More Than Catching: A Summer Trip with My Dad

A couple weeks ago, my parents came to visit me during what turned out to be one of the hottest stretches of the summer. The fishing had been decent earlier in the season, but we were hitting that mid-summer lull, long, hot days and sluggish trout that didn’t seem particularly interested in what we had to offer. Still, I was excited. Not because I thought we’d catch a ton of fish, but because my dad was coming to visit, and we were going to fish together.

We fished the Henry’s Fork and made a couple runs into Yellowstone, some of my favorite waters in the world. And over the course of two weeks, we caught maybe three fish. That’s it.

But this trip wasn’t about numbers.

We threw everything we could think of at them, purple chubbies with a Duracell dropper, caddis dries in the evenings, but between the sun, heat, and quiet hatches, the fish just weren’t buying it. Still, we geared up, and hit the river together. My dad’s still new to fly fishing. He’s a couple months in, coming from a background of bait fishing. So while he’s still learning to cast and read water, he’s got that spark, that hunger to understand this new, sometimes frustrating, but always beautiful pursuit.

When he finally hooked and landed a fish, it was like something out of a movie. He lit up, huge smile, beaming like a kid on Christmas morning. He asked for a picture, wanting a keepsake to remember the moment. And even though it was just one fish, that joy didn’t fade. It lasted the entire trip. You could feel it in the way he carried himself on the river from that point on. Confident. Excited. Connected.

We didn’t talk much about the past during our time together. It wasn’t about looking back, it was about being present. Laughing together. Making new memories. Most of our conversations were about the fishing we were doing right then: how the drift looked, whether we should move upstream, or whether the fish were laughing at us from the depths. There was a lot of joking around, especially after I slipped on a rock, mid-conversation, and went half-under in the river. My dad had been the one we both assumed would fall in, but it ended up being me, distracted by talking, fishing, and walking all at once. The water was cold, but the day was hot, so I dried out fast. We laughed about it the rest of the afternoon.

Some trips are full of action, fast fishing, heavy hatches, net after net of trout. This wasn’t one of those trips. But after our second time out with nothing to show for it, I started to realize something. I wasn’t frustrated. I wasn’t disappointed. I was just…happy. Being out there with my dad, fishing, talking, laughing, that was enough. More than enough. It felt honest. It felt easy. And for a relationship that hadn’t had a lot of time over the years, this was a chance to not just reconnect, but to build something new: a friendship rooted in a shared love for the outdoors and the rhythm of the river.

This wasn’t the kind of trip I’ll remember for the fish we caught. I’ll remember it for the feeling. For the memories. For the way fly fishing brought us together, not just as father and son, but as two people simply enjoying time on the water.

“Fishing is about more than catching!”