The Wooden Box {excerpts}

I was eight years old when Momma first allowed me to go to the Spit by myself. The unnamed fishing hole soon became my favorite hangout, even when there were no fish to be found. An eight year old can always find something to do even when there is nothing to do it with. That spring I had decided that I wanted to try fly fishing in the inlet. I had watched my father fly fish on the Russian River the prior spring. He had let me try it a few times that day, but the hours for fishing were short and he didn’t want to lose them while teaching me. He surprised me about a week later after we had returned to Homer by giving me my own fly rod. When he found time he would teach me to cast and how to tie my own flies. I practiced a lot by myself because Daddy worked so much. Before long I could perform a pretty decent two-handed spey cast. I was swinging my own flies before summer went away that year. Daddy spotted me one day practicing at the small pond on our property. He told me he believed I may have better a two-hand cast than he had, but the real test would come when I was fishing waters that actually had fish in it.

I sat out early that morning to head down to the fishing hole. The sun had just come up and it was still cold enough to see your own breath. There was still snow on the untraveled grounds. To get from the road down to the fishing spot you had to descend a pretty steep bank. That morning there was still snow and ice on the steep bank so I sat down on my butt and slid down, digging my heals in the dirt as I approached the water. Explaining to Momma how I got wet if I happened to end up in the freezing water was not something I wanted to do.

Fishing was slow that morning. It gave me plenty of opportunity to practice my casting. As the morning wore on I wanted to practice my catching. My young arms were starting to get pretty tired. I was never very big growing up and my fly rod was twice as long as I was tall. Casting over and over put strain on the muscles in my arms and my back. I was just about to take a break when I saw the backs of what must have been a million salmon as they crested the water. I jumped back up and grabbed my pole, and then with all the strength I had left in those scrawny eight year old arms I swept the line just above the water and watched as my fly landed with perfect presentation.

The spawning salmon are not really looking for a meal. But if you can irritate them with a fly in their face they are likely to bite at it. Well I made one really mad! I saw her mouth open and then close with lightning speed around my fly. The tip of my rod dove straight down towards the cold water almost bending the pole in half as the salmon turned, heading back out into the inlet. My fly reel began to sing like a fat opera lady as the salmon reeled off the line. The rate of my heart increased to about a million beats per minute. (A million fish and a million beats per minute, when I was eight years old there was only a “few” or a “million”, not much in between).

Then I made the biggest fishing mistake of my young life. I knew that I was supposed to let her play out the line, let her fight for a while.  “She’ll get tired”, my Dad would have said, “Don’t you get tired first. You’ll make mistakes if you do.”

I pulled up with all my might. Just as I did I felt the hook let go. I don’t know if she spit it out or if I just pulled to hard, but either way the sharp hook on that hand tied spey- fly flew right back the way it had come. I wasn’t fast enough to avoid the barbed hooked entering my cheek just below my left eye. The air was cold that day, even more so down by the water where the wind never stops blowing, and the freezing cold air had numbed my face. At first I thought the fly had just smacked me in the face. It hurt like the dickens. If you have never had your near frozen skin smacked then you can’t know the burning pain that is experienced, so take my word, it hurts! As my vision came back into focus I could see the fine strands of the rabbit hair I had used when tying the fly sticking up in my lower vision. I reached up and lightly touched the soft area below my eye, feeling for the hilt of the fly. My fingers found the fly and lightly pulled. The pain was incredible and I knew then that the hook had sunk in deep. Up to that moment I hadn’t cried, but then the tears came on full force. I probably would have sat there on my butt crying until someone came along if my own imagination hadn’t snapped me out of it. I began to wonder if the tears were pouring out of the new hole in my face made by the sharp hook. As my mind’s eye developed this picture I started to laugh, first quietly then out loud.

My laughter didn’t make the pain go away but the tears stopped as quickly as they had started. I wondered what my Dad would have said about me crying like a bumbling baby. I can’t remember Dad ever shedding a tear. His often-stated opinion was, “If you can grow face whiskers then you’re not built to cry.” Never mind that the faces of most boys my age were still as smooth as a skippin’ rock. But he wasn’t there to see my tears and I never told him about the crying part of this story. As far as I know, neither did Old Jacob.

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