one was for Grandpa, bud,” I said.
“Yep,” was his simple reply.
I prayed, but this time not to God. “Well Dad, I don’t know if you got to see all that, but I imagine you did. That one was for you, Dad, and your grandson caught it. We love you. That one was in your honor. Thank you, for everything.” And we kept silence.
The quiet was broken when Liam said, “Hey Dad, do you see that bald eagle?”
He pointed high up to a tree on the far bank where just above where we’d been fishing was perched a beautiful and also huge bird. It had quietly watched the whole thing– from hookup, to fight, to net and back to the water, to fist bumps. No doubt it was hoping we might offer the fish as a sort of offering, but we released it. We are fly fishermen after all.
The Spirit is pictured as a bird. Did the eagle represent the Spirit? Dad was bald. Did the eagle represent him? It doesn’t matter, and for my part, I’m claiming both.
Without words we thanked God for Grandpa, still basking in the glow of bringing to hand that majestic finned creature, watching the majestic winged creature watch us.
After about a minute, that bald eagle took flight and sailed away. Maybe it went looking for perch on the river where the water wasn’t so fast and the trout weren’t so smart.
Or maybe it flew all the way to heaven.
And Liam and I picked-up our rods, and I tied on another streamer.
“SOUNDINGS” posts are aimed at considering together topics that are important for our society, for the Church, and for our own spiritual journeys. To ‘take a sounding’ is a nautical term about using depth to determine where you are and where you’re going. These writings are designed to do just that. Please share this post with friends you think might appreciate it. If you would like to get SOUNDINGS posts from me sent directly to your inbox, click here.