Last August, my dad and I took a five-hour detour on a 12-hour drive to fish in Nevada’s Ruby Mountains. He was helping me move from Salt Lake City to Mammoth Lakes in the Eastern Sierra. The Rubies weren’t so far out of the way, he told me.
We pulled over to the side of a gravel road, assembled our rods, and walked past a rickety cabin to the clear stream, where enormous brook trout waited. We spent the next three hours traversing across the riverbank, hoping one would take a dry fly.
“10, 2, 10, 2,” Papa kept saying, reminding me of the proper forehand and backhand casting technique.
I couldn’t figure it out. I kept bending my wrist, dumping my line behind me unnecessarily. By contrast, his cast was crisp and direct. I watched, mesmerized, as he stood ankle-deep in his waders, his tall frame lassoing his line across the sky until he let his fly float naturally atop the current.
But no matter how hard we tried, the trout kept teasing us, wriggling their slippery bodies in the water ahead. Finally, we admitted defeat. We hopped back in the car and finished our trip to Mammoth.
I am not an avid angler. I can’t pretend to know what “the bug” feels like. I’ve caught only one fish in my life, in Upstate New York’s Adirondacks, with my dad by my side.
For me, the beauty of fishing lies in the connection the sport fosters with my dad. When we fish together, he lets me into the way he sees the world. He points to the places where the creatures lie—confluences, eddy lines, and behind big rocks—placing his faith in me that maybe this time it’ll be different. I’ll reel one in and become hooked.
Papa is a self-proclaimed fish addict. He lives in Alta, Utah, but drives three hours each way to fish the Green River in Wyoming multiple times a week. He’s traveled to Argentina and Mongolia to pursue the sport. He tells me that the best fishing is with a dry fly. He compares the strategy to chess.
“I think about fishing all the time,” Papa told me the other day. “I try to incorporate fishing into most of the things I do. Like if I’m going somewhere, I think, “Oh, should I bring a fly rod?”
During his most recent 48-hour visit to Mammoth, he spent both days alongside the Owens. This week, he flew with three fishing rods to visit friends and family in New England. He’d planned fishing trips to bookend his time out East: striper fishing in Duxbury, Massachusetts, and fly fishing in New Hampshire’s White Mountains.
My dad has been fly fishing intermittently over the past decade, but his obsession with the sport is new. He turned to fishing after a Nordic skiing accident in 2022, when he broke a ski pole against his rib. Blood pooled around the lining of his heart, causing traumatic pericarditis and unbearable chest pain. His doctor told him he couldn’t raise his heart rate for three months, or the problem would become chronic.
Papa initially tried other low-intensity activities, like walking and short hikes. But his pain persisted, a sensation he described as “Cholula’s hot sauce” in his chest.
He turned to fly fishing, a sport where he could still be outside while protecting his heart.
“Initially, it was kind of a struggle fest,” he recalled. “But then I really enjoyed it. I liked going to rivers I’d never seen and exploring the outdoors.”
In time, his chest pain resolved, and he was able to return to exertional activities. But he kept coming back to fishing.
“Fishing just became part of me,” he said.
He was enthralled by the time he spent alone in thought, immersed in nature. Often, he brought our family’s border collie, Luna, who learned to love fishing, too. Each new riverbank offered her territory to frolic through, unfettered by the constraints of time or anxious parents. Together, my dad and Luna saw moose, deer, and beavers in an ecosystem dependent on the river.
Eventually, Papa extended his love of fly fishing to my brother and me. When we were home from college over the holidays, he’d take Luna and us on three-hour road trips to Wyoming. One year, he bought us winter fly-fishing gloves for Christmas so we could cast in the snow without freezing our fingers. In December, for his birthday, he visited me again in Mammoth, winter angler gloves in tow. We fished the Owens with Luna to celebrate. In the past five years, not only has my dad become an angler, but he’s also stepped into a new version of himself. Papa is learning to pause and search for fish wherever they may be. I’m not sure I’ll ever catch the bug the way he has, but when I stand in my waders beside him, all I want is a fish on my line. It’s a kind of intimacy only fishing can foster. For that, I am thankful.
