Shippin' out, onto Highway 20, headed east into the wilderness, like a giant ship with a giant goal. Big fish.
She smiles and carries my tackle to the riffly water of Northside Park. It is light outside, but not sunny yet. The riverside alders hiding the sunlight, and the water looks purple, like a vein of the stream, pulsing with the thought of a traveling steelhead.
I step, awkwardly and clumsily, among a crop of bowling-ball sized rocks, and out into the stream. She laughs, probably thinking I am about to get wet from falling. I don't fall, and cast 30 or so times.
I see a small salmon jump, right in the choppy water I am fishing.
We spend a half an hour there. No steelhead.
On the road to Clear Lake, high in the Oregon Cascades, Alexa remembers Cascadia Park and a school field trip. The outdoors feels like home to her. And me.
She smiled all day, ate donuts and hoagies, drank Grape Gatorade, and netted her own fish. This photo gallery is a tribute to a great attitude and an awesome fisher, Alexa Jones.
We fished flies, buggers and nymphs, we fished lures, Rooster Tails and Rapalas. We caught fish. We lost fish.
She watched fish, as they followed her lure to the boat. And she wore sunblock. Watching her land a trout with a net reminded me why I fish.
Days on the water, lead to memories that span generations. Live without regret and enjoy waters.
Cherish time on the water with kids.
In the end, It was I who caught only the biggest of the trout, I did not catch the most. But I might have had the most fun.
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