The First Tug is always the Drug!

I can remember vividly my first tug. The first time I fell in love, the first time I hooked into chrome, the first salmon that rocked my world. I have always fallen for my first, and my first steelhead is something that I think about all the time and can remember perfectly. I was about 11 or 12 years old and I was sitting starbord side of the drift boat. My uncle Tom and his freind Mike had taken me down the Rouge River for a fall trout trip. We arived at the take out where we left uncle Tom's truck and jumped into Mike's wagoneer. The entire truck smelled like fish and I know that the night before I sat up not sleeping thinking about the trip watching reruns of Bill Dance Outdoors. We got to the boat ramp and I watched Mike push the boat into the water,and I rememebr I had to pee. I ran across the dew covered grass to the kybo so excited I forgot how wet I had become. I shivered and froze until the sun came up later that morning. Mike had me swinging a nightcrawler all morning and I kept begging to try out the fly rod. I had only been using a fly rod since my birthday and I taught myself how to use it. The VHS tape of Lefty was worn out by the time the trip even took place. I tied on a black bugger with some shot and made my first cast. I can remember being told to just let the water do the work, "don't mend, leave it alone, feed it line", Mike would yell. The fog had lifted off the water and I finally stopped shivering. As we aproched the fork Mike pulled the boat to the left channel and I felt the fly line come tight. Then the reel started making a screaming sound and I yelled "I'm sorry, I snaged it again!" Uncle Tom jumped up yelling to Mike to pull the boat to the right, and told me to shut up and hold on. As the reel started to scream louder I stopped sniveling long enough to look up and see that there was chrome on the end of that rod. I was hooked into a big steelhead and it was hot. The fish was on for only a few minutes as Mike tried to get us over to the fish, but it was to late. I was into the backing and the fish took the right channel, tail walking good bye to the three of us. It was a few years before I made it back to the Rouge to seek my revenge and a few more before I learned the secretss of the ghost. The memory has never left me and it is the same for the first time I hooked a Salmon. I was in Oregon and went fishing with a friend. He said I wouldn't stop telling him about how Steelhead were the only fish that I was into and no matter what he said I wouldn't believe him about Salmon. I had never caught or hooked a salmon in my life. I had lived on the water growing up, yet I never had the chance to hook a salmon. I was finally given the chance and it is a memory I will never forget and one that launched my guiding career into what it has become. It was September I believe and the Salmon had made it into tidewater. I went on the trip still talking about the last summer steelhead I had caught and how it was the best feeling in the world. I was given a rod and told here is where you cast and this is what you do. "Oh and by the way, if you hook something, DON'T THROW THE ROD!!!" I scoffed at the idea and started casting. The river was calm and it was starting to get dark,so I cast one more time into the deeper part of the pool. The line didn't exactly come tight like I had thought it would, it just started moving upstream. I paused and said "hey check this out" before I realized what was happening. Suddenly I started to panic and pulled the line tight as fast as I could. It came tight and started moving upstream even faster. I set the hook again and a fish that seemed to be three and a half feet long flew out of the water and splashed about. Just like that the fish was gone. I am sure now after years of telling this story, that the fish was only about 25 pounds but it is a memory that I never have forgotten. In fact I can remember many of my steelheading and salmon adventures. Each one as exciting as the next but none as powerful a memory as the first tug. As a father now, I look back upon those thoughts and to the first time that my young children hook into something. I guide because of the way my first tug made me feel and I want others to know what that drug feels like. I watch my sons practice spey casting and dragging flies now and keep waiting for the moment that their first tug becomes thier drug. The water spaying off the reel, the sound of line and the reel screaming, the splashing of the fish in the water. All of the sounds I hear when I close my eyes at night. I can feel the morning frost on my face, and the birds as they awaken. This is fishing. This is life.