The old rod had a history far richer than any he ever imagined when he first bought it, so many lives ago. And now his own life was about to change.

He hovered just inches above my face, urgently pounding me with questions that I desperately needed for him to answer as I tried to make some sense of what was happening.

Green-clad strangers scurried purposefully about in the unfeeling electronic glow of the monitors and machines that surrounded me, and the darkening room was raw and sterile as I lay cold and exposed, poised precariously on the edge of the Eternal with the pain of death lurking deep inside my chest.

Forty minutes earlier all had been well as I topped the ridge a few hundred yards above my house, alone on my evening walk, having just returned from Cumberland Island with my daughter, where I had caught what I now hoped desperately was not to be my last fish.

It was a small redfish, and I’d caught it on the old steelhead rod that had belonged to the two best men I’d ever known.

I had bought that rod brand-spankin’-new from Woody back in the mid-’80s when he worked at the little outdoor shop on Kingston Pike. It was an eight-foot fast-action spinning rod and bore the words “Steelhead Special” right there on the side between the long butt and the first guide.

I bought it for things like the big striped bass that prowled Norris Lake and the marauding bluefish and Spanish mackerel and sea trout that stalk the Outer Banks.

I put a Penn 710Z spinning reel on it that balanced the whole Jig perfectly. I have always loved those old, overbuilt Penn Z-reels – you remember, the classic black-and-gold models with the non-skirted spool that was, and still is, as bulletproof as it gets. The fact is, I wound up with pretty much the entire Z-Series, from the diminutive little 716, up to that beefy 710. But I never got around to getting one of the big 704s before they were discontinued, and I had always regretted that.

When my dad saw the new rod, he liked it.

He liked it a lot.

And so I gave it to him, reel and all. He was recovering from his first heart attack at the time, and had just gotten to the point where he felt like fishing again – no, that’s not right…he always felt like fishing. I should more lightly say that everyone else was becoming resolved to the fact that sooner or later he was going fishing again, whether they liked it or not.

It was early spring and there was still snow on the ground when he and Verlin headed north to Michigan to fish the Betsie. Verlin told me the story after Dad died, how they caught that first big steelhead out from under the old submerged snag that morning with the snow blowing sideways, and how Dad had so deftly coaxed the big fish out into the open run and played it to perfection and was finally able to work it into Verlin ‘s waiting net.

I’ve told you the story before and so I won’t bother you with it again, except to say how very pleased they both were with Dad’s new rod. I think that Verlin even caught a fish or two with it himself and offered Dad a couple million dollars, his new Jeep and a used bird dog for it – but of course Dad declined. So after Dad died and the rod came back to me, I naturally gave it to Verlin.

You gotta understand, while they were only first cousins, no two brothers have ever been closer to one another than Dad and Verlin. That rod was one of Verlin ‘s greatest treasures, and he fished it from Alaska to the Carolina coast in those last few years before he and Dad finally got back together.

I remember how he called me that Saturday evening just before he was scheduled to go in for surgery and asked if I could come up and see him the next day. We had a grand time together that Sunday afternoon, playing with rifles and dogs and shotguns and knives and remembering the times so long ago when David and I were little and always tagged along with our Dads. And just as I was getting ready to leave, Verlin gave me back his and dad’s old steelhead rod.

And now I fast-forward a quarter-century or so, and my best little curly haired fishing buddy has somehow turned into a beautiful young lady who has just earned her master’s degree in Marine Biology. She and I are on our way to Cabin Bluff, across the inlet from Cumberland Island on the southeastern coast of Georgia for redfish.

Carly is a very democratic fisherman, has been since she was four years old and caught her first fish, a five-inch bluegill that is still mounted and on her bedroom wall. She’ll fish for anything, whether with fly rod or spinning tackle or cut-cane pole.

But for my part, I pretty much stick to fly fishing, and for this adventure I had brought everything from a light saltwater 6-weight to a heavy 10-weight, just in case we had the opportunity to ambush one of Cumberland Island’s huge cruising tarpon.

But at the last minute, as we were organizing Carly’s spinning gear, I decided to bring along Dad’s old steelhead rod.

Believe it or not, even after all those years I had still never caught a fish on that rod, for it was too great a treasure for me just as it was. Still, I cleaned and lubricated the old 710Z and loaded it up with brand new line, and on that last day out with Carly and our good captain Toby Mohrman, I set it in the boat along with my fly rods.

Toby liked that whole rig as soon as he saw it, and he told me he had a couple of the big 704Z reels of his own that he hadn’t used in years.

The wind was up, and the fishing was tough that morning, but by early afternoon the incessant wind began to lay and Toby found the redfish – whereby Carly proceeded to thoroughly school me in the fine art of fishing.

Eventually she relented just long enough to give me a break from the camera and the release net and offer me a few blissful minutes of my own up on the pointy end of the boat. She even retrieved my 8-weight fly rod for me from beneath the gunwale, where it had ridden safe and unused for most of the day, and started to hand it to me. But in a sealing moment of sudden enlightenment, I declined her kind offer and instead lifted Dad’s old steelhead rod from one of the rod holders along the trailing rail of the sunroof and made the first good cast with it in decades, out along the far edge of the current and among the eddies of an oyster bed that jutted into the channel from the dense marsh grass.

The redfish that took my jig was not one of the big burly troublemakers that Carly had been catching. But it still had the heart of a redfish and certainly behaved like one, tearing down-current and trying to get back into the oysters where I knew he would likely slice my line, plowing mud and behaving so rudely that by the time I was finally able to lead him into Toby’s net, I was thankful to have such a fine rod and reel in my hands.

I held him up, along with Dad and Verlin’s old rod, only long enough for Carly to snap a couple of quick photos before releasing him.

It was the last fish I caught.

And now here I lay, fiat, cold and immobile as Dr. Paul probed the currents and eddies of my own heart, fishing for the blockages and one-by-one clearing the obstructions and finally restoring the blood flow that had nearly ceased.

I never got to Missouri for deer or to New Mexico for elk or Georgia or the Carolinas for quail or to Michigan for steelhead. And, deep in the throes of a cold and snowy winter in the mountains of east Tennessee, and I’m doing a lot of intense cardio-rehab and Dr. Paul is very pleased and optimistic with my progress.

Toby just sent me those two big Z-reels that he’s had stuffed away for so long and never uses. And no matter what this next echocardiogram has to show or how vociferously everyone may complain, I’m heading out for trout and turkeys as soon as the weather gets right.

And for sure, for more redfish with Dad and Verlin’s old steelhead rod.