A few years back, when word filtered down to my neck of the woods that the steelhead run was moving along swimmingly on the Sioux River I knew that I had to go. Big rainbows were on the move, I was told.
I’d been to the Sioux River before, although not as often as I’d like to have, and not at all that year. Once I watched a more accomplished angler hoist trout after trout from right by my feet in a deeper pool of the river. My offerings drifted slack-lined in the current. That man was a better fisherman than me that day, he knew it and I knew it and we both just smiled at each other.
It’s common knowledge in the angling community that at times the Sioux River can hold a good number of migrating fish, so perhaps a trip was in order, I thought to myself. I had gone over to the Brule River for the opener, caught a little sliver of a trout, rubbed elbows with more fisherman than I cared to, and had gone home empty handed; which isn’t that unusual.
My three-year-old son had been itching to get out and wet a line himself. It’s hard to describe and almost harder to believe, but Jack was already an outdoorsman at heart, despite still having training wheels on his bike. At any sporting-goods store it was nothing for my boy to stand in the rods and reels aisle for an hour or more, looking things over, seeing what’s for sale. Of course, he liked to run his fingers over the rubber frogs, plastic crawfish and bendy worms the most, but he’ll look at a spoon or spinner. He wasn’t particular.
Jack had given me the business after the Brule trip, informing me in his boyish voice that he should not have been left at home that day, that we were an angling team and in the future he’d prefer to fish rather than snuggle in with Fuzzy the teddy bear.
“I like to go fishing, too,” he said.
So, on a cold Thursday morning he and I traveled the half hour from our home to the Sioux River, a steady rain the backdrop for our day.
I brought our mud boots, my 10-foot steelhead rod and just enough gear to get by for a bit of fishing. I figured Jack would be soaked to the bone in short order and then would want to get back into the Jeep. I was wrong.
At the bridge I stopped half way across to look at the reddish river running wild beneath us. Only one other vehicle was at the park, and the river was seemingly ours alone.
And Jack was mesmerized by the ‘Big River.’ He stood spellbound beside me on the bank, staring at the rushing waters and boiling rapids. I pulled up the hood on my raincoat, and then his, the rain quickening in intensity.
Down by the stream I found a little beach of an area where the water pooled up a bit, a place where a father and a son could stand from shore and get a few casts in without fear of being swept away. I cast out a dozen or so times with the rod, tossing an orange rubber gob of fake spawn past the main current.
Eventually Jack wanted to hold the rod, after I had cast. The 10-foot rod looked cartoonish in his little arms, his smile stretching across his face. But he was fishing and that’s all that seemed to matter.
I did all the casting as both of us began to show signs of having stood in the rain for an hour or so. I kept asking Jack if he’d had enough and he kept saying, no. He said he thought we should stay for five more minutes, while holding up three fingers.
On my second-to-the-last cast I snagged a rock. It was easy to tell. I pulled up on the rod and the bait didn’t give, and there was no bounce to confirm that it may have been a fish. I looked down at Jack and he was busy picking rocks along the shoreline. So, I pulled up on the rock heavily as if setting the hook, and let loose with a holler that we had one on and that he could reel it in.
“It’s a big steelhead!” I yelled. “It’s huge!”
Jack rushed down the bank, took the over-sized fishing rod from me and began to fight the ‘trout’ with all his might, all the while hollering about the big fish on the end of the line. He’d pull on the rod, attempt to reel, and pull some more. The size of the rod and the strength of the river kept giving the desired illusion. I kept up the frantic charade, hopping around behind him and encouraging him to hold on.
Two or three minutes later the hook gave way from the rock and the line went slack. Jack looked at me, the rod now hanging low in his hand. He still had the big smile on his face.
“We had him Dad, we had him!” Jack said. “He was a big one. I had a steelhead.”
Maybe some day I might tell him it wasn’t a fish that we’d hooked that rainy day when he was just a boy. But I’ll never tell him he isn’t a fisherman.
Subject: Steelhead fishing with a three-year-old 
Fri Apr 24, 2009 8:31 am
