Nov. 20. By Jon Show. When I woke up the day after my dad died all I wanted to do was go fishing. To do one of the many things he taught me as a kid. He loved to hear about my adventures in the mountains and see pictures of what I caught.

It took me a few days to muster up the motivation. I didn’t want to be in my truck by myself, in my own head, for two hours on the way to the mountains.

When my buddy Anthony (known in these pages as Anthony) called me three mornings after my dad died and said he was going fishing I leapt out of bed.

The obituary had been written. The cremation and urn ordered. It was the weekend and my wife and kids were all out of town.

I grabbed my gear and he picked me up in the driveway. I posted my dad’s obituary from the passenger seat of his truck and listened as my phone dinged with notifications.

I turned it off. I didn’t feel like tearing up anymore.

We drove across the Blue Ridge Parkway, pulled up to the creek and geared up. We wished each other good luck and headed our separate ways.

I walked the path down to my favorite starting point. I’m usually eager to toss my first cast but I sat down instead and looked at the rustling leaves and listened to the rush of the water.

It hadn’t rained in a while so the water levels were down – my favorite time to fish drop pools and pocket water.

I grabbed my rod and tossed my first cast. It landed softly on the water but a clumsy flick of the wrist put it in a spot I knew there were no fish. Like making a perfect pass to a guy who isn’t there.

I threw a few more casts in the same unintended location and moved up the creek.

As I stepped into the next pool, I looked at the water and sat back down on a rock, unsure if I wanted to continue fishing or just sit there and think about my dad.

I stood up and said aloud to no one except myself, “Alright Pop, let’s see what we got today.”

For the first time in three days he slowly faded out of my frontal cortex, and I just thought about fishing.

I worked my way up the creek but had no luck. The last thing I needed was to get skunked.

A few more holes didn’t produce any fish. Then, right as I planned on heading back to the truck, I caught the smallest brook trout I have ever seen in my life, and smiled a smile that was more irony than happiness.

“Good things come in small packages,” he used to tell me as a kid.

I continued ahead and landed a few other minnow-sized brookies, and thought again about quitting for the day.

I looked out into the trees and said, “Is that all we got?” For the first time in my life I asked my dad a question and he wasn’t there to answer it.

A few moments later Anthony showed up, standing atop a giant boulder, and pointed to a fish, which spooked when I stepped into the hole to cast to it.

You can’t immediately catch a wild trout you just scared away. Or at least I never have. It’s one of the things I love about wild trout fishing on tiny creeks – you must be damn near perfect to catch them.

I didn’t hear my dad’s voice in my head but I thought about him and everything he taught me about life. “You never know until you try,” he used to say.

So I tossed a perfect, pointless cast over the pool where the spooked fish was probably hiding under a rock.

My dad wasn’t obnoxiously positive but he never let you get down. He wasn’t a cheerleader; he was a coach who was honest but always made you believe you were capable of anything you set your mind to.

The dry fly I tied on shortly before Anthony showed up was kind of a unicorn that I made up on my tying desk.

It had some green dubbing around the hook shank and a wing that I tied using a peeled back wood duck feather. My dad loved seeing the flies I tied even though he never fly fished himself.

That specific fly had been sitting in my box for almost a year. Too fancy and delicate to use, like an expensive bottle of wine that sits in your cupboard waiting for a special occasion.

Well, that day seemed fitting enough so I tied it on.

I don’t know how long that fly was on the water after I casted it in front of Anthony. It seemed like forever but was probably only a few seconds. The fish in that creek either immediately eat a fly or ignore it.

Disappointment crept in and I wanted to pull up the line and recast, but I let it run, which I rarely do, and boom, a fish hit.

Anthony yelled and ran down from the rock as I reeled in the catch – 50% mine and 50% his. My dad always celebrated the assist before he celebrated a made shot.

Species of wild trout usually live in certain areas where they are either native, or where they were introduced eons ago.

The hole I cast into on that creek was a brook trout hole. I’ve caught a hundred little wild fish in that creek. All numbers of brookies and a few brown trout. Never a rainbow. Never heard of anyone catching a rainbow there.

I yanked the fish out of the water and scooped it into my net, but instead of the brook or brown markings I expected to see, I glanced upon a vivid streak of pink running down its side. It was the most unexpected rainbow trout I’ve ever seen.

I removed and cut off the destroyed fly, accidentally dropped it in the creek, and watched it rush down the river, never to be fished again.

We admired the fish and took a picture and I dropped it back into the pool. Anthony wandered off to fish another hole and I set down my pole on a rock and cried for the umpteenth time in three days.

I got up and began stomping through water I’d normally fish, looking for a slow deep hole and a brown trout that would complete a feat I’d never accomplished – all three trout in a wild North Carolina creek on the same day.

I fished far longer than I’d meant to and eventually headed back to the truck, where Anthony had been patiently waiting for 30 minutes.

“Any more luck?” I showed him a picture of the much larger, beautiful, colored up brook trout I’d caught ten minutes after he left me. But no brown.

We tried a couple other unfamiliar spots that ended up being shallow trickles that didn’t hold fish, and headed to town to grab a beer.

An hour later on the way out of the bar Anthony asked me if I wanted to go back and try to catch a brown trout to complete the grand slam, but I was content and had to make it home to take my mom to dinner.

He asked one more time, “We have time, are you sure?”

“Yeah,” I said. And then referenced my dad for the first time, I think, that day.

“No one was more proud of anything I ever did than my dad, but he never had a problem with a little failure. That’s what motivates you and keeps you going back for more.”

My dad loved to fish and he would’ve loved fly fishing, but by the time I picked it up he didn’t have the strength or balance it requires.

So I never got to take him. At least while he was alive.

I’m not blindly spiritual enough to say my dad was with me that day, or dumb enough to suggest he was reincarnated as a fish, but in that moment I understood what people mean when they say they can feel the presence of their loved ones after they’re gone.

I would’ve loved it if my dad was with me, but in a way he kinda was, and I guess always will be.

To be honest I’ve struggled about whether I can continue to write this column. I can’t think about writing it without thinking about him. And I can’t write about my dead dad every month. It’s just too depressing. For all of us.

When I was young my dad was always my fairest critic and my biggest fan. At the end he was just my biggest fan. He loved reading this column.

He would’ve loved to see a picture of that fish and hear the story about how I caught it.

Seems dumb to stop doing something that made him so happy.

Jon Show lives in Robbins Park with his wife, who he calls “The Mother of Dragons.” Their 17-year-old son is “Future Man” and their 13-year-old daughter is “The Blonde Bomber.” Their dog is actually named Lightning.