This is obvious by ascent in the ternary tree of Pythagorean triples. Explicitly, ascent yields this formula:
$\rm (x,x+1,z) \to (X,X+1,Z),\ \ X = 3x+2z+1,\ \ Z = 4x+3z+2\:.\ \ $ For example
$\rm (3,4,5)\to (20, 21, 29)\to (119, 120, 169)\to (696, 697, 985)\to (4059, 4060, 5741)\to\cdots$
This corresponds to always taking the middle branch in the tree, see below
$\qquad\qquad$ 
The reflection that yields the descent in the triples tree is the following
$\quad\quad (x,y,z)\; \mapsto (x,y,z) - 2 \dfrac{(x,y,z)\cdot(1,1,1)}{(1,1,1)\cdot(1,1,1)} (1,1,1)$
$\quad\quad\quad\quad\quad\quad = (x,y,z) - 2 \; (x+y-z) \; (1,1,1)$
$\quad\quad\quad\quad\quad\quad = (-x-2y+2z, \; -2x-y+2z, \; -2x-2y+3z)$
We ascend the tree by inverting this reflection, combined with trivial sign-changing reflections:
$\quad\quad (-3,+4,5) \mapsto (-3,+4,5) - 2 \; (-3+4-5) \; (1,1,1) = ( 5,12,13)$
$\quad\quad (-3,-4,5) \mapsto (-3,-4,5) - 2 \; (-3-4-5) \; (1,1,1) = (21,20,29)$
$\quad\quad (+3,-4,5) \mapsto (+3,-4,5) - 2 \; (+3-4-5) \; (1,1,1) = (15,8,17)$
Continuing in this way enables one to reflectively generate the entire tree of primitive Pythagorean triples. This has a beautiful geometric interpretation in terms of refelections - see my said MathOverflow post and see here for sums of four squares.