Water rushed into my wading boots, cool and welcome in the soft early light. The saltwater flat stood before me with the innocence and promise one expects from good water. I feel that special thrill that comes when you ease into water before sunrise, when the birth of a new day holds the excitement of things to come. The water, clear and cool, edges into the mangroves as I let the sights and sounds of this beautiful place wash over me. The smells of a flooding flat, at once sweet and pungent, the easy splash of bait fish in shallow water, the call of gulls as they stir to life, beginning their ceaseless pursuit for food, all help to erase the chaos of the past few weeks.

This is the real beauty of fly fishing, the singular pursuit of something that transcends the pettiness of day to day survival in a modern world. I have developed an obsessive love affair with this sport. Perhaps because the past few years have provided ample opportunity to pursue fish in many distant parts of the pacific, from California to Thailand, with a myriad of stops at obscure posts in between. Only I, know how fortunate I have been. On each of these forays I have left satisfied, not so much with the state of fish caught and released, more with the certain belief that a day of solitude on new water is still worth pursuing. For this reason, I can find no method of measuring the day's catch, either in quantity or quality, that will not diminish the beauty of my most favored obsession. Yet this day is different, my son Justin is with me. I feel a new sensation this day, today I need to catch fish.

A slight gasp behind me drags me back to the present, I look around as the boy eases far enough into the water that his boots flood. His face registers the shock, his lips press together in an effort not to show his discomfort as he struggles to do everything correctly. I look at him proudly, a good boy, in his mind this has become a rite of passage, though I have tried to keep it from being so. Today must go well, I don't want him to be disappointed. The struggle to prevent this occasion from taking on to much importance has been difficult, the use of adult logic, qualifying success as quality time spent together, down playing the need to catch trophy fish, all the reasoning has only been partially successful. This young man needs to catch something, if for no other reason than to prove he can. All this has injected a new element into the game I have come to cherish. Today we must catch fish, surely I am flirting with disaster.

This day has moved inexorably closer in my son's mind. Several times over the past few weeks I have watched him take out his gear and check everything, starting with the new vest we picked up in Bangkok on our last visit and ending with a 3^rd generation graphite fly rod that he has spent untold hours learning to cast. The day he has worked so hard to prepare for, the day he has both longed for and dreaded, has finally arrived. We have crossed most of the pacific ocean, traveling west to east and are finally back in Hawaii. All of us have traveled here from Okinawa Japan, for a much needed family vacation, though the wife and my daughter are still fast asleep at this hour. I look at my son again in the early light, the firm set of the jaw, the lips pressed tightly together. Crunch time, now it's all up to fate.

This flat, at the extreme end of Kaneohe Bay, (Kahn-A-oh-A) is one of my favorite flats on the island of Oahu. I genuinely like working this area, that is the main reason I have decided to bring the boy here for his first "real" fishing trip. For though my son has fished with me several times he has decided that those trips to the salt weren't "real" trips, after all, they didn't require getting on a plane and going anywhere. This particular line of logic defies description, as such, I attribute it to youth and accept such things as beyond the control of a father.

Much thought has gone into this particular trip. The tide is right, bait fish are everywhere, the distinctive thwooping sound produced by feeding barracuda can be heard all around us. This is where I caught my first decent cuda on a flyrod. Perhaps that as much as anything brought me back to this wonderful place. I had caught a good fish here, after doing everything absolutely wrong. Maybe that was the lure, maybe whatever force had helped me that day would still be here and if necessary, maybe it would again.

The sun just begins to edge over the horizon as water suddenly erupts only a few feet away. A curtain of glass minnows shower light as they leap across the water, an explosion of sight and sound that is a testament to the forces of nature. I can see them now, hungry barracuda working the shallows with reckless abandon. We pause for a moment as the excitement starts to build. I check the boy's fly one more time, a pattern that I tied only the night before after checking this flat. The fly is the best I can do, a fairly close approximation in size and color to the countless bait fish now trying to escape the marauding bands of barracuda. Six inches of steel wire is tied right to the monofilament leader, a leader that I have shortened to about seven feet. All the knots are good, the fly light enough to turn over correctly. If there was ever a time to introduce a boy to barracuda now is that time.

I offer instructions as he strips line from the reel, about forty to fifty feet, this is all he can comfortably handle with a fly this large. The six weight rod he is using is a few sizes too light for anything exceptionally large, but is an effective combination for barracuda upwards of fifteen pounds. I have loaned him a Penn 2.5 reel so he has ample storage capacity for the short though brutally fast runs of hooked barracuda. Suddenly, there is a good swirl of water no more than twenty feet from us. We both see the fish at the same time, a young cuda of maybe five pounds. The six weight comes up fast, the back cast much faster than necessary for such a short cast, the rod flexes under the load, the line is traveling just short of light speed when it impacts the water within inches of the barracuda. The startled fish launches itself a good ten feet through the air before knifing into the water again in its haste to get away. My son is crestfallen, I try not to say anything, afraid that it will be mistaken for criticism. "Relax son, just offer the bait to them, they'll do the rest," is the best I can do, afraid this is an omen of worse things to come.

We move down the flat towards the Marine Corps Base Hawaii, Marina, as the military base covers all of the Mokapu (Mock-a-pooh) peninsula which forms the ocean side of the bay and ease to a stop after wading silently for a half minute or so. Bait fish are running toward us, we can see them coming from a good distance away. "Get ready," I hiss, silently cursing myself for sounding so excited. The panicked bait fish are getting closer, "cast out now and wait," I urge. The boy makes a couple of false casts and launches line in the general direction of the oncoming wave of fleeing fish. A good strong cast, it goes about where I would have put it, I watch as the line unfolds and the fly drops gently into the water with barely a splash. "Wait," I say as he begins to retrieve, a little too early. Just as the bait fish swarm past the fly I shout "Strip it! Short strips, as fast as you can." He does, nothing happens. As the bait fish pass us we see a couple of small cuda running from us as they recognize us for what we are. I patiently explain to the youngster that sometimes it just works out that way, he's not having any.

Finally, I do the right thing, though entirely by accident. I pull the fly from my old 9 weight pack rod and start fishing myself. Almost immediately, I hook a small barracuda that my son volunteers to catch for me. Of course, I pass the rod to him and watch him work the fish as he backs out of the water onto the shore. This is one rule I have made sure he clearly understood, excited barracuda can sometimes do the most insane things, like swim right into you. This is no real threat except that a barracuda's mouth is filled with a ferocious set of teeth that should not encounter any part of the human anatomy. Subsequently, backing out of the water allows the boy to play the fish without me having to worry about paying for a doctors visit. Shortly, he has the fish where I can handle it. After a brief Kodak® moment, I show him the teeth, note that he is suitably impressed and release the fish.

The fly is shot, the peacock herl and most of the tailing material long gone after being sliced by the predators teeth, I quickly change over to a new fly, thankful that I brought a dozen or so with me, an absolute necessity when catching cuda. As I moisten the knot to pull it tight, I notice my son is back in the water and has moved out several yards from shore. At that point he already had line in the air, I watch it roll over and land softly just short of a small patch of nervous water. He begins to strip rapidly and I see the water boil behind the fly, then spot a good fish following the small offering. Justin sees it also, as stripped line begins piling up in the water around him. He redoubles his efforts to strip faster, a trick that seems to frequently trigger a strike with pacific barracuda, a fact I have discussed with him frequently. I open my mouth to yell stop, as he strips too much line in, almost stripping the leader material inside the rod guides, when the fish strikes. The barracuda hits from the side. A slashing run that carries it half out of the water. The boy slams the breaks on, jerking the fish sideways, I wait on the inevitable sound of parting line as he applies much too much pressure, a mistake he corrects by completely releasing the fly line. Miraculously, the leader holds. The barracuda wastes no time putting distance between himself and us, quickly pulling all of the slack line from the water and through the guides in a spray of water and leaping flyline, how it keeps from fouling is beyond me.

Suddenly the sound of a free spooling Penn reel shatters the morning stillness, the fish is now eighty to 100 feet away as the boy slams the breaks on again turning the fish nicely. A good thing too, because he yelps and turns to show me an ugly tangle of flyline and dacron backing hanging from the butt of his rod. He has just created the "Mother of all Birds nests" a situation all fly fishers have to deal with occasionally and which generally occurs at the worst possible time, this being no exception. The fish is now running to and fro jumping with every opportunity. The boy plays the fish just like the large bream he learned to catch in the pond across the street from his Grandfather's home in New England, stripping line when the fish gives ground and releasing it when the fish runs. A dozen times the fish should have broken off, a dozen times it didn't. In a few short minutes he has brought the fish to me. Lifting it carefully from the water, I let him see the size of it, maybe eight or nine pounds, then carefully remove the hook, hesitate for a minute and let him hold and release the fish.

After clearing the tangles from his reel and setting the proper amount of drag to inhibit free spooling we fish a couple more hours, Justin and I both catch several more small fish, use up a fair amount of the flies I had tied and generally have a great time. When his enthusiasm starts to wan, we call it a day. I listened for the umpteenth time as we make our way back to the car as he tells me how he landed the "big" fish. I smile and nod encouragement, though I'm not really listening this time, I'm just pleased with how well the day turned out. The boy is happily recounting his exploits with "his" fish, but beyond the excited chatter, the look in his eyes says much more than the words themselves. I'll have to go far to top this outing. One thing's for sure though, I don't ever want to go out again when I must catch fish. It makes the game too hard…

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