I didn’t want to return home and give up the last few hours of Indian summer on this September evening, so I headed to nearby Twelvepole Creek in West Virginia. I was grasping for a way to stay connected to the memory of my father, who had passed that year from an auto-immune disease. He used to take me to this spot when I was too young to even cast. I’d throw rocks in the water. Yeah, I was that kid.
I was 20 now, and he was gone. I stood on the rocky side of the shallow river and finally made a decent cast with one of his old musky lures. It landed in a gorgeous piece of slack water that looked like it had secrets to hide. After a couple of turns on the handle, I felt a heavy weight as my rod loaded, and time stood still. I was tight to my first river musky.
My eyes followed the
