A River Runs Through Them

Ian McCreary—who grew up in Oregon—remembers being in the 6th grade and getting up around 4 a.m. to go fishing for steelhead trout with his father on the Santiam River.

“[I would] get to school at 11 [a.m.], get to class and my teacher would say ‘Where were you?’ I would say ‘I was fishing’ and she did not like that response at all,” said McCreary. “I pretty much grew up fishing in the [Pacific] Northwest.”

McCreary has lived in the Platte Valley for nearly five years, moving to the area from nearby Walden, Colorado.

“We were living in Walden [and] I was teaching down there, then there was a j...