Saturday, July 11, 2015

Father and Son Time!


Hello All!

It’s been a while.  I’ve had to transition from the USAF to the civilian sector, landed a job, and I’m not sure I’m done job hunting just yet.  Seems working over 50 hours a week is more than just the military.  Working for a defense contractor is like working for the military.  Hope things will level out soon.  Anyway, the rain has come, and come, and COME this year.  They have run, and run, and RUN the generators every day for almost three months.  I’m bored and heading for the long drive up to the Norfolk River soon to get reacquainted with my rod.  Man, it’s been too long. 

However, I happen to have a magic moment with a very influential person in my life back before the rain.  That person was my Dad.  He has NEVER fly fished before, and he was definitely a…uh…fish out of water.  However, he got to it.  The first night he was here, I sat him down and got him to make some simple flies – San Juan Worm and Red Zebra Midges.  He flat had a ball tying those things, and he said that he understood why I did it - Therapeutic.  He actually stayed up after I went to bed and made about 10-15 more.  AWESOME stuff folks.  The next day, I took him into the front yard to do the casting drills I learned with, my kids learned with, and now my Dad learned with.  Within about an hour, he could cast 35-40’ with little to no effort.  Then, I started grabbing the yarn at the end of the cast and demoing how to set the hook.  After about another 30 minutes, he had that down.  We were set to fish on the morning of day 3.

The morning started just like any other day with me going fishing or hunting with Dad…Dad is SLOW.  Had to prod the old man about every 5 minutes to get going.  We can’t start fishing LATE.  Anyway, we were on the water about 0700 hours (7 AM for normal folks).  We hit the Little Red River at Cow Shoals, Arkansas.  One of my favorite places to fish.  I picked the super shallow riffles at the entrance from the stairs to get him concentrating on the cast.  Yep, it was so exciting for him that he was chucking the thing like we NEVER practiced the day prior.  Anyway, I finally got him to settle down and he started casting about 10-15’ without issue.  I told him to keep on working that distance for now.  He had about 9-10 takes, but was SLOW in setting the hook and when he did, he set it like he was trying to set a 32” Cobia in Pensacola with me deep sea fishing – Yep miss that too.  After the 4th time, I had to seriously council him on the fact he was probably tearing the jaws off the poor fish. 

 
I finally started fishing and caught 8-10 fish.  My Dad continued to struggle with setting the hook.  I decided to take him to the HOLE where there are more fish and generally they STRIKE to get fist shot at the food.  It took about 10-15 minutes for my Dad to settle in, and the fish to start striking.  The first two or three took him by surprise that he was clumsy and lost them.  The third…Well here it is!  This was my Dad’s first Rainbow trout on the fly, and he was whooping so much….I think everyone on the river knew he caught one.  He caught a couple more, and he is now SOLD on fly fishing.  All he talked about on the way home was the PEACE, the calm, and the absolute weirdness of the rod twitching so much and the pull of such a small fish like a trout. 

It was a beautiful day with a beautiful person.  It is days like these that I hope to remember the rest of our lives.  Awesome father and son time.  We are now planning to meet in Gatlinburg, TN and hitting some rivers from there to Chattanooga.  Should be a heck of a time and fun meeting new fly shop owners and people in the river.  There is nothing quite as fun as fly fishing.

Tight lines!

RobF

Arkansas Fly Fishing

1 comment:

  1. Sounds like an awesome time. Last time I was on the Red, we fished from an arc...can't wait for some low water.

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