It was a springtime evening on the banks of a small, alders-canopied brook just outside Gander, N.L., when my lifelong love affair with trouting had its first date. 

There were no flowers or candy or sappy Hallmark cards; such dating accoutrements were those of young men whose fancy turned in the spring to a more amorous brand of love.

For me, a nine-year-old boy, there was a fishing pole and a can of worms, and an immensely patient father anxious to share with his son the wonderful pursuit of mud trout, as brook trout are commonly called in Newfoundland.

Implausible as it might sound, my seven decades plus on this side of the sod have not diminished the memory of those initial, magical hours with Dad at Radio Range Brook, proof of the lasting impact the experience had on my visceral fondness for fishing; an addiction that still begs to be fed.

It was about a 45-minute trudge through heavy woods and across two bogs to the actual fishing spot, a trek I made without so much as a whimper, a resilience on my part about which Dad would boast during descriptions of our trip in years to come.

“Bobby’s long rubbers were about two sizes too big,” Dad would reminisce, “That would add to his clumsiness as he got stuck in the bog, or tripped over stumps and fallen trees, always bouncing back up as though he had built-in springs.”

Once at our destination, the old man, the unofficial outfitter and mentor, took over, inserting a reel on the pole (we never used the word “rod,” that was for snobs), slipping the line through the eyelets and out the top, and pulling it to a length he thought would be most efficient for his trouting protege.

Then he tied on a hook, armed it with a juicy worm, and helped me cast the line, somewhat awkwardly, into the slow moving stream.

The results were immediate; the rapid fire tugs of the mud trout at the bait were something I had obviously never experienced, and were mysterious and exciting.

Instinctively, I yanked the pole backwards, with all the grace of a tail-chasing pup, and flung the trout, firmly hooked by its mouth, back over my head and into the adjacent alders.

I stood there, gob smacked at my virginal success, as Dad scrambled to where the mud trout lay flopping, removed it quickly and expertly from the hook, and proudly displayed the 30-cm-long prize for my benefit as if it were a hundred dollar bill, before placing the “pan-sized” catch in the basket that lay nearby.

I was hooked, so to speak.

Not a spring has gone by since when I haven’t “put a line in the water”, as we say in Newfoundland, a ritual repeated throughout the summer months, resurrecting the pure joy of that nine-year-old boy at Radio Range.

There were occasions, as well, when fishing for mud trout provided solace, when such peace of mind was desperately needed.

I remember trying to deal with a profound, life-threatening problem with booze, the toughest battle of my existence, and taking to the rivers and ponds with my dog, Sport, a formula for escapism that helped fight the incessant urge to get drunk. (At the risk of boasting, I haven’t had a drink in 40 years).

There was also a nearly fatal bout with cancer in my early 50s, a couple of years of emotional turmoil for me, my wife Heather, and our loved ones. But, once again, journeys to mud trout habitats were the medicine I required to remain sane, to help deal with a disease that had invaded not just my body, but my very soul.

But the best of all the fishing exploits were with my father as he and I aged but continued to haul in fat mud trout, on adventuresome float plane expeditions into wilderness areas, or simpler trips to ponds within driving distance, places like Rosie’s Gullies, Cup of Tea Gully, Tom’s Pond, and Black Gully.

Dad died 10 years ago at the grand old age of 89, and, by chance, I was the only person in the room in a palliative care unit in St. John’s when he took his last breath.

As I quietly and sadly said my goodbyes, there were, among other countless memories, the everlasting thoughts of that evening at Radio Range Brook, a wondrous flashback that allowed me to smile through the tears.