It was the night before my brother was married.
I admit I discovered it slowly. I had just started tying for my next trip to the Yakima River.
“We sure are losing a lot of beadheads Pop.”
The beginning is special. It is in the beginning that the bond forms. After the excitement of something new wears off. When you are not catching fish. When you have to re-tie your knots. When the fish are rising to everything except your fly. It may not seem like it. And you may not notice it, but these are the times when something special happens between you and the river and the fish you chase.
It is one thing to not catch fish while nymphing. It is another to be hooking up all day and then come up short on a great spot.
“You make coffee?”
He stood two feet away from me. Close, so his whisper sounded loud in the quiet while the others slept.
“Nope.”
We drifted on the river in and out of shadows below the cliffs. It was a cold morning. I knew it would be hot later. It had been the same thing the day before.
My brother drove the whole way. I sat in in the back. My father was up front. My brother and father had split the cost of the drift boat four years earlier. That was before the Rendezvous.