A Catch Across Four Generations
For five minutes, I felt like the best fly fisherman in the world.
I was on a mission to recreate a 70-year-old photograph of my great-grandpa.
He was on the bank of the Arkansas River at a time before it was the tailwaters of Pueblo Reservoir. Pipe in mouth, arm outstretched with a net, reaching for a fish. Trees in the background, thick with leaves, just beyond a long-gone wooden railroad bridge, now replaced by a larger steel one. An island full of shrubs in the middle of the flow.
A lot of things needed to line up.
Ray mapping out the photo shoot with his son, Jacob.
My 25-year-old son, Jacob, a photographer and great-great-grandson of Pop, made the trip with me to the Arkansas River to get the shot. I was worried that he might lose interest in the project if I didn’t catch something fairly quickly, and my track record on this stretch wasn’t good. I’d only landed three fish in my five outings and none in this deep, slow-moving water. If I didn’t catch something within an hour, I fully intended to find a stick, hook it with my fly, and hope that it would stir the water in a similar way to Pop’s fish.
The pressure was on.
After leaving the parking lot, the closer we got to the spot the more excited we both got. Though the trees and brush prevented an open view of the water, we could see fish rising in the gentle current, locked in by large branches that hung down into the river.
The fish were hungry and their food was plentiful, delivered on the surface of the water. I thought I might actually be able to catch something.
My son’s excitement spiked as we came to an opening that would allow us to climb down the eight-foot drop to the water. He got down to the thin strip of gravel between the water and the wall between us to watch the fish more closely. They were rising so much that new rings were forming in succession.
I followed his descent and asked him if he could see what they were eating. That is when my five minutes of elite angling began.
We kneeled together to spot the translucent wings of Trico spinners, some clumped in twos and threes. I knew I didn’t have anything with the olive body I saw, but I did have one with black in my fly box.
A box of Pop’s flies with Ray’s Ross reel and Scott fly rod.
My brother had tied this fly a couple of years ago when we were just getting started as tyers. He gave me two when we were fishing together in a swarm of Tricos and I had nothing close to match. I lost one of them, and I thought of him every time I saw this one. What I thought was that I’d never catch a fish on that ugly thing.
It was perfect for today. Its left wing was pressed against its body, and I started to straighten it out until I realized it was exactly what a couple of the little floaters looked like.
I felt a rush of adrenaline, the kind that makes it difficult to thread 5X tippet through the eye of a size 20 hook.
After I tied it on, I opened my box again, as the amateur version of myself told me I needed a double rig if I wanted any chance of catching one of those hogs. My elite fly-fisher self told me to get that fly on the water and hook one of those things now.
A small dab of gink, with a little spread up the line to help it float, and I was ready. I pulled out some line from my reel to give me the 10 feet I needed to drop the fly in the middle of the narrow current that fed three hungry trout.
Bullseye. A quick mend to give a natural float, then 3, 2, 1… the fly was gone, and the fight was on.
As soon as I knew the hook was set, I opened the pocket of my Fishpond chest pack, grabbed my empty pipe and clenched it between my teeth. I let the fish run enough to keep it on the hook, but out of the branches at the back of its dining room.
Everything was lining up - the lens of Jacob’s camera to my right, the bushes in the middle of the river, the railroad bridge in the distance to my left. The scene from 70 years before was playing out as close as any film director could have made happen. All the actors, including the fish, were in their places.
I heard the rapid fire of my son’s camera and knew I was in the middle of something special.
At 9:02 am on Sunday, September 4, 2022, I was reaching out to net a fish in the same pose with the same scene on the same ground that my great-grandpa, Pop, had 70 years earlier.
The adrenaline kept my hands from cooperating for a smooth release of the 16” rainbow. The fly I used to trick the fish went back into the water with it.
A few moments later, in a rush of emotion, I put my head on my son’s shoulder and wept. It was brief but intense. He put his arm around me and shared the tears.
There was a strong but invisible influence on the emotions, one of the most important parts of the story. My 79-year-old dad wasn’t there, but I wish I had invited him. He’s the one who got all this started. I’ve been fishing with him since I was a kid, fly-fishing since I was a teenager.
When I started tying flies four years ago, he gave me a little black notebook and a stack of index cards that Pop made back in the 1960s. These two treasures contain almost 170 drawings of flies representing 99 different patterns—each fly with a recipe in Pop’s handwriting.
I became enamored of these treasures, with Pop’s life, and with this picture of him on the bank of the Arkansas River. My dad and I went searching and found it together in March. The emotions were just as strong that day, and the mission to recreate the photograph began.
When it all came together, at the moment that everything aligned, I was a great-grandson, a son, a brother and a dad, and the best fly fisherman in the world.
