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by Dave Hrbacek | The Catholic Spirit

Fishing Retreat

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ST. ZENO

St. Zeno of Verona lived in the fourth century and is the patron saint of fly fishing anglers. A group of parishioners at St. Michael and St. Mary in Stillwater, led by Father Jake Anderson, who served at the parish from 2015 to 2018, formed a fly fishing club in 2016 and named it St. Zeno Anglers. They commissioned local artist Nick Markell to create an icon for the group, which each year is blessed at an annual men’s fly fishing retreat led by Father Anderson and given to one member to take home and keep until the next retreat.

Pat Houlton, a member of the group who helped start the annual retreat, had it in his home for two years (he was not able to attend the retreat last year) and passed it to Todd Knaeble during a special ceremony May 22 after the retreat’s opening Mass. Houlton’s wife, Janet, has been battling cancer, and he said it was meaningful to have the icon in their home during the last two years. Also, it was Janet who discovered that St. Zeno is the patron saint of fly anglers and informed Pat. During his opening talk of the retreat this year, Father Anderson talked about St. Zeno, who lived in Verona, Italy. He noted that the saint “was a great fisherman” who often went fishing in the river that flowed through Verona, which is why art depicting him often includes a fish dangling from his crosier.

85, wholeheartedly embraces this retreat for similar reasons. He has been on all four of them and he attends most of the local outings, too.

He is known to take naps in between fly fishing sessions, but he is fully awake to the benefits of this type of gathering, and to having men of faith, including Father Anderson, to share a stream with.

“They’re all deeply faithful men, Catholic men,” Kriesel said. And “the families that they’re raising — the younger guys — are absolutely amazing.”

He reserved the strongest words of praise for Father Anderson, whom he honored during a campfire tribute on the first evening of the retreat.

“God bless you, Father Anderson,” Kriesel said, as applause broke out among the men encircling the embers. “You’re the glue for this whole thing, you really are. You give us the heart, the spirit — and you out-fish all of us.”

That last remark drew hearty laughter from the men, but it’s true. On the first afternoon of fishing, Father Anderson worked a short stretch of flowing water and landed more than a dozen trout in conditions all the men described as very difficult. Seeing him ply the waters with his fly rod, it’s clear that his is a refined craft, performed with hands as skilled as a sculptor’s.

The men who came this year ranged in age from 28 to 85, and that is part of the draw. Some of them are young fathers who like to fish and pray together with men who have decades of experience in both raising children and working in the professional world. The older men are eager to share what they have learned throughout their lives, including the art of fly fishing. The men vary in skill when it comes to casting for trout. That’s why they are divided into teams of two or three, with experienced fly anglers on each team assigned to help beginners and novices. Houlton, in addition to helping organize the retreat, serves as one of its main fly fishing mentors, a role he relishes.

After doing it for more than 30 years and sharing the sport with all five of his sons, he finds joy in continuing to help others catch fish. He also likes the friendships he has formed through both the retreat and St. Zeno club events. They are what keep him coming back.

“It’s just great fellowship,” said Houlton, who taught Father Livingston how to fly fish. “As men, we bond through activity. ... And, the fly fishing allows us to have an activity that we can share together.”

It also opens the door to more serious topics while sitting around a campfire at night — like the battle Houlton’s wife, Janet, is fighting with cancer, and the battle his son-in-law’s sister is also fighting with cancer. Fishing first and talking later is, perhaps, an indirect road to the things that matter in life. But, it is a destination these men always reach during the retreat.

“If you put men together in something like this,” Houlton said, “then they will talk more freely and they will talk about things — and, I think, more personal things. It opens that up.”

It is why Houlton declares: “This is my kind of retreat.”

The oldest man at this year’s gathering, Buzz Kriesel,

Make no mistake — fierce competitiveness burns within Father Anderson. He does not like to lose a fish, and he definitely does not like to get skunked (that rarely happens). Yet, he would never measure a trip by its trout. In the end, fly fishing is but the means to something deeper, something greater. From beginning to end, there is no mistaking what he is really aiming for on this retreat — helping the men deepen their relationship with Christ.

The men know that. This is the true bounty they take back home to their families, in addition to any trout that fall under their fillet knives.

Their wives know that, too. Travis Amiot, 42, said even though his wife teases him about calling three days of fly fishing a “retreat,” she is on board with him leaving her and their children for a few days to share fly rods and fellowship with the other men.

“She knows the quality of the men that are coming, and she knows for sure I’m better for coming,” he said. “She likes to give me a hard time by joking that it’s not really a retreat. But, in the end, she knows that coming here, the notes that I’ll take from what Father Jake says, and the time with these guys, we’ll be a better family because of it.”