I moved here in third grade, but remember fishing lakes in Oregon before that with Dad rowing and me trolling little hot shots.

Caught my first steelhead on May Creek (trib of the Wallace). I was 12, fishing for trout with a fly rod, Colorado spinner and worm and 4lb leader. I couldn't do much with the fish. It ran downstream to one of the larger holes and just sulked there. Old Lady Radenbush (One of the only 5 families that lived on May Creek at the time) came out and asked if I needed help.....I said, "Sure!" So she disappears around back of her place and comes back around the house with a gaff on about a 12 foot pole, hikes up her dress, kicks off her shoes, wades across the creek and stands next to me and says, "Now just raise him up a bit." I do just that and she reaches out with that long gaff and drags that ugly old buck to the beach for me. Dad's jaw dropped open when I came home with that fish.

Of course, I've turned many steelhead back that were much bigger and in much better shape, but there's something about that first one.

We used to spend a couple of weeks every year in a rented beach cabin (complete with the old block ice box for refridgeration) at Indian Beach on Camano Island (Dad still lives on the island....he's 86). We would rent a boat and motor at Madrona Beach, grab a couple dozen live herring which were handed out in a coffee can. (The herring were caught every few nights off the end of the resort dock by using a light to attract them and then netting them and dumping them in a concrete live well.) Any way, an old rental boat would be rolled over to the rail road iron launch, we'd jump in and down we'd fly into the water for a day's salmon fishing.

Spent many a nite sleeping in a mummy bag on the beach, looking at the stars and listening to the water.

If heaven is even half as good as that.......