It was August 2003, I had been telling my 9 year old nephew I would take himstriper fishing, but the days never seemed to work out. Finally I was ableto twist my sisters arm and get him out in my boat. Now, up to this point hehad never been saltwater fishing, so he had no idea what to expect, otherthan me telling him I had been catching stripers longer than him. We got tothe boat launch early, and got the boat right in.Within 15 minutes we were both fighting schoolie stripers on spinningoutfits, one after another. We stayed there for almost and hour, I couldn’tbring myself to leave seeing he was having the time of his life, but thetide was perfect, and we needed to get to one of my spots where we canusually bring a monster to the boat. I set up my fly rod while he continuedto catch the small stuff. With everything ready to go, I asked him if he wasready to try and catch a striper as tall as him, and with a big smile on hisface, he said “You better believe it, I already caught more fish than youtoday”…Hmmm, he was right, and I was happy. We took the 30minute boat rideand I marked fish right away. He was throwing a 10inch power eel with ½ oz.Jig head, and I started throwing the fly, we fished almost an hour without ahit. Which was quite disappointing, because we could see the fish swimmingin front of us. I had thrown just about every fly I had in my box and mynephew started asking if we could go back to the first spot and catch morefish.I looked in my other fly box and realized I had 2 flies that my nephewbought me for my birthday back in April, but I had never thrown them. So Itell him we will head back to the first spot after I try out the 2 flies hegave me. On the first cast I get a strike, and we see a large boil in thewater, it was a good one. My nephew jumps up and grabs his spinning rod, butdoesn’t cast, he waits a minute and asks if I would cast my fly out for himand he could retrieve it, How do you say no to that, I let out a pretty goodcast and hand him the rod, he had watched me for over an hour cast andretrieve, and I was amazed at what I saw, my nine year old nephew strippingline like a pro, then WHAMMMM, a big fish takes the fly and starts a veryfast run with the current, to this day I don’t know how the line didn’ttangle seeing it was all in the bottom of my boat but it didn’t. With allthe fly line out, and the backing going out, I about had a heart attack.My nephew screaming for me to take the rod back because he couldn’t do it, Istarted coaching him, changed the drag a bit, got him settled, and he pumpedthat fish for at least 25 minutes. When the battle was over my nephew caughta 47inch striper on a fly rod, I am not sure what it weighed but it was ahog. We sat there for a second looking at the fish, it was 1inch shortedthan him, he then decided we would let it go, he said it was too big to takehome. I thought that was the best, he knew we should let it go. We bothassisted in releasing the fish, and it swam away strong after quite a fewminutes of reviving.The rest of the day I didn’t have a care in the world, we got into moresmall stripers on the fly rod, and he pulled them in. To this day he is mybest fishing partner, we go out together quite often, but he has yet tocatch another striper that big. Something in my life changed that day, thatday brought my nephew and myself together with a bond that will never bebroken. When ever things in life are not going my way I just think of thatday back in August 2003 and my worries go away.