This trip, to SE Idaho/SW Wyoming, has been magnificent in some many ways, but it has also been a time for growth and learning.
One of the big things I wanted to do was to get the boy in the raft. He’s 9, coordinated enough to figure some stuff out, but not yet a fully-formed angler.
We had one misfire where we went looking for some small water to fish and basically failed. The boy got tired of walking. He got bored. I didn’t react well to his complaints and there was a spiral that suckes allllll the fun out of what we were trying to do.
Then, I got him out on the raft. I towed this raft ~890 miles to get here. It was not a small endeavor.
He took to it… he loved it… said he prefered this kind of fishing to creek fishing/river fishing. He went out with me twice and talked about about how much he loved it. And, after some amature net work on the first day, we finally got the money shot.
He was stoked. He had a few fish on and many dry eats, but this is the one he got to hold in his hand, knowing that he caught it.
There was a lot of good dad/son time on the water. We saw bald and golden eagles. We saw a moose and a fawn. We saw more osprey than you could shake a stick at. We saw stoneflies and caddis and mayflies. We had a great time on the water.
This… this was a thing worth doing.
- Unique Post
