TAKE ME FISHING, DAD

TAKE A KID FISHING

A RELUCTANT FATHER, AN EAGER SON, AND A TRIP TO A POND

Author Bjorn Dihle’s 3½-year-old son Shiras is a fishing fanatic. His dad tolerates the activity these days, so when Shiras begged Pops to wet a line, there was no real chance to say no. (BJORN DIHLE)

BY BJORN DIHLE

“Let’s go fishing!” my 3½-year-old son Shiras yelled. The deer rut was just kicking o and Shiras had interrupted my daydreams of big bucks. I’d been preoccupied by a lot of things, including the need to fill the freezer with venison, but going fishing was low on the list.

I’m not a big fisherman. I don’t dislike it, but I only do it for food or, when I commercially fished, for money. Still, my boy’s eyes vacillated between insanity and desperation as he wielded a broken fishing rod over his head like a 40-pound Conan the Barbarian.

“There’s not much to catch … It’s too late in the season … Ouch! Stop hitting me!” I yelled.

It wasn’t the first time Shiras beat me with a broken Ugly Stik. In all fairness, I had it coming. He’d been asking to go fishing almost every day for months. He’d had a pretty good season, for a 3-year-old: experiencing a handful of Dolly Varden missions in early summer; netting sockeye with friends up the Taku River in July; trolling for coho in August.

Shiras’s younger brother Theron is a little too young to get into serious fishing yet, so examining and playing with a tote of sockeye will su ce

these days. (BJORN DIHLE)

As I did my best to dodge his flurry of swings, I remembered how when I was a little kid I was nearly as obsessed with fishing as him. If my dad couldn’t take me, I’d either despair or ride my bike to go cast for Dollies or jig for bottomfish.

But my interest in fishing fizzled out during my adolescence. My dad would try to get me to go fishing with him and I’d decline with a lame excuse like needing to watch a seemingly important basketball game on television.

Even worse than my son beating me was knowing that if I didn’t take him fishing, he’d spend the next hour alternating between casting in a mud puddle in a backyard and torturing his little brother Theron by pretending he was a fish and catching him.

“Let’s go,” I said.

Shiras whooped, smacked me with THERE ARE A FEW beaver ponds that hold some trout near where we live. I threw together our kit, which consisted of plenty of snacks, warm clothes and Shiras’s collapsible Eagle Claw pole. I loaded Theron into a backpack and the three of us, along with our dog, headed o into the woods.

Fog hung low on the forest, the brush was frosted and there was not a breath of breeze. A buck had recently walked the trail we were traveling. There are few deer in the area and I generally just see sign during the rut when the bucks are really moving. I explained to Shiras what was going on; his eyes lit up and he said, “Let’s go hunting!”

We passed by some sloughs and were walking along a pond when we heard a big

Shiras on a happier day with a Dolly Varden to interact with. (BJORN DIHLE)

On the way back home after fishing, when Shiras asked his impatient dad if he liked fishing, it was a question the author had to carefully answer for the sake of his sons. “It took me back to being a kid, glued to the television, while my dad tried to get me to go fishing with him,” he writes. “Right then, I loved fishing so much it made my chest ache.”

(BJORN DIHLE)

splash. I assumed it was a beaver slapping its tail. But a red salmon leapt out of the gray waters. Other salmon jumped. There’s a small run of late coho here and it looked like we were witnessing the peak of their spawning. I crossed my fingers there’d be more trout and Dollies that had followed to feast on their eggs.

I set Theron free at a sandy beach and he immediately grabbed a handful of leaves, then toddled to the shore to throw them in the water. Unlike his older brother, he respected natural boundaries and I didn’t need to worry much about him falling in or even getting his feet wet. When Shiras was his age, I couldn’t keep him out of the water – even during cold winter days.

I attached a spinner with a single barbless hook to the line and ducked and dodged as Shiras whipped his rod around. He insisted on casting all by himself, but after a while let me help him. I’d cast and

he’d reel in. After a half hour without luck, he looked up at me, disappointed, and asked why we weren’t catching fish.

Noticing some fry swimming along the shore, he waded in and began chasing them, figuring he’d have a better chance of catching something that way. He was soon soaked to the waist but, despite the temperature being in the mid-30s, shouted with glee and kept me updated on all his near misses.

I WANTED THE BOY to catch something, so I started casting seriously. I thought back to a stream on Chichagof Island that had been filled with trout when I’d walked up a few months ago. The creek went through a number of karst caves and at the mouth of one was a couple hundred trout. Most were between 10 and 12 inches, but there was a small school of bigger fish a little way o . I’d wished my boys and dad had been there to see

I tried to bribe him with a jellybean. He negotiated for three and, only then, came out of the water. At that moment he realized he was hypothermic and possibly on the verge of freezing to death. I changed him into dry clothes and, with Theron asleep on my back, we began the walk home.

“DO YOU LIKE FISHING?” Shiras asked.

The question caught me o guard. It took me back to being a kid, glued to the television, while my dad tried to get me to go fishing with him. Right then, I loved fishing so much it made my chest ache.

“Yeah, going fishing is the best,” I said. ASJ

them and maybe catch a few.

I put the rod down and was playing with Theron when Shiras yelled, “I caught something!” He waded to shore and proudly displayed a leech that was busily trying to sink its teeth into his flesh. I complimented him on his catch and gave him the option of keeping it for dinner.

I plucked a coho fry out of the water, then dropped it into Shiras’s cupped hands. He studied the baby fish for a few moments and, with my encouragement, dropped it back in the water. Nearby, a flash of red stirred the gray waters. An adult coho was digging its nest in preparation to lay her eggs. It struck me then that the salmon had stopped jumping and now the pond was still. Sun rays were shining through the fog. Theron was beginning to nod o and I needed to get him home for a nap. I told Shiras it was time to go.

“Never! I’m going to stay here forever!” he yelled back. Editor’s note: Bjorn Dihle is a lifelong Alaskan and the author of the book A Shape in the Dark: Living and Dying with Brown Bears. Order it at amazon.com/Shape-Dark-Living-Dying-Brown/dp/1680513095.