The kid was ten years old and small for his age, but his legs were strong and he waded without fear. He fished hard. We shared a passion and a singular focus, so I enjoyed having him on the water. He stood just tall enough not to lose him in a field of goldenrod and he weighed less than the family dog. But he was sturdy, tough and determined, with an unwavering perseverance that kept him focused during the inevitable slow days with a fly rod.

He only talked of fishing. It was likely safe to assume that his conversations carried more variety with others, but the kid and I rarely strayed from the devotion. Trout. We chased wild browns and stocked bows across every lick and run in the county that was cold enough to hold trout and small enough for the kid to remain upright in a moderate side current.

In point of fact, he fell in or went over his hip boots nearly every time we fished. Ambition tended to outweigh reason, and the pocket water off the far bank often seemed fishier than what was on the near side of the midcurrent. On many an occasion, I’d watch him climb back out of the river to find a suitable log, take a seat with a chuckle and proceed to dump the water from his boots before ringing out his socks and redressing. The kid was efficient, and I admired that.

Brook trout streams were our favorite. It was the size of water he could manage, and I found, in the kid, a friend that would walk for miles for small fish and abundant scenery. He intuitively understood that the fishing was somehow secondary — that the walk would make the memory.

He tied flies that looked like hell, but I never mentioned it because they caught fish and it made him smile, so that was enough. The kid’s ideas about how to catch a trout were amusing to me at first, but I soon learned restraint in offering any advice. Instead, I was instructed by watching his instincts with a fly rod — which often outperformed all the things that are supposed to work.

He was the most dependable fishing partner I’ve ever had. With the unbound freedom of a ten-year-old’s short list of responsibilities, he was always available, would always fish and never folded plans. Conditions didn’t matter. On one rainy, cold, November day, with holes in his patched boots, frozen hands, a wet hat and no raincoat, he slung his cheap rod with the old and cracked fly line, and I watched as he lit up the stream. On days that he didn’t, he kept fishing anyway.

I don’t know where his natural way with trout came from. His father was not a fisherman, and the kid was mostly self taught — honest-to-goodness self taught, without YouTube videos or even much influence from any decent fishing literature. He was just an innately fishy kid with instinct and the desire to be on the water.

One horribly windy day, with storms rolling through, we decided to fish anyway. The kid’s Mom told me he could go as long as I would, “make sure a tree doesn’t fall on him.” No problem, I assured her, and I heroically rescued the kid from all the falling timber that a single day could bring (which is to say, the kid and I went fishing together).

After a couple years of sharing the water, we knew each other well and worked the river as a team. I took the bigger waters and deeper chutes while the kid jumped above to pick off fish in the skinny riffles. It was a good partnership.

One early summer weekend we took a long drive. Winding the backroads before dawn, we slowed progressively as we traveled northward, fighting fog in the cool valleys and dodging deer that we frightened with the headlights. Finally, as the yellow sun rose over a line of spruce trees, we parked in the ferns, gathered our gear and walked into the silence.

We followed the sound of trickling water, upstream into the dense forest with the objective to walk until we broke out of the floodplain. We walked the lower stretch of the stream among the roots and fallen oaks with massive broken limbs pushing earth and widening the valley — miles of curving streambed redirected from one season into the next. The kid fell repeatedly into the leftover trenches overgrown with deep green plants. I turned once to see his hands pushing himself upright against the mossy ground. We shared a grin, and then we pushed forward. We walked for hours. When the dominant undergrowth finally gave way to adult hemlocks, the forest shaded the mid-morning sun, and we stopped walking.

The fishing was as it should be in such a remote place. We threw dry flies into the black and brown corners of falling water, hooking native brook trout gems as small as the kid’s fingers and no larger than my hand. The water flowed down the mountain as we moved up and through it. We climbed a watery trail that narrowed as the hours past. We rarely spoke as we worked in tandem among the evergreens, cold water and gentle rain that had set in, releasing one fish after another.

We fished until sunset and then hiked east on an old logging road. It was dark when we found the truck in the ferns again, and with satisfied exhaustion we drove dirt roads, then hard roads that widened like the stream itself as we traveled south down the mountain.

The kid fought off sleep the whole way home. We talked of trout and winding rivers.

Domenick Swentosky is writer, musician, father and fisherman living in central Pennsylvania.