Uncaught Trout
On memory, resilience, and getting that fish!
There is a pond behind the meeting house in our town called the Children’s Pond. It’s a small body of water set under a canopy of pine, maple, and beech. If you look hard enough, you can spot Monadnock through the trees. By law, no one over the age of 15 is allowed to fish at the Children’s Pond. It is strictly reserved for the youth of our town; a small, safe, secluded place for them to go and enjoy a little fishing.
On the first weekend in May, our town recreation department holds an annual kids fishing derby. Natalie and Graeme were excited for this year’s, and we spent the entire week preparing. We pulled our rods out from the garage, and practiced casting in the driveway. Natalie and I spent several nights tying up some flies.
For years I was a member of a small club of fly fishermen down in Massachusetts. They taught me how to tie the kinds of flies needed for successfully fly fishing New England's myriad rivers. Wooly buggers, blood worms, prince nymphs, and crane fly larva were, and are, effective favorites. Natalie would often accompany me to these meetings, as they were held Monday nights after her dance lessons. She’d sit with me among the old timers, watching as we took feathers, flash, wire, and various hairs, and tied them onto hooks in attempts to create imitations of freshwater critters. Eventually, she got around to tying some herself. She created her own wonderfully zany and colorful patterns, many of which made her giggle.
The week of the derby, we sat at the dining room table tying up flies that she could use to catch the small trout that had been stocked in the pond. She insisted on using her fly rod, a small 7ft 3wt I’d built for her several years previous. The derby was going to be her first time casting her rod in many years. She was nervous, but she had scouted a spot at the Children’s Pond where she could make casts without risk of getting tangled in the trees or accidentally hooking other derby participants.
Meanwhile, Graeme's outfit was all up to me. My sister had bought him his first fishing rod for his third birthday back in September, and he’d recently acquired his own tackle box on a Papa/Graeme trip to Bass Pro Shops with my dad. It was now my job to fill it with the appropriate tackle.
As I browsed the shelves of the store looking for hooks and bobbers, I began to think back to all the times my dad had set me up for fishing. Every summer, we’d go on vacation to some corner of New England. Lakes in Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire were particular favorites, because we could always go fishing while we were there. When I was 5 years old, I remember standing on a splintery wooden dock on the pond of the hotel we were staying at in central Vermont. My sister, then 2 or 3, was with me, and we were both casting our little fishing rods into shallow water. I don’t know what magic was around me that day, but I caught at least 20 fish. I felt utterly invincible, as any young boy would who is catching loads of fish. I figured I had the makings of a champion fisherman. I was wrong.
As I got older and became less patient, my sister took over as the family’s trophy fish catcher. Wherever we went, she’d catch the most fish, and the biggest. For many years, a 7-pound bass sat collecting frost in our freezer because dad was so proud of my sister's catch that he wanted to taxidermy it and hang it in his office.
Meanwhile, I wasn’t coming anywhere close to the glory of that sunny day on the dock. In fact, I wasn’t catching anything. For the next 20 years, between 1999 and 2019, I didn’t catch a single fish on vacation or otherwise. That dry spell finally broke when I hooked a minuscule brown trout on an estate in Galway, Ireland. It was a proud, albeit somewhat silly moment to see this tiny fish hooked to the fly at the end of my line.
Regardless of my luckless youth, I still loved fishing. Most of that love emerged from the depths of my dad’s tackle box, which to me was a treasure chest loaded with colorful jigs, hooks, scissors, and other tools of the fishing trade. For years, I wanted nothing more than to aspire to have a tackle box as cool as his.
When I got home from the store, I loaded Graeme’s new tackle box with the worms, hooks, sinkers, and bobbers I’d bought. As I watched my hands put these items into the plastic box, they seemed to turn larger and rougher, almost like my dad’s hands. I realized how big my own hands must seem to my son, and that they were now doing the very thing my father had done for me when I was young.
Time can get away from you when you aren’t paying attention. Yesterday I was 5 and catching the most fish anyone had ever caught. Today, I’m on the cusp of 30, tying flies with my preteen daughter and filling my young son’s tackle box for his first fishing derby. That night, I prayed for good weather and success at the derby the following morning.
As is so often the case with fishing, reality is far more frustrating than what we can dream up. We got to the derby late, and Natalie's perfectly scouted spot had been already been taken. The shoreline of the Children’s Pond was swarming, so real estate was at a premium. We managed to find a small inlet from which to cast, but with the trees close by and so many other kids around it wasn’t going to be easy.
As I got a worm onto Graeme’s hook, a whistle blew and the chaos began. Small trout were soon flying out of the water, zooming into the air on the end of 15 fishing lines. After being tallied at the judges table, the poor things were chucked unceremoniously back into the water. It wasn’t long before the shallows became crowded with floating, belly up fish. Those uncaught trout acted upon instinct, and made their way to deeper water at the center of the pond.
As the kids surrounding her pulled in more and more fish, Natalie became frustrated. The trees and general bustle kept her from being able to make the casts that would get her fly line out to the middle of the pond where the fish were. To make matters worse, her wooly bugger kept getting snagged on branches and leaves below the surface. But she’d keep reeling in and trying again.
Graeme, meanwhile, was getting a few nibbles on the end of his line, but the fish refused to be hooked. Every time we put on a new worm, he’d say determinedly: “I’m gonna get that fish, Dad!”
When the derby ended and the final tally was made, my kids walked away with zero fish between them. They were, understandably, disappointed.
“I’m sorry I didn’t catch that big fish, Dad,” Graeme said. I told him not to worry which, for his toddler mind, was enough to make him forget about it and perk up.
Natalie, however, was struggling. All she had wanted that morning was to catch a fish on a fly she’d tied using the rod I had made for her. Her spot had been taken, and everyone else had caught fish except for her and her brother. She was on the verge of tears as we packed the rods and tackle boxes into the van.
“Natalie?” I whispered.
“What?” she sniffled.
“Sometimes you just don’t catch fish. Conditions were tricky out there. The fish were scared, and there was live bait for them to go after. But you kept at it. You didn’t give up, and I am really proud of you,” I said.
“I just really wanted to catch a fish. I’ve never caught one before,” she said.
“I understand sweetheart. But listen: when I was 5, I caught about 20 fish in the span of a morning. I didn’t catch another fish for 20 whole years.”
She stared at me.
“Really?”
“Really,” I said. “So keep your chin up. You’ll catch your first fish soon. I promise.”
It is always difficult to help your kids through a failure. To be honest, had I not gone through my own fishing struggles, I wouldn’t have been able to say much more to Natalie than “Next time, sweetheart.” As a dad, I plan to do for my kids what my dad always did for me: tie on another fly, hook on another worm, and cast that line back out into the water.