Doctor's Luck

• Fathers
• Mentors
• Physicians
• Recreation
• Fishes
• Human

My father, Katsumi James Nakadate, who had known from the age of 4 that he would become a physician, retired from the practice of anesthesiology when he was 67. He retired from fishing a few years later, acknowledging a veteran's respect for fast-moving water and an intelligent fear of falling down one of the Oregon riverbanks where he had waved magic with a spinning rod for many years—on the Wilson, Trask, Nehalem, Nestucca, Deschutes. But he held on to his fishing vests until he was 85.

A tan vest for steelhead gear, rust brown for salmon, and khaki for trout. Always neatly packed and ready to go: snaps and swivels in tiny plastic envelopes, lures and flies, sinkers, hooks carefully snelled and coiled into plastic leader wallets, hook-sharpening stones, nail clippers to trim off nubs of extra line after knots were tied—and a hemostat, retired from surgical duty, for deftly extracting hooks from the mouths of conquered fish, many to be released.

In late fall and through the winter, he always welcomed the sudden grace of an open …