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I’ve had the pleasure this summer of teaching my 15-year-old son how to row a drift boat, more specifically, how to row a drift boat effectively for fly fishing the Missouri River.

After years of being somewhere between indifferent and Lukewarm towards fly fishing, he has started to take an interest this season. An interest sparked by spending time hanging around the shop  with super-cool fishing guides and his ultra uncool dad.  He still isn’t all that enamored with fly fishing but he’s definitely a fan of the guide life (whatever that is) and the idea of making money rowing a boat definitely has some appeal. That and I think he figures having mad rowing skills might impress the ladies.

And so in between washing boats, mowing grass, cleaning rooms and working in the shop he’s committed to a day a week with me on the water and while my motives are pure I’d be lying if I didn’t acknowledge the fact that I’m pretty stoked to have someone rowing the boat so I can fish. He’s really come a long way over the past few weeks and is definitely to the point where he can get the boat down the river without a problem. He’s starting to understand and control speed and distance in relation to the location of the indicator and he’s even gotten pretty good at maintaining the proper speed and distance for streamer fishing. We’ve just started to tackle moving the boat laterally which will be what we concentrate on for the next couple of weeks.

The last couple of times out we’ve had big winds to contend with and he has rapidly discovered why wind is the bane of the Missouri River Fly Fishing Guide’s Existence. Is it really that bad? I think my son would tell you it is,  judging by the couple of “I’m not doing it”, “I can’t do it”,  “I hate rowing” meltdowns he’s  had. I’ve had plenty of them myself so I’m not too worried about it but it sure detracts from my fishing when my guide decides he’s throwing in the towel!

We’ll keep at it and see if we can’t make him into a Montana  fly fishing guide after all.