Bittersweet

e rst trout

I ever caught on a y took a garish purple patch of feathers and cloth I’d seen in a souvenir shop and bought blind, without a clue. A 15-year-old boy who’d never heard of nymphs or match-the-hatch, yet yearned to sh the way real anglers do. Somehow, dragging the thing deep like a sodden worm behind a pair of lead shot, I hooked a sh. “I caught a trout! I caught a trout! On a y!” I cried.

Of countless sh hooked, or yet to hook, that ageless thrill, none has meant so much, or will.

Kent Cowgill is a retired English professor living in Winona, Minn., with an abiding passion for steelhead angling in the tributaries of Lake Michigan. His most recent books are a travel narrative, Back in Time: Echoes of a Vanished America in the Heart of France, and a ction collection, Sunlit Ri es and Shadowed Runs: Stories of Fly shing in America. Both are available on Amazon.