Welcome back to Haiku Monday, where the Fish Hack is taking refuge at this-here Fish Wrap as a way of relaxing after a week infestation by the Donor and Host Organism.

Even at age 45, Fish Hack is still the abused and neglected middle child when Ma and Pa Hack come to town.

Family comes callin’
So Fish Hack is week-long host.
Need help from Jim Beam.

You remember Haiku Monday. Fish Hack busts a few non-rhymes in Japanese poetic form. Just sharing a few yucks about the outdoors in three-line stanzas meant to put a little class in Fish Hack’s otherwise low-brow world.

So the ‘Rents visit Medford to watch the two Tax Deductions play fall sports, and it’s all good.

With soccer and football done Sunday, Hack gets the opportunity to get two girls on the upper Rogue River for a very special evening.

With the Host Organism and Tax Deduction No. 2 (known at Lone Pine School as Maggie) in the driftboat and Fish Hack on the sticks, we went in search of their first steelhead on a fly.

Hack’s goal for the eve:
Get one girl her first steelhead.
Nothing more noble.

Host Organism had the fancy Sage rod and Orvis reel that is the best fly combo in Fish Hack’s formidable arsenal. But TD 2 had the most precious.

A lame old Cortland fly rod, something that would go claimed in the Free Bin at most garage sales. Bent guides, the cork in the handle loose so pieces spin. But it’s top-drawer for other reasons.

Fish Hack’s first fly rod, bought with a $55 loan in 1987 from an old bud named Pat Kollodge while at the Blue Heron Fly Shop along the North Umpqua River.

Lotta firsts with that rod, including my first steelhead on a fly.

Betchya didn’t realize how sappy a sentimentalist Fish Hack can be.

Just upstream of Dodge Bridge, 9-year-old Mags is doing the Rogue River Twitch with a juicy bug. WHAM! A steelhead that easily would tip the Toledoes at 8 pounds slams her bug and takes off.

Poor Mags is trying to figure out how to stop the reel from screaming when ... boom. The fish leaps to the sky and spits out her fly.

She couldn’t see over the driftboat transom at what a beautiful fish she scratched.

And just like her Provider, Mags got faced by her first steelhead on a fly much like Fish Hack did half a life ago.

And with the same weapon, that old’ Courtland 6/7 weight.

As soon as she lands her first steelhead with that old rod, it will be retired -- until the day one of her brood climbs in the driftboat in search of his/her first steelhead on a fly.

When one old fly rod
Bridges three generations:
A steelhead family.