The old man I sat with on the bank watched the wave runner pound the waves. “It’s only job is the sullying of a river,” he said, “just noise.” Water splashes as the vvvvRRRRrrrr vvvvRRRRrrrr goes in and out, the wave runner pulsed itself out and back into the low Kootenai. In a split second, a splash, and the large man is in the water. “Sink,” the old man said.

The water rushes up the rocks towards our feet after being buzzed by the man now attempting to kick his leg up onto the wave runner and pull himself back on. The old man puffed from his handmade pipe meticulously built out of a branch of a silver maple and shook his head.

“They’re coming up again. Place the fly right there, in front of the blow down. Be sure to mend.”

I did as the old man said.

“Mend.”

Another pull from his pipe.

“Mend again. Ah…” Disgust. I had let him down.

“Roll cast. Try again. They are still eating.”

The stagnation in his cadence reminded me of someone from my childhood but I couldn’t place it. In one breath, it sounded like a booming voice that I heard many times down a set of stairs, echoing throughout the basement that us kids made basecamp in for weeks at a time. The next breath, it was as if I was back in Robert Wrigley’s Poetry 300 level class at University of Idaho being told that a line in my poem was too poetic. As I looked the man up and down again, he was as familiar as he was foreign to me. Why he decided to scramble down these rocks at the Triangle and sit down next to me will forever be a mystery. But it was a welcome one.

“Wait, no movement.”

I snapped back and put my eyes on the fly in time to see it disappear under the dark Kootenai waters.

“Hold…set, now,” he calmly guided me as I lifted the rod up above my head only to have it come back down as the fish made a run down the current.

“Pull, then let him run.”

I followed his voice. My old Pfleuger Medalist started humming as the fish ran my line down, jumped, and started racing back. It was large.

“Strip, strip, strip.”

I had caught many fish on a fly rod over the years, but I followed the repetition of his voice, his teacher tone, and I stripped in following his count. The fish jumped again not ten feet from us.

“It’s big,” we both said. I had a smile on my face. The old man, stoic. The fish swam in front of us not three feet from the shore. A rainbow; plump and at least 20”. It was the largest trout I have had on a fly rod, an #18 purple haze latched into its lip attached to my leader with 6x tippet. The Nirvana PhoenixGlass 5 weight I was using could handle it and helped to keep that tippet safe with the flex of its fiberglass blank. I reached for the net. The old man stopped me.

“It is going to run,” he said as the fish took off across the river immediately. I went to pull the line, and the old man stopped me.

“Let. Him. Run.” I did, and my Medalist sang its song yet again.

“You don’t want to break off. Let it wear itself out.”

I watched the line run out of my reel with the heat of the evening soaking my brow with sweat. The fish ran for another minute, and I slowly stopped the line against my fiberglass rod. The fish answered this with a large leap out of the sunset-drenched river water. It is moments like this that take us anglers aback. Sheer beauty comes from all places while you are fly fishing: the bluebirds song against the drone of a rolling creek, the ripples caused by emerging insects and the subsequent trout nose breaking the surface to feed, the analeptic response from feeling the tug of a trout at the end of your line.

Or, sometimes the waters decide to paint a picture for you, a snapshot of nature that you, and only you, are usually there to witness.

The smell of Prince Albert hit my nose with a rush of nostalgia and I looked over. The old man was now standing beside me, pipe in his mouth, and I could tell that he was sharing this feeling.

The fight had been going on for five minutes at this time and the trout was running itself back towards us slowly through the current. I stripped in my line while reeling in the slack, and the fish was soon in front of us. Awe-inspiring; a true small god that has blessed us in this river evening. I grabbed the net from beside me, my fly rod bent to the cork. I dropped to my knees and went for the land.

“No…” the old man said as the fish made one more run and snapped the fly right off the tippet. One last jump, and the fish was gone. I slammed my rod tip into the water (something you should never do), said a few choice words, and turned to the old man with apologies loaded in my throat.

But he was gone. I am not sure where he went, or how he left so fast. He was just gone.

I tied on another fly, quickly caught a consolation trout of 11” and went home to my wife and child to tell them the story of the One That Got Away before he rested his head on his pillow in anticipation of a nice, full night of sleep. I always have some sort of tale to tell them about, and this night was no different. A wise woman once told me, “you don’t always remember the large trout you land, but you will always remember the one that got away”.

Just as I had never seen the old man before, I have yet to see him again. Some nights along the Inner Village Kootenai I still smell the hint of Prince Albert tobacco, and hear him say from beside me, “let him run”.