Skip to main content

Jared's Adams Fly - A Father's Memory

Guest Blogger
By R. Conrad Schultz

I don’t recall his age at the time.  Somewhere in that age of finding himself.  Still in the blush of innocense.  Maybe fourteen or fifteen.  He had acquired the art of tying dry flies.  Something that takes patience and perseverance.  Actually quite good at all types of flies, he mastered the Adams.  Beautiful tail and body.  Seldom did he put on a palmer hackle but the shoulder hackle was just about perfect.  The wings consisting of the ends of the hackle were always pert and upright.

For some reason that has been lost in the annals of time Bill Spangler and I had acquired a gold mine.  I know, sounds preposterous.  Well it was.  We had to travel to John Day and then Canyon City to prove our claim.  Wasn’t much but exploring the area and clearing a little of the road.

Jared went along and we all had our fly rods in the back of the rig. Somewhere in the desert on the way back we came across a little stream that appeared that it needed to be fished.  It wasn’t large by western Oregon standards and as it wandered through the desert the willows had grown along its banks.  It was clear and rippling in places and then slowing to a gentle sweep around the bends.

Jared had a number of his hand tied flies and picked out one of the best Adams in the fly box. In our family you only fished with your own hand tied flies or one of another family member. It was a disgrace to fish with a store bought fly.  With tennis shoes and jeans he waded out a little to the center of the stream.

He stood for a long time observing the water and its many currents and the shadowed water under the willows.  There it was.  Just a small dimple on the water.  There, again the same, only a little downstream.  Something was working the may flies under the willows.  Crouching, concentrating and careful in his movement he began the smooth graceful presentation of the Adams.  A little slurping and slight boil of water and with a gentle lift of the rod he was hooked up with a beautiful trout. 

As time has dimmed the memory I cannot recall the size or the specie.  But I shall never forget the feeling of joy I felt for him at that moment.  Oh, I know that in the order of things that this was not a moment of time to be remembered.  But I will remember,  because it represented goodness and a father proud of his son.  Not pride because he had tied an Adams and caught a nice trout, but pride because I knew what he would become.  He would be a father and a man of God serving and teaching others.  He would be successful in his occupation and have a wonderful family. 

All that from an Adams?  Well maybe!  There seems to be a thread that endlessly connects the good things of the earth with the heavenly things of the earth.  You can have both in this life.

That is the goodness of a loving Heavenly Father.

(Editors note: This is a story written by my Father and shared with me several years ago. It is an experience he had with my younger brother Jared. If you enjoyed this story of a father and son fishing, then you might also enjoy this post entitled The One That Got Away.)
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lessons I learned from a childhood experience with bullying

By Stephen C. Schultz The dew around the window was starting to bead up. In a classic case of chaos theory, the little beads of water gave way to gravity and randomly bounced and bumped their way to the window sill like a steal marble in a pinball game. There was a small pool of water in the cracked and peeling beige paint. I sat facing the window, staring at the small engraved stone nestled in the flower beds. There weren’t many flowers at this time of year. Mostly rhododendrons and Oregon grapes reaching skyward from the damp bark mulch that covered the planter area.   The month of January in Eugene Oregon was filled with days and days of mist and fog.   In fact, pretty much from October through June was filled with fog, rain, mist, showers, freezing rain and occasionally snow. The local weathermen didn’t bother with predictions about the chance of precipitation; they took pride in developing new adjectives to describe the type of precipitation and how much you can expect.
10 comments
Read more

Perfectly Wicked - A new take on an old fairy tale!

Guest Blogger Amanda Schultz Age 15 There she was…hair as black as night, lips as red as blood, skin as white as snow. Standing by the window, washing dishes, whistling while she worked. Snow White. I shudder with disgust every time I hear her name. What kind of a name is that anyway? “Snow White”. Gahhh, it’s a name that practically begs to be made fun of. Yet, there she goes, frolicking around like she owns the Enchanted Forest. No. I’m the Queen. I’m in charge. My magic mirror was mistaken. I’m the Fairest of them all, not that sorry excuse for a princess. One bite from my poison apple and that air-head will be so ugly not even her mother could love her. And I will be the Fairest once again! I suppose that I should rewind a little bit. It wasn’t always a competition between Snow White and me. In fact, back in the day, we had a nice little system going on. I would rule the kingdom and practice my magic, while Snow did the dishes and tended the garden. She stayed out of my w
11 comments
Read more

"Sugar and Spice" - A Child's Kindness

By Stephen C. Schultz I recall a childhood rhyme that went something like this; “…sugar and spice and everything nice…that’s what little girls are made of!” As the father of three daughters and one son, there is no doubt about the truthfulness of that saying. I was in San Diego a couple of weeks ago with my family. We were down at Seaport Village right on the bay having lunch. It was a beautiful day, sun shining, light breeze and we were eating on an outside deck. We were engaged in a conversation about what we wanted to do later that day when I noticed my youngest daughter, a fifth grader, was focused on something else. So, I turned to see what she was gazing at. She was following the movements of a transient man who had walked up onto the deck and was systematically searching the garbage cans for food. He was looking in each receptacle and reaching in to move the contents around. At one can, his hand came out with a partially eaten sandwich of some kind. He reached back
9 comments
Read more