His first groggy words of the morning expressed his desire to fish the Letort. He knew what he was getting into. An avid reader, he had been picking random volumes out of my fly fishing library for years. He had seen the pictures of the weeds and read the dour words of those recalling the halcyon days. But he had also heard me talking about the hours I spent watching individual trout feed, the weeks of trial and error to make the right cast to a particular fish, and the place the little creek played in my life for a time. And, of course, there were the pictures of the startlingly large brown trout I was able to chance into.
The second day of our father and son fly fishing trip in Pennsylvania’s Cumberland Valley had to be on the region’s spring creeks. Four days’ worth of heavy rain had turned the freestone and limestone-influenced creeks into churning chocolate milk. Those waters had been my primary goal. Thankfully there were other options and a flexible teenager at hand.
After a breakfast with enough calories for a party twice our size, we headed to the Letort Spring Run. I’m not sure if it was my anecdotes, the books he read, or simply his adventurous personality, but he was enraptured by the scene. If he said that it was cool once, he said it a hundred times. We walked slowly. I showed him how fish lay and how they feed in relation to weed beds. We discussed the unpredictable and undulating currents, and how no two casts would yield the same presentation. While all of this instruction was happening, a footlong bronze form propelled itself from under a clump of vegetation to slam his fly. None of the three of us expected it.
After a morning of impersonating herons and carefully aiming backcasts, we drove into town to check off his next request: the Pennsylvania Fly Fishing Museum. This is a boy who loves lore, loves history, and, again, loves reading. This small, self-guided museum is a must-see for anyone who fishes this area or appreciates the legacy of those who came before us. He pored over each display. Every placard was read and every looped video was watched. While I am hardly an angler of any importance, he perceived how my fly fishing intersected with some of the men and moments memorialized in that museum.
His next request was a trip to Big Spring Creek. We spent the afternoon dropping flies into seams, discussing the reason why one would fish a bamboo rod in 2025, and admiring the beauty of the valley. A little wild rainbow came to hand, and I was able to share why this ten-inch fish was more rewarding than some of the 20-inch fish I had caught in “the ditch” decades ago.
The third morning he had the goal-oriented drive of a military marksman. He caught more trout in the first hours of sunlight on that day than he did the previous two combined. His skills had increased dramatically over the course of 48 hours: casting, mending, and detecting strikes. The best kind of ambition hit, too. He wanted a particular fish. So, he targeted said fish and was able to land it. There were a lot of proud dad moments in watching all of that unfold. But it was also a source of joy to see him struggle with that familiar internal debate of ending on a high note with a fish or making one more cast. I didn’t guide him at all on that one.
I am confident that there will be fishing trips in our future where large quantities of big fish will be the lasting, profound memory. But this brief adventure was more about my son walking paths I had described to him since he was old enough to listen. It was also a chance for me to retrace my old fishing footsteps alongside my oldest boy. Both wonderfully reinforced that fly fishing is about much, much more.