At a very young age, Tony was scouting the drift below Cobble Rock on a chilly May day. Later, he would catch his first trout with a flyrod, a hundred yards or so upstream from this spot.
In the beginning, there was a spinning rod with either Power Bait or a casting bubble (I’d cast-he’d retrieve) and a dry fly. Early on he enjoyed ‘The Moment’ and caught many trout. Later, I braved the frustrations of teaching him to cast a flyrod. It was, to be expected, too early and he struggled to coordinate the movements and I struggled to stay patient. But he did manage to flail away. On this day, I had positioned him on a safe rock with room to back cast and within view of camp. I ran up to camp to get something when Tony started to yell. Christ, he had either fallen in or been bitten by a snake! But, in fact he had a beautiful Rainbow Trout on and was cranking away as he had with a spinning rod at a lake. I stood there and watched him move off the rock and instinctively stop cranking. The fish moved through the threads of the currents and Tony moved slightly downstream with it, and I moved below. He walked and cranked and soon the trout was feisty in the shallows. I grabbed the leader and hollered for a camera to record the blessed event. Photographed and released, both of us a bit adrenalized for different reasons, watched the fish shoot from the shallows to the safety of a riffle. Tony had caught his first trout with a fly and flyrod. He had also reinforced C & R as a dominant practice. The surge of confidence at such a young age has never waned.
SwittersB & Exploring 
