I remember back when I was a little kid, my dad would be taking me fishing the next day and I could never sleep. I think I was more likely to crash out on Christmas Eve then to fall a sleep before a big morning fishing trip, and this was before college, before working nights all summer. I would roll around for hours and think about what big surprise I would find in the river the next day. I remember very well a trip to a creek way up north, that we had heard about at a party a few nights before, I’m not sure what the gathering was for, and it was weird because my family goes to few parties and when they do, fishing is rarely discussed. Anyway a guy said he had caught some silvers there that day and he saw someone catch a burbot. This was before I started fly fishing so I must have been between eight and twelve. Anyway my little brain couldn’t wrap around sleeping, it couldn’t stay clear long enough for a dream to pop in.

Come 5 a.m. we were off and rolling, I had a bucket of cured salmon roe, my favorite salmon rod and a grin as we went north for a few hours. I remember how the sky looked that morning, the clouds looked like giant rounded spirals, bumpy and blue, until the early light hit them and the spirals disappeared giving way to a vast blue sky, with fuffly clouds that can be described no other way but happy. It was late August, I know that because the state fair was going, it was possibly the first day of the fair. We followed the guys instructions in this old silver van we once had, we got rid of it in ’99 so I must have been younger than 11. We drove along the beach to a stream where we found a bunch of folks sitting there fishing.

I put on a bobber, a hook and a clump of eggs and started casting while my dad sat in a chair and half watched, half read a book or the paper or something. I remember watching the subtle tick of the bobber as fish hit, then suddenly it sank. My years of drowning worms at the local pond left me ready for this possibility, I struck, the hook went deep and I fought a nice silver to the shore. My guess is that it was just turning red, what Prince William Sound commercial fishermen would call blush. The fish still had a metallic sheen, still very silver at first glance, but also a deep reddish glow, like a anodized piece of metal. My dad upon seeing my luck started fishing, he was using a green Pixee, I’m not sure what he was doing but it looked like he was just standing there with a rod in his had and a slack line, which even at the age of 9 or whatever I was I knew that you didn’t fish a pixee like that. I was just about to say something when, he unceremoniously landed a fish, just reeled it in, no fighting no hook set no nothing. His was also a nice coho, very pretty for that late in the season.

I’m not sure but I think that might be the last salmon I ever saw my dad land. I’m sure as soon as we got back in the car I fell asleep, probably waking up to gaze at the mountains that you can see when you are 45 minutes from home, a great sign on a long car trip. I’m sure my mom cleaned the fish as I was too grossed out by fish guts to do it myself back then (one of the reasons I started releasing most of the fish I caught). I probably slept well that night and went back to school with another good story to tell that probably nobody really listened to.

Maybe this summer I’ll go back to that creek, pull up a lawn chair, throw on a glob of eggs, crack open a beer, and toast my dad as he sits and reads a book and I watch a big red and white bobber drift down the slow current like the clouds drift overhead. Until then I’m awake early in the morning, with my mind fill with the excitement of seeing a girl I really like pretty soon, of plans for the summer, of the nervousness that comes with getting done with school, starting another new life, and my mind is filled tonight for some reason with the story I just told you, and how much I wish that the prospect of staring at a red and white bobber for hours was enough to make roll around in bed like a little kid on Christmas. It was so simple back then, no decision on whether it was the right time to make a move on a woman, how to afford what I want, or what I was gonna do in 3 months. Back then it was just me and the river, nothing else, I wish I could have that again.