How a Failed Fishing Trip Changed My Appreciation for Family Traditions

One day last year, I asked my father what he loved about fishing. A wistful look came over him.

“There’s just something about standing hip-deep in a Montana trout stream,” he replied, “or on the bank of a Vermont lake shaded by pines.”

I nodded, then pointed out to him that he’d never done either of those things.

Fantasy and reality commingle on the angler’s plane. A hardened realist doesn’t continue to stuff clattering rods into the back of the hatchback, results be damned. Even on those occasions when the fish deign to bite, the moment exists within a larger fantasy that this is somehow a Special Thing, and not just a scaly animal on the end of some string.

My dad, 82, absorbed my correction but merely shrugged. In his earliest memories he’s prowling Long Island Sound for flounder and bass. Asking what he loves about fishing is like asking a bear what it likes about being a bear. The hook is set too deep to be appraised.

There’s no hook in me, though not for lack of opportunity. In a somewhat desultory Virginia childhood, fishing with my father was a recurring motif. Even during my parents’ separation, we’d find our way to a pond or a shady riverbank fairly regularly. The memories lurk beneath a rippled surface: My dad tangled in line, cursing at knots. The clang of the tackle box in the metal canoe. The tuna sandwich, beckoning.

Mostly there was waiting. How many hours did I pass on muddy banks, index finger bent, waiting for a twitch? The anticipation surged through my little body—then gradually gave way to questions. How long is this operation going to take, exactly? How do we know the fish are even hungry? Then, a little older, Maybe this isn’t really my thing? At 18, I walked away from it all, toward wilder adventures, oblivious to the homing device that would go off when I had a son of my own.

So, on a recent Friday, I found myself approaching the bank of a lake shaded by pines. After my decades-long hiatus, I’d decided to take my dad and 11-year-old son, Casper, on a fishing trip of our own, before either of them aged out of such a thing. For three days we would catch our meals in the grandeur of Oregon’s Mount Hood National Forest, all dense, misty firs and streams dark and cold; here and there a massive eagle. It feels almost jarringly wild there, the kind of forest where you go to disappear, though somehow it’s within striking distance of civilization. A person can fly into PDX at 9, hit an artisanal Eritrean food truck by 10, and at noon be in woods so thick the sun can’t penetrate.

We’d reserved a campsite near Timothy Lake, a vast shimmering jewel plopped in the center of all these pines. Whatever fishing represents to my dad, I wanted to give him a chance to pass it on to his grandson. As for Casper, I wanted him to enjoy the same nature fantasies I’d indulged on those childhood fishing expeditions—living by your wits, surviving off the land. Maybe it’s silly to foist fantasies on someone. But as the generational guardian of old-school hook-through-worm living, I felt obliged, if only to give my boy something to write about decades hence.

If it’s a cinematic, gear-forward fishing adventure you seek, look elsewhere; that’s not our brand. We are campsite-too-close-to-the-restroom people, futz-with-the-rusty-reel people. What we lack in mastery we make up for in proximity to a simpler time. No screens! Minimal expertise! Three generations concerned only about catching dinner!

Dramatis personae: Casper is rapidly shedding his kid skin for preadolescence. He’s sporty and pensive, a speedy left back and a thinker of big thoughts. In a month he’ll start taking the city bus by himself, and I’ll start scrolling through baby photos.

My dad’s a handsome fella, an affable New York Jew who stops strangers to admire their babies or try out a Russian phrase he’s been practicing. He knows one song—“Stormy Monday”—and calls all dogs boys. He’s been known to carry a stick of butter in the center console of his Honda. He would like to tell you about the Battle of Crete.

More than anything else, though, my dad’s an optimist. Angling or otherwise, he is undeterred. It’s a quality I admire more and more the older I get. There are worse ways to move through life than with unblinking faith in your next cast.

After pitching our tent, our first stop was a narrow stream feeding the lake from its south end. It seemed to me too shallow for any self-respecting fish, but my father noticed a promising pool shaded by a rock overhang. Nestling his tackle box in some reeds, he began tying our lures.

We stood quietly and started casting, the occasional red-winged blackbird trilling into the silence. In time I realized what it was saying: No fish live in this water.

On to Timothy Lake proper, where Oregon was really doing its thing. Warm pine needle carpet. Sun slanting through tree line. Gentle lapping of wavelets. We reached the water’s edge, and immediately a fat mullet hurled itself into the air.

Over the next hour we threw out a hundred casts from the shore—jigs, topwaters, spinnerbaits. We cast so many times that my dad caught one of his own lures, lost to an earlier snag. But no fish lived in this water.

Baffled, we retreated to our campground. Dusk fell, and we fried up a couple of rib eyes that, thankfully, my dad had suggested we buy, even though we had planned to catch and eat fish constantly.

Snug in our sleeping bags, eager for the next day’s glories, we read ourselves to sleep by lantern.

Illustration by Andrea Cheung

The next morning, I scrambled eggs, and then we hit a different spot in the lake. No fish lived there. That was fine, we found another. No fish lived there, either. We found a floating dock leading far out into the water. Fish obviously lived there. We cast for an hour. No fish lived there.

Walking back to our site, Casper pantomimed catching a trout.

”It’s getting away!” he said.

I maneuvered an imaginary net. Could we imagine catching a fish so vividly that it actually scratched our itch? We were debating this possibility when a St. Bernard came bounding onto the path.

”Sorry, that’s Stella,” a woman called out.

“Good boy,” my dad said.

I noticed the woman was packing up a tent.

“Big storm coming,” she said. “Lightning, hail. Pretty extreme.”

Hard to believe; the sky was Simpsons blue. Thirty minutes later, a thousand timpani rumbled through the forest. For three courageous minutes we debated staying. The next rumble decided for us. Securing our stuff at the site as best we could, we jumped in the car and bombed up to the town of Government Camp. We found a room just before the lightning and hail began.

Lying in my hard motel bed, I felt something strange. I was sad. I wanted us to catch a fish. My indifference to this sport went deep—but somehow, suddenly, so did this desire. I wanted my father and son to shriek at that initial tug, I wanted them to crank the reel frantically, and then, while the world outside our campsite spun further into madness, I wanted that fish to sizzle in our pan on a chilly Oregon night.

When I woke the next morning, I knew it would be so. The sky was blue again and every unbitten hook had, I saw now, taken us closer to the statistical inevitability of a catch. We hauled back to the campground. I was inspecting our storm-soaked gear when my dad mumbled something.

“What?” I asked.

“They’re gone.”

The fishing poles. In our haste to flee, we’d left them out, right by the road.

Not much was said for a while. We shook the water off the tent and stuffed our sleeping bags into sacks. I told Casper how sorry I was about the poles and proposed we distract ourselves with a walk by the lake. He agreed, a good sport.

Down by the water, there was no evidence of the previous night’s storm. We skipped stones, and my dad fiddled with his pocketknife.

Suddenly, an idea.

“Why don’t we just jump in?” I said.

Casper’s eyes widened. And then, without a word, he was kicking off his sneakers.

I dove right in; Casper made the mistake of testing the water first. It wasn’t exactly warm.

“Maybe I’ll just read?” he said.

“That’s fine!” I called over my shoulder, swimming farther out.

Among my parental vows: No shaming the kids into acts of bravery. But I noticed my father had put away his knife and taken interest in the situation. Suddenly, I knew what was coming.

“Hey,” he said to Casper. “I thought you were tough.”

Maybe it was naive to think three Colins could go fishing without once slipping into an intergenerational collision of some sort, but something in me fired.

”Dad,” I shouted, and then, with some saltiness, shared my position on the policing of manliness.

”What?” he replied. Shoulders up, theatrical innocence. “I was kidding!” Irritation at my irritation.

“It’s OK,” Casper assured both deranged parties.

Poor guy, caught between two ancient grinding plates. But he handled it just right. He pulled off his shirt and soon we were both bobbing out where that mullet had jumped Friday. I tried to grasp how impossibly soon he would be a middle-aged man, and then an older one, but I couldn’t get there.

For now, there was just me and my son and the hundreds of brook trout and cutthroat and kokanee and bullhead and bass no doubt swimming around us—weaving through our legs, snickering at our bad luck this weekend. But our luck was remarkable. I treaded water and stared at Casper’s great toothy smile, and the sweet look of his ears when his hair is wet.