By HUNTER REDFIELD – Student Contributor
Once again, alarms at 5:30 went off in the cabin, but water dripping onto the new tin roof allowed me to slowly close my eyes and go back to bed with no intent to wake Jacob.
At around eight, I re-awoke and tapped Jacob. Soon we got ready and stoked up the fire to make sure it was ready to cook breakfast on before we left for the stream and arrived at the spot we had fished the previous day, hoping we could again catch a few trout.
With a snapped off leader, I began retying knots as I watched Jacob fish. Soon, I was done and made my way into the water, drifting through the hole once and then again as my line abruptly stopped and I set the hook.
The fish felt solid and seemed to stay down as Jacob looked at me curious as to how big it could possibly be. Soon, we both understood the reason it had stayed down so well and seemed like a big fish as a sucker had made his way to the top and into my net.
We fished a little longer, Jacob caught a brown, but then my phone buzzed announcing that bacon was ready at camp, and we drove back to eat a good breakfast and once again go fishing.
This time, however, we went to a new spot, and upon pulling in and walking to the stream, I spotted a bright yellow spot in the water and we both knew it was a fish. I watched as Jacob fished for it and then stepped back, saying he was going to change flies and I could give it a shot.
Drift after drift went by, and I decided maybe the fish was farther out than I had thought. My flies hit the water and began drifting by the fish as my line went tight and it began rolling, trying to shake the hook out of its mouth.
A deep pink stripe could be seen, and I slowly worked him towards Jacob as it jumped and spit the hook only to leave us both in disbelief.
We fished a while longer and a man appeared asking if we had seen or hooked the golden trout, but soon it began raining hard, leaving us running for the only dry place we knew of – the truck.
We arrived and got in, waiting out the storm, realizing we had left Jacob’s other rod lay on the bank forgotten. We made our way back down to the stream as the rain ended only to find that someone had taken his rod and left us both disappointed that someone would do that.
Yet, we kept fishing, hoping that we could get one fish that would turn the day around and leave us with smiles on our faces, but that fish never came even though we switched spots several times and saw many more fish.
We returned to camp for dinner and played a card game before it began to get dark, and we made our way to an island in the river where we hoped small mouth would lay, but we never found a fish there either, so we returned home, stopping at a hole we know big wild brown trout live in and still couldn’t manage to get the tug we had been waiting on all day.
So, we once again got into the truck and drove back up to the camp and sat down by the fire before going back to sleep with alarms set for 5:30.
Columnist Hunter Redfield is a student at Cranberry High School and a member of Cranberry Chronicles, the school’s journalism/publications group.
