Lachlan's first time casting for trout.
The strong and silver Rainbow trout of my youth course through my dreams. We caught so many on Mepps #2 lures I can’t remember where my first one was caught. But I know what counts, how I did it and that I did it with my dad.
Colorado trolling on blue reservoirs and surreptitious into the wet dewed grass aside unknown mountain brooks. My dad’s dreams moving into practice and seeping into my own.
Flashes of unturned rocks, mossy when you don’t know it but always glistening under the high sun and a hidden promise of the leader jerking so suddenly you almost forgot why you were there. I didn’t know what I was doing yet, but my dad did and he guided it.
These things work their way through my life and continue on beyond me where I can’t see yet. In the midst I take my own son out, now to brushy banks stepping through cow pies and burrs and thistle, seeing the fish easier than than I could when I was young. My son looking where I point and not understanding yet that some day he will know.
Watching him throw into the water and lever roll casts better than I had in my first 4 years of taking it seriously, but remembering my first fly trout came on a practice cast like it. He asking “like this? Now what?” And saying with pride “just like you’re doing.” Watching the bright-colored scud float through the habitat.
I used to think that the wisdom was in the mystery of what’s subsurfuce, but I think now it’s more to know that I know what’s in there. The underworld of pockets and knowledge that they’re there, the silver dream not realizing what they are to me, the mystery for me still not grasping what they do know. But I have known them and now my son will.
