I’m a city kid, but I love fishing, so when my dad said we were going fishing to Syracuse on the Butternut Creek, I was excited. You see, ever since I went fishing off of the boat, the Norma K III in Point Pleasant, New Jersey, and caught a four-foot sand shark, I’ve been hooked on fishing. I was six then.

That was seven years ago. Now, instead of shark fishing, I prefer bass and trout fishing. Lucky for me we have friends that live in Syracuse who put out the word to their fishing friends that we were coming up for the weekend. Therefore, we had a heads-up on the hotspots in town. We were told to check out a place by Highway 690 between the Jamesville and Fayetteville exits. Sure enough, following the creek for about a mile along, we found several beautiful spots. I caught my first brown trout of the day just before sunrise. At this spot, there was a small waterfall. Above the waterfall, was very slow moving, smooth water. In the rushing whitewater, with a pebble bottom, my first cast was precisely where the dropping water hit the surface. I started to reel in the crank bait that I had, and immediately felt the strike and set the hook. A Brown. Nine-incher.

We moved on after a morning of fishing on the Butternut in Jamesville and we got lost on the country roads in the surrounding communities. In the midst of being lost we came across a sign that said, “Spring Ponds Trout Fishing.” The address, 5200 Highbridge Road, Fayetteville, is not far from Jamesville. It seemed like a joke at first because it is exactly what I wanted: trout fishing. But we drove in and realized it was several ponds stocked-full of trout. It seemed kind of ridiculous. But just for kicks and giggles, Dad and I fished there anyway. It couldn’t hurt our confidence, I thought. Fishing here, every single cast you could catch a fish—literally. But the three to five-pond lunkers were what I really wanted to nab. I hooked several but it took me a while to actually bring one in. Turned out this place was a fish hatchery. We left with six seven to eight-inch Rainbows, and one three-pound, 18-inch beauty.

For the next day’s lunch, back at our friends house, we cooked up the six smaller trout in a frying pan. Here’s what we did: we soaked them in milk, dusted them with seasoned bread crumbs, added a few other spices that we found on our friends’ shelves (oregano, pepper, basil, and sea salt), stuffed them with lemons, and put them in the pan with olive oil for about seven minutes on each side. Delicious.

On a full stomach of fish, we were set for our departure. That doesn’t mean we were done fishing, though. So, for our last casts of the trip, we drove around looking for the perfect icing to a great weekend on the Butternut. Lucky for us, we came upon a sign that read: Butternut Creek, Public Fishing Stream. We stopped in the small gravel parking lot, and headed down the thin trail lined with Poison Ivy. It was a beautiful place; there was a small bridge which provided a reasonably deep section with slow moving water and cover for us in the event of any bad weather.

Upstream from the bridge, was some white water, but a deep section which looked good to me. In this section, I tried the fly-rod for a while with a tiny black ant, but had no luck. Then, out of nowhere, the sky opened up on us. It was pouring, but that didn’t stop me from fishing. From the shelter under the bridge, I took casts into the stream with a Blue Fox spinner tied on my spinning rod. As soon as the rain stopped, I went to the rapids by the grass reeds before the bridge to try my luck again. I waded barefoot into the middle of the stream just to my calves, and took a cast to where the whitewater met the deep section of smooth water. I got a hit immediately. A beautiful brook trout flipped on the end of my line.

On the ride home I thought about the times we had, the rivers I discovered, the times to come and all the rivers to be fished.