Gawd Lady Your Awesome-Unbelievable

[Jeff Tief]

Many of the good folks on the Forum have heard me tell stories of my wife Susie's love of fishing.Some of you know her and have witnessed her on the stream and have seen her with the fly rod.Still some of you may know about her her concern's and the personal losses she has endured. Susie is a two time breast cancer survivor, lost her and mine wonderful son Brett in 2010 and 2 identical twin grandson's the next year. Throughout these extremely hard times she has pushed on often with a few tears but always with the resolve to keep going. This short story comes from a couple days on the water since the twins died in 2011. We were fishing Montauk one day and both were catching a good number of fish.After a picnic lunch in the campground ,I excused myself and went to the men's room while Susie headed back to the stream.As I approached her from the bank -3 teenage boys were walking downstream around her.You never know any more how people are going to react so I was watching and listening closely.One of the young men said "Gawd Lady Your Awesome". Not quite what you always expect from our youth but it was a comment I had to ask about. Susie had stepped into the stream and quickly caught a 2# rainbow.After a short fight she left it in her net in the water long enough to show me before she released it.It was at this time the 3 boys first saw and watched her fishing. They were excited that she had caught a fish since they weren't catching any and were impressed that she was going to release it. She no sooner netted the first the first fish when one of equal size swam into her view and she caught it on the next cast. Now these boys were really excited and spoke the words mentioned in the title. The rest of the story happened at Roaring River the next summer.We were both catching fish and I wandered up to the Twin Falls and found a spot to fish.After catching 3-4 in a row a man about my age asked me if I could help him. I pretty much will help anyone if I can and this guy had been struggling. He might have been 5' tall and had some birth defects which didn't make it easy to cast but figured it was game on. I had rigged him up with a split shot and gray scud and demonstrated a good drift and watched him miss strike after strike.About that time another guy asked me to help his son who was blind.Pretty much the same scenario occurred with me watching his drift and telling when he had a strike. I started upstream and Susie came walking by so I introduced her to the first guy and told him to keep an eye on her.She had set down on the walk way and started picking off fish one after another.He soon moved right next to her and with each fish he would yell"Unbelievable".She eventually got up as he had fly line draped off her head and vest. In two short moments these people saw her as awesome and unbelievable and never knew her whole story and how true their statements were.

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[Chief Grey Bear]

Great read!!!

The resilience and strength of a woman is something that few men truly appreciate and understand.

You sir have!

[rainbow]

Great story and lady.

[Rolan Duffield]

Great story Jeff. And thanks for your efforts to supply flies for the Healing Waters project.

Rolan