Opie, PT and Tex After a Morning Adventure
Like it was yesterday I still remember loading up the old Ford truck with our fishing gear, hooking up to ‘old greenie’ and heading for northern waters across the bridge in the U.P. for the first time. PT, Tex and I were 8, 7 and 6 and it was the greatest adventure of our young lives.
For the next 7 years we would head north for the first week of June to explore new waters, chase monster Walleyes and just be boys. Memories and traditions were born during those years that are permanently ingrained in each one of us. From our morning swim/bath that we called the ‘Healer’ because the icy water would cure whatever ailed ya to the endless stories of lost fish and the shenanigans us boys got into while our dads were napping. Every year for one week at Pitko’s Landing on the shores of Caribou Lake we were allowed to just be boys; to test our brawn, enrich our souls and glory in our own victories and defeats. Those are truly some of my fondest memories from my childhood and I feel so blessed to have a father that would invest so much time and patience with me.
The Crew Dockside on Caribou Lake with Old Greenie
Well this weekend all of us boys from the Caribou lake trips are reuniting on the banks of the Pere Marquette River in Baldwin, Mi to recant old stories and chase spring steelhead. It has been 22 years since that first trip north with the boys. A lot has changed over the years as we have all grown older and wiser and have each followed different paths through life. The old men are a little older and us boys are now men but there are some things that will never change. I am looking forward to some very hearty laughs, some great fish stories and spending time enjoying nature with some of my closest friends.
Hopefully none of us end up taking a surprise ‘healer’ in the river this weekend.
Tight Lines,
Opie
“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.” – Norman MacLean