On the morning of March 9th my sister, Megan, called to tell me that dad had passed. We were en route home, halfway between Montana and Oregon, at a hotel in Idaho. Despite our best efforts, we had missed the final farewell. We pushed on, a morose drive along the Columbia. It happened to be my wife’s birthday. Dad had always liked her best. At Megan’s house, we gathered for a family dinner, and took joy and solace in the cheerful play of our collective children. As we arranged for dad’s service, another cloud loomed as the smoldering COVD-19 pandemic plumed into a conflagration. Inevitably, we canceled the service and shifted attention to other complex and unpleasant family matters. With nothing left to do, the sensible thing was to return home and brace for the ramifications of a national lockdown.
Like a needle in a haystack, lost amid this web of chaos, was the opportunity to mourn the loss of my father. Throughout the turmoil of the father/son relationship, specifically, the abyss between a teenage boy and a middle-aged man, our shared love of hunting and fishing was the glue that kept us together, and empowered us to forgive and forget the petty disputes that we, too often, allowed to overpower the deep love that exists between us. My dad was a good man that worked really hard to provide for his family. He was extremely supportive and proud of all of us, and this love deserved reflection. I needed this too.
Following an unprecedented earthquake that shook our house in Missoula, the skies broke loose with a resurrection of winter, and I waited for the storm to settle before hitting the river. “Social Distancing” was a new buzzword, but I would’ve fished solo regardless. I sorted through dad’s Deschutes-centric fly boxes, the compartments stuffed with Sofa Pillows, Elk Hair Caddis, Green Butt Skunks, and his favorite fly, the Renegade. I found the ones that I had tied for him, and the noticeably better store-boughts that I had gifted prior to his annual foray to Whiskey Dick’s, the famed water on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation. My dad represented the tribe for his entire law career, and once a year, during the Pi-Ume-Sha Treaty Days celebration in June, we were granted access to the forbidden fruit in the form of brick-shithouse “redsides”, the native rainbow of the Deschutes.
I plucked two mint condition Renegades from his box and added them to my collection of foam flies and parachutes relevant to western Montana. I recalled the first time that Dad came out to here to fish with me some 15 years ago. Despite my local knowledge, he leaned on the Renegade and I learned that the trout of the Clark Fork watershed couldn’t resist the timeless dry fly.
I called by buddy Mike, another Central Oregon native who relocated to Missoula well before I did, and he kindly granted me access to prime wade water via his property. My Brittany, Skookum, so named for the creek that trickled into the Deschutes above Whiskey Dick’s, explored the woods and kicked the ducks off the slough on the walk to the river. My dad had Brittanies, so I always have too. On a relatively warm April afternoon, there were stoneflies and mayflies about and the fish were taking advantage. I made a few casts with my preferred foam dry fly, raised a fish or two, and concluded that I should let these trout rest, and return later. I hiked downstream to the serenades of sandhill cranes and honkers, and found a pod of rising trout on the far bank. After better fishing than I deserved, I hiked back upriver, and perched on a streamside log. I removed the foam fly, dropped to 4x, and attached one of dad’s Renegades. I sat there awhile. A head wind teased a pending storm front from the Bitterroots. The weather system had likely originated in the Cascades, then passed the Blues and Wallowas, and I reflected on our times together: decades in those mountains and the arid river chasms that drain them. I recalled our adventures to Belize and Guatemala, and for the first time in nearly a month since he passed, I really missed my dad but felt his presence. I toted Skookum across the river, dropped her on an island, and approached the rising trout, Renegade in hand.
On one of my first drifts a fish took. I set the hook, and from the other side, I heard dad’s infectious laugh at the effectiveness of an age-old dry fly pattern designed to imitate nothing. The trout wasn’t very big but I broke it off, and knew that in my period of reflection, I had managed to tie a shitty knot. My dad always stressed the importance of a good knot, and here, once again, his son had ignored his sage advice. I snipped the end of the frayed tippet and plucked the last Renegade from my box. Skookum, bless her heart, watched chest deep in the frigid water. She was either ready to go home or transfixed on the gravity of the moment.
I missed another eat, and the cloud cover waned momentarily, taking the risers with it. I waited and watched, and as the calm before the storm loomed, I made a blind cast into a soft current break and a fish rose to the fly. I slipped the beautiful Westslope Cutthroat into the net, a native fish, caught on a simple fly that belonged to an angler eternally linked to native people, a renegade of sorts himself. I submerged the net and the fish returned home. I clipped my last Renegade, returned it to the fly box, went home, and played with dad’s grandkids until the sun went down.
