Fishing Buddies

I was seven the first time Dad wrapped his big hands around mine, flipped back the bale of my brand new spinning reel, and helped me cast my line out into the middle of that icy Sierra stream. There had been a layer of frost on the picnic table when we tiptoed out of camp, and it was still so early that the morning sun barely peeked from behind the mountains. A veil of mist hung over the meadow and the stream where we stood. I smelled coffee and bacon from somewhere in the distance. The only sounds that interrupted the morning stillness were a busy woodpecker and the snowmelt rushing over the rocks at our feet.

My stomach jerked when those first infinitesimal tugs vibrated up the line and down my lightweight pole. With raised eyebrows and eyes that must have shone the excitement I felt, I looked at Dad for guidance. He shook his head, put his finger to his lips and whispered, “Wait. Let him eat the whole salmon egg, then give a little tug back. Right now he’s just nibbling.”

I bit my lip in concentration, but I followed his advice. Minutes later, I landed my first, and undoubtedly the world’s most beautiful, brown trout. To me, he was huge—all seven inches of him. When Dad said, “He’s a keeper,” I could not have been more proud. He helped me cut a branched willow twig with my pocket knife and showed me how to slip one side of the branch up through the fish’s gills. I carried it back to camp that way—for all the rest of the fish-envying world to see. I was hooked.

Our mutual love of fishing formed a bond between my dad and me.Years of stalking trout in the mountains were followed by deep-sea fishing trips off the coast of Southern California for barracuda, cod and albacore. It was a shared passion. There was something very special about spending a day together, working our way up opposite sides of a willowy mountain creek or standing next to one another on the pier in Oceanside, both of us reeking of anchovies and mussels. To us, even the days we went home with an empty bucket or gunny sack were days well spent.

Dad read the hatchery reports in the newspaper every week and would call me at breakfast time. “They stocked Deep Creek yesterday. What are you doing today?” It was always too much of a temptation for me, and I’d hope my sales manager wouldn’t call while I was gone. But I’d get my daughter off to school, then I’d grab my pole and tackle box (I was the only woman I knew who had one) from the garage, and be at his house in thirty minutes. Mom, somewhat jealous of our time together, still would pack us a lunch, almost always the same one—crackers and cheese, fruit, a couple cold drinks and Fig Newtons. Those damned Fig Newtons—Dad never went anywhere without them.

There were also those long conversations during the early morning drives to the beach to go deep-sea fishing on one of the party boats. I’ve often said the only reason I’d ever get up at four in the morning was to go fishing with Dad. The first time he took me, I was the only female on board, if you didn’t count the hard-faced, crabby, peroxided woman in the galley. I found a spot by myself in the bow, where no self-respecting fisherman would ever choose to fish. But it was the only place “the girl” was really allowed. The serious fishermen had staked out the stern before the boat had even left the harbor and had been hard at work on the “steak and eggs’ they drank from their hip flasks. I’m sure they wondered at the wisdom of the guy with his daughter. This was “man’s work.”

Well, I showed them all. I caught a yellowtail that day and fought it for what seemed like hours. When it wrapped my line around the anchor chain, some of the old salts said I should just cut the line—or the fish would do it for me. But Dad explained to the skipper that this was my first deep-sea trip, and that man raised the anchor so a deckhand could gaff my fish and haul it aboard. When my yellowtail won the day’s jackpot, the delight on Dad’s face mirrored mine. I knew once again I was hooked.

Fast forward forty years. Mom had passed away unexpectedly after a brief illness. Dad was lonely and at loose ends. One day he said, wistfully, that he could die a happy man if he could ever catch a salmon. That was the day I began planning our trip to Alaska. It was my birthday gift to him the summer he turned eighty-two. We went to a fancy fishing camp out on the Kenai Peninsula—all gourmet meals and fishing guides. An eighty-something father and his fifty-something daughter were a curiosity at the camp, filled mostly with plaid flannel-shirted fishing buddies and a few Land’s End married couples.

We soon realized that what we’d signed on for was no vacation. It was more like salmon boot camp. Up at 4:30, breakfast at 5:30, on the river at 6:30. We fished all day, every day, for a week. Cast, strike, reel in, haul aboard—over and over. We couldn’t miss. Most days, by mid-afternoon, we’d begin to pray that we wouldn’t get another strike, and we for sure didn’t want to snag the dorsal fin of some tired Sockeye. We learned the hard way that reeling in a fish cross-wise was really hard work. Every night by nine o'clock, even though it was not yet dark, we fell into our beds in exhaustion. But what sweet pain that week was. It was Nirvana for both of us.

At the end of the week, we dragged ourselves back through the airport and loaded the car up with sixty pounds of smoked and flash-frozen salmon fillets. Dad proceeded to dole out his share of fish to friends over the following months. I discovered that I could tell how much a person meant to him by how much salmon he shared. I’m sure his companions at the Senior Center got tired of hearing his fish-by-fish rehash of the “Great Alaska Salmon Fishing Trip.” They probably got tired of the salmon, too.

When Dad died, two summers later, almost to the week of our trip, he still had some salmon in his freezer. I think it made him feel rich, like money in the bank. It hurt a lot to lose him, but I have found comfort in the fact we shared so many wonderful days fishing together and that I had helped him to die a happy man.

Dad was “a keeper.”