Jason looked up the dirt road at their new house and realized how far they’d walked and how much lower this was than their house, way uphill from here and nearly surrounded by trees. The overlapping rooflines played into each other, climbing ever higher until they met at the stone chimney. “Awesome.”
“What’s that?”
“Our new house. My dad always took us to look at nice houses on Sundays after church. This house is the coolest ever.” Maybe this was why his father had grown up wanting to be an architect. “Now it’s ours, huh, me and my mom and Barnabas?”
Willis smiled and touched Jason’s shoulder. "Ready to catch some fish?" He picked up the pole and pulled out three arm lengths of fishing line. He ducked and crept closer to the stream. “You want to try first?” Willis offered the pole, not teasing.
Jason stepped back and shook his head. "No, you go first." He needed to see how.
Willis pulled out another arm’s length of fishing line and laid it carefully over grass where it wouldn’t snag. He looked back at Jason, making sure he was paying attention, and tossed the worm-baited hook high into the air. The loose line played out quickly, the line went tight and the worm dropped into the water upstream. It only traveled about a foot downstream before the line jerked tight, the pole bent sharply and Willis stood.
Jason’s chest pounded with excitement, watching the taught line run up and down the stream with the pole nearly bent double.
Willis held the fat end of the pole upright, close to his chest, and walked to the edge of the stream. Jason stayed close, looking down into deep, fast moving water.
Deep down, barely visible in this light, a big fish darted under the grassy bank they both stood on.
“Careful, here. We’re standing on bog.” Willis stuck the tip of the pole into the water where the line went under the bank. “He gets tangled in roots down there, we’ll never get him out.”
The reel clicked like crazy.
“What’s that noise? Is it busted?”
“That’s the drag. If it’s set too tight, a big fish can break the line.”
After another minute or so of reeling in and clicking back out, Willis pulled a flopping, foot long fish onto the grassy bank and set his knee between the fish and the water. He grabbed the fish with his left hand and stuck a finger down its throat, twisted it a couple of times and pulled out the bare hook. He put the twitching fish into his creel and pulled a clump of long, green grass. He dipped the grass into the creek, laid it into his creel and positioned the fish on top of it. He yanked more grass, wet it and put it on top. “Wet grass keeps the fish from drying out.” Willis stood, reeled in line and hooked the biggest ring on the fishing pole, cranking the reel just enough to slightly bend the pole, keeping the line tight.
“Are we finished, Willis?”
“We’re all finished here. Fish won’t bite here for the rest of the day.” Willis carried the pole back out to the road and walked uphill toward the house. “Nothing will bite for a quarter mile downstream, neither.”
Willis led Jason past cows feeding at a bin before he turned back toward the stream. When they got close enough, they both ducked.
Willis knelt, pulled out line and baited the hook. He handed the baited hook to Jason and nodded toward the stream.
Jason threw the worm as hard as he could.
It landed in a thicket of brush on the far side of the stream and got snagged.
Willis tried to free it but the line broke and he had to put on a new hook. He gave Jason the worm this time and coached on how to bait the hook.
Jason poked and slid the squirmy thing up the hook and poked it through again.
Willis nodded. Good job.
The sun had now risen above the mountain, getting hot already.
Jason handed Willis the pole, took off his heavy coat and tied the sleeves around his waist. He followed Willis upstream to another location.
Jason tossed the worm again grabbed the pole. The line jerked tight, the fish pulling so hard that Jason nearly lost his grip. He held tight and cranked, the drag clicked, the fish running upstream and down. Jason's heart beat like a sledge hammer.
After what seemed half an hour, he finally pulled the fish onto the shoreline.
Willis unhooked the giant fish and put it into the creel.
They moved to three more locations and Jason caught two more fish, then Willis led him to a wide bend in the stream where the water moved more slowly. He showed Jason how to clean and scrape the fish and to toss all the guts into the water where Willis said the crawdads would eat it. Cleaning the last fish, Willis said, “Nice golden trout. Real nice.”
“Our teacher told us these are endangered. Shouldn’t we throw it back?”
“Hooked too deep. It’ll die. He swallowed the hook all the way down and tore up his gut.” He packed the cleaned fish into the creel with more wet grass. “This is your property, son. You can do whatever you want. State fish and game don’t come in here, or anyone else for that matter. This meadow hasn’t been fished since before your dad went away.”
Willis shook his head, remembering something. “Near forgot.” He reached to his back pocket and pulled out a brand new hunting knife in a handmade scabbard. It looked just like the one he'd used to clean fish. “A mountain man needs a good knife.” He unbuckled Jason’s belt, pulled half of it out of the loops, and fed the scabbard onto it.
Jason restrung and fastened his belt and reached behind for the knife, over his right-side back pocket, just like Willis's. “Awesome.” Jason pulled the knife and ran his thumb down the length of the blade, feeling for sharpness.
