Reading the Water, Reading Each Other
What the Son Says
Boulders dwarf my father as he casts to the green water on the far side of the plunge pool. The current has carved the rock the way a bone is worn by time, divoted and eroded by use, easing the flow of snowmelt. A brook trout appears from the crease, its silhouette hovering under the Royal Wulff. The moment the trout relinquishes its doubt and trusts the fly, a deception that marks all fishermen as charlatans, is clouded in the colors and sounds of dappled sides and a sunlight-etched back breaking the surface.
Dad’s line jumps, and I scramble to net the 7 inches of Northern Appalachian brookie. “Worth the trip,” Dad laughs as he reels in the slack.
We’ve driven over 400 miles north to fish remote streams in Green Mountain National Forest.
The native brookies and wild brown trout we catch will run the length of my hand, like their cousins we cradle in our home streams along the Allegheny Front in Pennsylvania. But each year we’re pulled to these waters, strewn with
