The Trapped and Tangled Loon

“PASS ME A woolly bugger, will ya?” I asked my cousin Isaiah.

“I’m using it. Try a hopper. It’ll work just as good,” he said.

Since I didn’t feel much like arguing with him, I pulled a hopper from our shared tackle box. Standing at the lake’s edge, I cast my line onto the smooth-as-glass water of Police Outpost Lake.

Down the shoreline Isaiah’s father, my Uncle Rick, was knee-deep into the water by a bank of evergreen trees. He liked to fish alone, away from distractions and noise and other people.

I’d learned to fish from my dad. He’d taught me to fish alone, in silence, lost in my own thoughts. Like meditation. He’d taught me