A Pretty Good Day...

FAOL Community Fly Anglers Online
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My granddaughter is 4 and flies are still a little time into the future for salmon. She has caught a number of grayling on flies she tied herself, including some big ones, by almost any standard. But today was about silver (coho) salmon and it was a bit technical for her age. So she got a bobber and roe on a spinning rod.

Last year, at three, she caught her first solo salmon… today she caught four, at four. I suspect most things in her life are going to be easier for the training she has gotten with a rod in her hand…

But the big take-away… Riley was born when I was just shy of forty. I knew my personality type was not good for raising a kid so I waited until I had matured a bit. Riley did not follow my plan and is 26 with a 4-year-old and a 20-month-old. But what he did today was spend ALL of his time making sure his daughter was fishing and he did not even set up a rod for himself until his daughter was finished for the day. She missed many and lost several on the way in. But, she also caught four legitimate silvers at four…

When Denny visited about a dozen years ago Riley made sure Denny got into the grayling he was looking for, a literal 22 1/4" grayling… I should have realized then he had the stuff to help someone else do their thing without inserting his own wants. But it does make me feel very good knowing my grandkids are getting such an incredible introduction to fishing. It does not hurt that they get to learn here in AK.

As an aside, my granddaughter ties many flies sitting on my lap and the grayling she caught this spring, up to 18" or so, fell to flies she tied with me. Funny how grayling like pink… I never suspected that!

Sorry that I cannot post their pictures, but some folks are sensitive to that…

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Grandpa had a lot of fun on this excursion.

Rick

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Hap, you make me jealous. My granddaughter is not quite 20 months, I am looking forward to taking her after some bream here in Georgia. I had not considered teaching her to tie flies, something to think about. You and I are blessed.

4

What a great story. You are helping her mak memories that will stick with her for the rest of her life. Congratulations on being a good grandpa.

Jim Smith

5

Enjoyed reading this Hap. You painted a pretty good picture of her sitting on your lap while tying flies. Thank you for sharing.

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Thanks guys, it is fun…

And yesterday was more of the same. There was a very hot bite on fish with sea lice all over them! She landed at least 6 and my grandson even reeled one in. It was so hot I even fished a little and had a couple ridiculous hard-charging takes that one lives for. These chrome fish still in tidewater are something else.

My granddaughter even agreed to kiss a fish for a photo for the mere payment of an ice cream cone with pink ice cream and sprinkles!

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Hap,
You made my day!!
While my 4 month old granddaughter, Nora, is too young to fish, her big brother, 2 year old Landon, started fishing with me this year. So far this year, he has kissed 4 bluegill & a crappie with no fear & no hesitation. I just told him that to be a REAL fisherman, he needed to kiss the fish right on the lips. I have 9 grandchildren & all the others have fished, kissed fish, & still do fish with Grandpa.
My granddaughter Tori, who is now 15, started fishing with me at age 3. One day, she insisted that I fish too. She watched a few casts, then tried to “flycast” with her Zebco. As I was untangling her line, I saw her pick up my flyrod & lay about 15 feet of line out…caught a decent bluegill on that cast too. After I told him that story, old friend “Uncle Jack Hise” made Tori a short bamboo fly rod that she treasures to this day…NOONE uses that rod but Tori. I’ll never be able to thank Jack enough!
Sadly, I won’t be teaching the kids to tie due to failing close-up vision & poor skills to begin with, but they catch, help clean, help cook, & EAT the fish.
We’ll both leave this world with some youngsters loving this wonderful sport & that’s a good thing.

Mike

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Thanks ohiotuber… but I must ask, does that make you a potato? :wink:

We were fishing in a very public place with tons of boats running by… we were “hidden” in plain view, but too close to access for anyone to bother us. We had hundreds of tightly packed fish and no company. Because silvers are incredibly spooky we had to deal with things very carefully to keep from spooking the hole. We fish the margins and immediately get the fish OUT of the hole. We were able to extract and retain 14 in a steady stream. We knelt in tall grass and kept shadows off the water. My granddaughter understood the reasons and the policies very quickly. She understood when we stopped fishing and gave the hole a rest, even though there was no slowing of the fishing. She understood when I told her that if we kept doing what we were doing it would put them down and then we would have to wait much longer. She got it…

It is a place I have fished for many decades and Riley grew up running river boats. He has built two mini jet boats and has many youtube videos and has a serious understanding of running wild water in little jet boats. Take a look at his videos by searching for “riley peck alaska mini boats” or a second “son” eben fiorentino" to see some interesting videos.

Start with this one…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5_9sUlTxWk

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Very nice to hear from you Hap! My granddaughter is 27 months old and is now living in Italy. I sure wish I could take her out fishing!

Z

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I understand completely! My granddaughter caught her two silvers this morning, 100% legally and ethically. She is counting the numbers of people she is feeding with every fish. My grandson caught one silver 100% upright… at 22 months… he intended to carry it around under his arm like a loaf of bread. He later set the hook on another and decided he needed to check out his toy truck rather than fight his fish… Kids are fun!!!

11

Hey Hap :),
Those videos are absolutely fantastic!!!. Professional quality video capture and jet boat manipulation. Are these meant for commercial sale/distribution or is it just a day on the water for giggles ???

Mark

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Thank you Marco, I am happy you liked them. The boats are just for fun, but fishing and hunting access is the driver. There are a couple outfits making them now up here though. The first edition they built entirely from scratch, lofting their own designs, even. They got a lot of experience, fast.

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I used to see a guy on the Chattahoochee here north of Atlanta that built jet drive boats by taking the drive out of wrecked jet skis and putting them in jon or semi-vee aluminum fishing boats. The Hooch does not have the challenges of your wild rivers but there are several small falls and rapid that he traveled up easily. He picked up the moniker of “Jet boat Jerry.”

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Hap,
I also wanted to know if the videos were made for commercial consumption or just for fun. My opinion suggests that they ARE marketable . The only problem I see is how to categorize them…as an advert for the boat manufacturer or a “Visit Alaska” promo ( in which case I overheard a “stay home” comment which would of course have to be edited out :)).
Quality stuff done by guys just havin a blast.

Mark

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Marco, these are strictly for fun and their own amusement. There is a small group of guys building and running them up here and they are a social bunch for the most part.

One of my “second sons” has some good videos and you can find him on Youtube as well, Eben Fiorentino is his name. He has a video of a run he made with my son up Grant Creek. It was a gnarly run! I am glad they did not ask me to go because I may have been stupid enough to say “Yes!”

Riley’s video titled something like “Guessit Creek” is a ride I did go on and we had no idea if we had any chance of getting up it. Chainsaws, rope and tackle, shovels, and sweat got us there. We had hoped to find the Mother Lode of lake trout… did not… but it was a great weekend just the same. And in case anyone thinks it was cheating, all of the footage showing wood being cut was edited out. Many log jumps were left in, as were several crashes. Once crash in a spruce took my glasses and a favorite hat and made them disappear in a deep hole. :frowning:

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Same motor source, but they build their own hulls, mostly. As they are small boats they do not need really thick aluminum, but it is still heavier than the typical jon boat. The bottoms are covered with HDPE skid plates, glued and screwed on. Some of the dings they get are incredible displays of “force directed!”

The first time I went for a ride with Riley in his first boat we were running in a tiny stream with a tremendous bit of family history. The first shock came to me when we found ourselves in a long, very shallow pool with no current. At the head of the pool was gravel rise, about a foot in elevation of dry gravel to the next pool. He looked at me, shrugged his shoulders, grinned and gunned it! As we shot up he killed the jet pump, waited till we splashed on the other side, hit the starter and we were off! It made me laugh how well the little boat shot up the trickles.

Later, coming down the “river” we got lost on which track to take and ended up headed toward a green spruce laying across, and blocking our path. With a shrug, a wink, and a mashed throttle we hit the spruce. The tree turned with us rather than parting. Loaded, like a series of monster spey rods, it returned to its previous shape and place. It lifted the boat and slowed it right down. In my infinite wisdom, I decided to throw my weight forward by leaning well out over the bow. It was enough to break the situation free and allow ALL of those limb “rods” to put buckets of river water in my face! We shot through the spruce and ended up on the bank in a smallish log jam. Riley was afraid I had hurt myself. But I was just laughing too hard to breathe!

Later, as we were running down he suddenly hit the kill switch and pointed up an avalanche chute above us. He quickly grabbed his rifle and ran up the chute and shot a brown bear. It only took me a half-hour to get where he went!

In the late '60s my father left me on the beach just out of sight of Riley’s bear. I watched him climb the mountain through a spotting scope and gave him signals with life jackets on canoe paddles to lead him to a flock of mountain goats. When he shot a goat I went fishing up a tiny creek that disappeared many years ago under glacial silt. I was concentrating on fish; it was a very hot August day; and it was dead calm. The bear grass was over my head and I was just stumbling through it watching a particular fish.

Call it my intuition, Spidey Sense, or luck… but things seemed wrong suddenly. Looking through the grass as best I could, maybe 15-20 feet away was a bear. It was a brown bear. It was sleeping and snoring so loudly I hear it still on calm evenings! I can also solidly report it was a boar, on his back, all four legs spread out! I did have a rifle and had used it quite a bit, but I was 13 or 14.

I backed out of there, and when I hit open beach, I ran all the way back to the tripod, still set up on our landing spot.

My father took a photo of the canoe with the goat when he got back to pick me up. He had boned out and carried a mountain goat off the mountain in a trappers’ pack he had made of wood and fiberglass. It hurt just picking it up empty! I think earlier generations of humans had fewer nerve endings dedicated to pain sensing!

Riley has the original photo with my father’s notations on the back, framed, in his “man room.”

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Wildly!!! While I was tapping out the last missive I was distracted by every dog in the neighborhood going nuts! As the baying, barking, and whatever you call the other sounds dogs make increased I looked down the road in front of my house and watched a brown bear, probably a young boar, but maybe a sow, turn the corner at the bottom of the road. A few of you have been here before and know what I am talking about… Anyway, due South, it turned up the hill, due north, headed toward my house. About 80 yards (halfway here) it cranked a left into a row of houses and was gone from sight. The pack (six mixed dogs) shot right past the turn and up the hill. A few minutes later the bear crossed the road right where it made the first turn I saw and wandered down over the bluff. I can still hear the dogs to my NW barking…