“Andrew! Chase! Wake up we got some fishing to do!” my stepdad says with his deep, cracky voice. Chase and I get up and look around.

As I wake up before the sun does, my heart skips a beat when I think of the king salmon.  I grab my phone. 4:30am. I walk outside the cabin and a race of wind comes toward me and now i'm as cold as the ice in the cooler cooling down my iced sweet tea. Waking up to go king salmon fishing is no joke. My mind is thinking of me pulling in a king salmon today .  the whole time up north,  a river runs through my mind .

As I head down to the river I cannot see in front of my own two feet, nearly tripping and landing on my a** more than once. But finally, i get down to the freezing, fresh and beautiful river. Right when the sun reaches over the peaks of the trees covering the river, I see  the colorful king salmon jump. Watching the fish jump up to the  sky like they just  want to  leave and fly, is something very cool and it never gets old.I'm using the same rig my step dad uses because he taught me all about fishing.

I follow his fishing guides like a baby trying to learn how to walk. But in my case, i can never master it. As i look down the rivers bend I see the fly fishermen doing a 10 and 2 count. On the clock the 10 is on the left side. Think you are the hand of the clock. You pull your pole to the 10 o'clock then whip it to the 2 o'clock. This makes the line go as far as you want it to  This is a way of learning how to fly fish. This art in my eyes are as good as the mona lisa. But after I cast the rig that Chase,Kyle and I are using, I feel something grab onto my hook. I know this is the time to pull that monster salmon in i've wanted all these years.

I set the hook so hard i see my rod tip bend to the max. I'm waiting for my monster fish to fight. But it's not a fish. It's a giant log from hundreds of  years ago. This place is called Suicide Bend,because the lumberjacks of upper michigan would throw down the logs and if you tried to go across, it’s damn near suicide. But every year the king salmon come out of Lake Michigan up the rivers and streams to mate , then they die.  These fish can be stacked on each other and they still won't bite your bait. That's how it goes.

But waking up at 4:30 and freezing all day, hooking onto multiple logs and not getting one salmon taught me something. Life is all about trying again and never trying to tell life what to do. Just let it happen and maybe just maybe, a fish will be on your pole. All some people need in their life is a river running through it.