A long time ago, a legendary steelhead guide told me that every true steelheader needs to catch three fish without a phone or a camera - to truly appreciate the fish for what it is.

I didn’t think much of it at the time. I was younger, eager to record everything, to prove the moment had happened. But that idea came back to me years later, in the quiet ways that lessons often do.

It was 2009. Our home river, the Deschutes, was having an all-time return. It seemed like you couldn’t do wrong that season. One cold November morning, I invited a friend who wasn’t an angler to come along. We hiked in along the railroad tracks, crunching through frost toward a chain of islands I’d fished a hundred times before.

It was crowded that day — word had gotten out — and we waited for our turn to step into the run. As I stripped line from my reel, I realized I’d left my camera in the truck. Smartphones weren’t in the budget then, and for a moment I actually considered hiking back for it.

I didn’t.

That first cast turned into a grab, and soon a heavy native buck was in the current. When I brought him to hand, someone clapped from the railroad tracks above. I turned, smiled, and released the fish. “That was the most beautiful Deschutes buck I’ve ever seen,” I said quietly to myself.

I can still see that fish now -the silver scales, the cold air, the way my breath hung above the water. The image is sharper in my mind than any photo I’ve ever taken.

Sixteen years later, I found myself in Florida. My phone had stopped charging, and for the first time in a long while, I didn’t have a camera in my pocket. As we drove to meet our guide, I thought about that steelhead -about what it meant to experience something fully, without proof, without distraction.

We spent the day chasing bonefish and permit across the flats. When I released my first Florida bonefish, I caught myself smiling. I hadn’t checked the time once. I hadn’t thought about a photo. Just me, the guide, and a friend learning something new about bonefish. A quiet, perfect kind of presence.

From Florida, we flew south to Cuba to host a group of ten, half return guests, half longtime friends on their first trip. The fishing was excellent, but the thing everyone talked about wasn’t the fish. It was how good it felt to be off the grid. No phones. No endless scroll. Just laughter, conversation, and that rare kind of connection that happens when everyone is actually there.

Technology connects us, but it also steals something subtle. The best moments on the water -the ones that stay -happen when we’re not trying to capture them.

At Stillwater Travel, that’s what we chase. The places that pull you away from the noise and back into the present. The kind of experiences that live in memory long after the camera roll fades.