Lou Ureneck's Backcast in the Boston Globe

An Alaskan fishing trip provides bond for estranged father and son

By David Mehegan
Boston Globe, October 9, 2007

BELCHERTOWN - On a mild September morning on the Swift River, where it flows out of the Quabbin Reservoir, Lou Ureneck wades and casts a No. 14 grasshopper fly upstream. A 16-inch rainbow trout hurtles up and grabs it, dancing atop the bright water until it is brought to hand and released.

With its poetic fineness and almost mathematical detail, fly-fishing has a gestural language which links aficionados on a stream, even in silence. It's that language that Ureneck hoped would help reverse a widening gulf between himself and a teenage son. The hope played out in an eventful fishing trip on Alaska's lonely Kanektok River in 2000. The father-son link was reknit, if not right away, and not necessarily in the way Ureneck imagined. The story is told in his new book, "Backcast: Fatherhood, Fly-fishing, and a River Journey Through the Heart of Alaska." More than a fish story, it's an autobiography, and at the center are two broken families.

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