On Saturday, March 1st 2025, The Historic Pearl Theater in downtown Bonners Ferry put on a showing of the IF4, or International Fly Fishing Film Festival, which I attended with some new and old friends, mostly in the latter category. Much older than I am. But I digress. It was to be a good time talking lakes, rivers, streams, trout, rods, reels, tippet, leader, flies. All this while watching seven very different short films based around fly fishing and the concept of time (loosely). There was beer, snacks, tables, chairs, a projector, and a couple of speakers. You know, the stuff that you need for the type of shindig this was. A table up front under the screen had seven different raffle items ranging from fly line to t-shirts to a fly rod, each with a bucket to go with them in which I popped a few of my red raffle tickets into. I sat down at a table with my buddies Bret Ashworth, who also happens to be my boss, and Les Bevan, a fly fishing and fly tying guru I have gotten to know quite well over the past two years. The other two chairs around the table sat the bodies and faces of two people who would have recognized me if it was 25 years ago and I was about half the size I am now. A past police officer and sheriff in town who I am pretty sure worked with my father on a few things back in the day (and may have known my name from a few reports that may have hit his desk at some point), and another man who I have known through his children and through Ducks Unlimited dinners back in the day. After a couple of handshakes and re-introductions for the benefit of all, I grabbed a tall boy from the counter and the films started to play.

The first film, called The Silent Spotter by the filmmaker RA Beattie (who made a wonderful short film a few years back called “Frontera Norte”), was about a deaf and mute fishing guide in Xcalek, Mexico, and the love of the Permit. A very interesting concept, a very interesting story, and really, a good little film. But, and this is all on me, something just didn’t sit right. The story of Tommy Batun, the guide, was beautiful in itself but it was bogged down by the dudebro-ness of the whole thing. The loud, bass heavy music. The action quick cuts relying too much on following the rhythm of the overblown music. The loud hoots and hollers of the young fisherman aiming for a trophy. This is all nitpicky, I know, but it was a theme throughout the night with a few more of the films. It was all too Yeti cooler, Yeti hat, Yeti sticker covering the back window of the brand new, sparkly clean F-150 that is parked at the turnoff you wanted to fish along the north fork of the Coeur d’Alene river. 

I started to panic. It takes a man to admit that he was going through an existential crisis during the first short film of the IF4. I grew uncomfortable. The white stout I was sipping on was running out faster than I thought it should. I was scribbling notes throughout my notebook, viciously attacking the overproduction of the film at hand, the loud frat music pulsating around my pea sized brain inside my skull. Is this what the sport has become? No. Is this what I have become? I took a trip to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. I asked myself: Was I becoming my father?

After I flushed, blew my nose, and washed my hands, I was back at the table and ready for the next film. Or was I? I felt different. The aged faces around me were familiar, the voices were ones that I had heard before. My cheeks began to tickle, and I went to scratch them. It felt good, but what was this getting stuck between them? I had shaved my bushy winter beard off not four days earlier. As I pulled my hands back, I could see that it was the longer hairs from the top of my head. I pulled my hat off, and the rest of it fell around me, surrounding me, reminding me of what I was. I ran a hand over the now bald and liver spotted scalp I was stuck with. The hair covered the table, the floor, my shoulders, and what was left was an all too familiar horseshoe of coarse grey hair and the five strands on top that I would comb over with false hope, just like he did. I felt extra weight at the bridge of my nose, and the same hand came down my forehead to a stop at the large bifocal frames that were now resting there. I tried to speak out to Bret, but I coughed instead, the decades of smoke in my lungs catching up. I turned to the old sheriff and to the man from Ducks Unlimited, and I began the conversations I had had with them numerous times before, all with the same chortles, breadth of nostalgia, the times have changed-esque conversations that besiege all conversations at some point in life. I chortle just like John Standal would. I know I have his smile. Oh, why has this happened to me?

I returned to my own body during the fourth film, Native Range. It was a film about a few friends and a dog who set out on the challenge of the Utah Cutthroat Slam. It was the exact medicine I needed after the experience that the first film had put me through. It was my type of fly fishing, the truest form for me. They were tasked with catching four different types of Native Cutthroat trout in the state of Utah: the Bonneville cutthroat trout, the Colorado River cutthroat, the Yellowstone cutthroat, and the Bear River. Just like another great challenge that I am currently participating in, the Western Native Trout Challenge, it was about targeting specific native trout species for a small prize, all for an entry fee that went towards a fund for native trout conservation projects across the state. It is not about trophy fish. It is not about the pictures with big trout for you to post on social media and get those ever precious likes for in attempts to be known as a good fisherman. No, it is about fishing small creeks for even smaller and easily spooked fish, and it was about being out in nature and fishing with a purpose that is not entirely selfish. If you are a creek fly fisherman in North Idaho like I am, you know that it is some of the best catch and release fishing that you can participate in. I will take one 8” native trout out of a creek on a fly rod in a day over twenty 14” stocked Rainbows out of one of our lakes any day of the year. And if you are fishing with a purpose of conservation, it is an even better feeling. 

And the best part about this film, other than being the best short film of the night? My father would have hated it. He was a man who looked upon catch and release, and fly fishing, with a stern look. He was one to fish and hunt to sustain his family, to provide food for the table, to keep bags and bags of gutted stocked Rainbow trout in the deep freezer until there was just a bit of freezer burn on them. And here I am: a fly fisherman who 99% of the time would release a nice keeper of a trout back into its native river rather than take it home. While I love the taste of trout, there is just something awesome about seeing the gorgeous colors of a native trout, ones that had been feeding deeply on the nymphs of stone flies and breaking water for the olive caddis flies during a big hatch. A calm washed over me. Yes, we may share similarities with our parents in terms of feelings, habits, annoyances, predilections towards how we enjoy the outdoors and the things in life. But we will never truly be our parents. We will always have our individualism intact that makes us who we are, and you should try your darndest to never lose that. And as the raffles were called off, and white tickets were pulled from every bucket, and the film festival finished on another obnoxious over-edited film about very loud saltwater fisherman hooting and hollering over the large giant trevally that they were pulling out of the shallows to even louder music, I couldn’t help but smile. While my personal annoyance with things like this echoed deeply with the personality of my father, I wasn’t him. Just a part of him. And soon, after the melt, I would be back in my northern creeks finding my small native Rainbow and Cutthroat trout on my 3 weight fiberglass rod and tiny size 22 adams flies. While the winter months can be hard, and as we all get older, just remember the old adage pulled from Dr. Seuss’ Happy Birthday to You!: “Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is you-er than you!”