You'll Always Remember your First

Your first car. Your first kiss. Your first job. The first time you fucked (Hey this is a family blog!) 

Maybe not you're first fish (depending on age) but the first one that mattered. The one that made you realize that there just might be something in trying to slip a piece of steel through a fishes jawbone and showing your mastery of it.

The first time that you realized that this was not the most important thing in fishing.

There is something about your first that's magical. You're first wild trout or your first steelhead. The first never seems to be the biggest fish, the hardest fight or the world class trophy. But it is the most endearing.


You'll remember your first long after you've caught bigger and wilier fish; then eventually forgotten them.

It's those firsts that lay down the stepping stones that will, as the years weather us away into the people we are meant to become, first reveal those initial lines of character.

Things will always be bigger and better; our culture almost depends on it. We're always trading up, improving, finding excuses to justify the whatever-it-is that will bring that certain sparkle back to our eye. For a moment or two. The wood grain in our luxury cars has to be that specific color of sunset mahogany. But ten years from now it will be a pale ghost compared to the 15 year old Buick Sky Hawk with no interior roofing that took being flipped over 3 times for the thing to finally die. (We on the other had didn't have a scratch.)

A first is simplicity in itself. For a moment it is the pinnacle of your accomplishments. That first deer is the biggest that you've ever killed! No matter if it's all of 90 lbs before it was gutted and soaking wet to boot.

You may accomplish great things in life. You may walk down roads that few if anyone else will ever tread. But it's those first that will bring a certain warmth to your recollective smile, or just a little more whimsy that normal as you recount the story. 

Your firsts are what rooted you down so that you could move on.