The weekend was a success, mostly. First cast, first fish. You have to worry about the curse of the first cast there, but it ended up no mattering. He stuck a bunch more and was moving well in the little river I put him on. He was catching his own fish, which is a level of competence that you love to see.
I bring this little bucket, attached to my backpack, along with me on these trips. The point is simple… I put the fish in there so the boy can look at them in a safe way. Gives us a little quality time with these cool little creatures.
There were stumbles… the pants he had were a little too big and sagged and that seemed to cause endless irritation (and some frustration on my part) until I rolled the top down a couple times and that solved the problem. This trip ended up being a lot of me saying “when we face a challenge, we try to find a solution.” Probably said that 30 times, which means maybe it didn’t sink in too deep.
This is my home water. This is where I learned to fly fish. So it is always special to see one of my kids walking in these waters.
The second morning we went back to the Upper Sacramento to one of my favorite stretches but it turned out the boy just was not OK with standing in 59 degree water. I got this one wrong. He managed to catch one and I managed to get this photo, which may be one of my best.
I got that fixed this week when a pair of Redington waders and kid boots arrived. The waders are big on him, but that just means he’ll grow into them.
He asked to go again this weekend and so we are. I have two weekends this whole summer where I could get him fishing and we are going to take advantage of both of them.
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Awesome! Looks like it was a great trip. Get that boy started early! You can tell him that I don’t like cold water either.