Fishing with the boy: Steelheader.net- Steelhead, Salmon and trout fishing

It will happen sooner than you think! Quick (sort of) story.....
Ive been taking both my boys Steelheading for quite a few years now. I convinced my wife I was making them 'tougher' as an excuse to get them out on winter Steelhead camping trips also. But when they were younger what worked best is if we just set up a camp and plunked for the weekend. Both my boys first Steelies came this way but it was still "plunking". Fast foward to Labor Day weekend, uh....I think it was 2003. Took the whole fam out to the Hoh river with DB in tow. At this point in my kids lifes I always thought that your typical Steelhead setups were too complicated for them and so I was drift fishing and I had both of them pitching spinners. We are about halfway through our drift when I anchored up and dropped a couple of plugs. My older son starts rummaging through my tackle box and finds something that catches his eye. He askes me what they were, I tell him what they are and what they are trying to immitate. He takes a good long hard look at them, turns it around in his hand like he was inspecting a diamond for his true love or something and looks at me and says "I want to use this, how do set it up?". so I help him set it up as I usually do, under a float. We get the rig tied up. I told him casting a float is a bit different and pointed over to a little seam in the river and had him practice a couple of casts as I pulled the plugs in and get ready to move on. Plug rods in the boat I am now pulling the anchor up and about to lock it in (back then my anchor lock was still in the back of the boat) and lay the rode down in the boat as to not tangle with anything....and I hear "dad..dad...DAD!" I turn around and my sons rod is bent over almost into the water and dancing like you wouldnt believe. I'll never forget the look on his face. Confusion mixed with excitment with a touch of fright.

My wife thinks I am sometimes morbid because I classify the best memories as the ones I hope I see when 'my life flashes before my eyes'. I dont have alot of them that immediatly come to mind, but this was positively one of them.

Well, fishing being what it is, he gets the fish to the boat. Its a beautiful hatchery hen, probably about 7 or 8 pounds. I have the net ready but the rod, by the way, is a 5 foot trout rod and he cant reach far enough to get the fish close enough for me to net (my other son and dog were also in the boat) and so I ask him to hand me the rod.....

Till this day I cannot explain what exactly happened, he habded off the rod to me and the second he let go of it the fish came off the hook like it was never hooked in the first place. It didnt shake or try to make another run or do anything spectacular that I could try to blame it on, it just fell off. My son has not let me live this down yet and Im sure that after years of fishing together someday we will be at fishcamp, me an old fart and he will tell the story about how his dad lost his first steelhead. And you know what? Because I know he will always remember that day and it will remain something we tease eachother about all the way to the grave. I'll take the blame for that anyday.

All my best fishing memories are with my kids.

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"Should of been here yesterday"