My little brother and the ugly fish

As children, my brothers and I would wander outside for most of the day, partly because we belonged outside as well as knowing that our mother would put us to work had we stayed inside. The house we lived in was in the middle an Idaho farm, full of potato fields and irrigation ditches. Our backyard lay on the border of the Arco desert; we would stand on the edge of the desert and look on as it went seemingly forever. During the month of November the irrigation ditches or canals as we called them, would empty out. At the bottom of the canals would be puddles full of fish. Most of the fish were bottom feeding sucker fish, with a few other types of fish in the mix. A sucker fish is one of the ugliest creatures known to man, with a long scaly body, big bulging eyes, and a sucker type mouth on the bottom of the head. As a fisherman, a sucker is always an unwelcome catch, and is often killed or given to Mexicans before being considered to be thrown back into the murk. One late fall day in November in 1996, my brother Russell and I convinced our younger brother Spencer that these sucker fish needed saving before the puddles dried up. We found many, but eventually Spencer found one that must have been ten pounds, and uglier than any I had ever seen. To this day I still have nightmares about my younger monkey-like brother holding this giant, ugly monster half his size, its hideous mouth pulsating as it hung there seemingly motionless. I remember his compassion as he was eager to help the ugliest and lowliest of creatures, with trout being at the other majestic end of the spectrum. I remember thinking it amazing that he could treat a sucker fish with this much respect, yet people all over cannot treat other people with even that much respect.

The yellow canyon and the Teton River with my Pals.

November 7, 2009
Many years ago, when I was a young boy, my mother would tell me about the breaking of the Teton Dam and how much damage had been caused. Caleb and Cory had decided to fly fish the Teton River with me, just below the remains of the old dam. They are always welcome fishing pals, due to the fact that they know how to fish and good conversations always ensue. The day turned out to be cold and rigid and the wind was much stronger in the canyon. I tied a sculpin to the end of my line and hoped for the best. Cory had borrowed one of my number eight leech patterns and had caught a twelve inch hybrid covered in dark algae growth; it was the unhealthiest looking trout I had ever seen. That had turned out to be the only catch of the whole trip to the canyon. I stood on the edge of the river admiring the beauty that God had created, and how it had hammered through the dam that man had made. What had been left of the dam were just the very edges of the wall, as well as some structures that now served no purpose, what was left was a ghost. We explored around in the golden canyon and rolled some boulders down the mountainside. While doing this we came upon a doe in the brush, she sprang off and looked back occasionally to see us and what we were doing. It embarrassed me to think that she might have been watching us the whole time, while we were tossing rocks down the mountain like yetis, wondering what the heck we were thinking. There is a loud and obnoxious excitement that comes over a man when a large rock is rolled down a mountain, and the boy deep down inside comes out of hiding.

November 4, 2009 - Solitude

Standing on the bank of the Henry’s Fork of the Snake River, I observed a place remembered. We had all been there a few months earlier in midsummer. Everything was green and alive at that time, and so was my soul. Now things were different, the world was full of yellows, reds, and browns; autumn was in full swing and ready to give way to winter at any moment. There was a place on the bank of the river that had looked promising. I fish alone due to prefernce, but also due to the fact that nobody will go fly fishing with me anymore. I tied a number four sculpin to the end of my line, hoping to catch the attention of the biggest trout in the river. After a while the sculpin yielded no results so I tied a dry fly on for memories sake. The wishing and whirring sound that is made when the line passes back and forth in the air above my head always gives my soul peace and therapy. Although no fish were interested in taking a bite on my number sixteen blue wing olive, I was happy for a moment. The weather was around seventy degrees, which was amazing and almost unheard of for a November in Idaho. The songs of the summer are gone, and the songs of that summer may be gone forever. The only song I heard as I stood on the bank without a trout was that of the soft autumn breeze…

The Begining

While talking with my Grandfather last week, I realized that this world is full of stories, with stories from my own family being of most interest to me. Most of the posts will be stories from my life, and stories that I find to be noteworthy. If you are reading this, you are the resistance...