First Pitch 2005

It was the middle of May, it was cold, it was wet and the Red Sox were playing at one o’clock. The plan was to fish for a couple of hours and then take a seat at the bar at The Bridgewaye for the first pitch.

I put the boat in just as the incoming turned slack. We motored downriver on glass. In the usual spots we could see schoolies break the surface. It being the first day of the season in the boat we opted to head for bigger fish knowing these spots would still be holding on the way back in.

We ran into The Bowl down the backside toward Branch Creek. It looked quiet but we managed a few rats in the deep holes. I put down the eight weight, picked up the push pole and climbed up on the platform. Enduring the usual jokes about me falling off and the questionable effectiveness of the flies I tie, I poled us along a mud bar in front of the sod bank in the back corner. Looking into the water through the magic of polarized lenses and the angle I had up top I could see everything. Brian made a few casts to the bank and I watched his new “sure thing” of ostrich herl, bucktail and peacock shimmy its way back on the retrieve. I didn’t want to let on I liked it, so I didn’t. But that dog would hunt.

I saw a flash in the water outside a small alcove in the bank, the kind of flash that usually has stripes running down the side. I pushed us over there and lined Brian up for a shot. I saw the flash again but he couldn’t because of the glare on the surface. I pointed with the tip of the pole and told him where to cast. He put the fly right where it needed to be but there was no follow.

As Brian picked up the fly up and started making another cast I saw the fish come across from the side and move up into the alcove. I told him to drop it in the same place and watched the line stretch out to the bank. The fly dropped down just inches from the fish. Two strips were all that was needed for that stripe to eat ostrich and steel. It was a good fish and a good start to the season.

 

Brian "Ostrich" Peck

We ran up into the North and managed a few more stripes before we had to head back to the dock to make the game. There would many more fish during the season but none as memorable as the one we caught working together.

South River, MA

May 2005

Shopping

This morning I got up early to go for a run along the harbor in Scituate so that I would be at the lighthouse at sunrise. As I dragged myself along the bike path in the early morning darkness I came up behind two twenty-something ladies out for a morning power walk. Their heads were silhouetted by the glow of their electronic devices as they simultaneously burned data and talked to each other. Because I run in the Fifty and Over Husky Division and move slow now I was able to hear part of the conversation as I struggled to breathe and pass by them.

“…and I’ll be so pissed if he doesn’t get it for me for Christmas. I deserve it!” said Walker Number One.

Walker Number Two replied, “Oh my God, you so deserve it.”

I passed the walkers and made it to the lighthouse. And I watched the sunrise. I doubt they did…unless it was on YouTube.

The whole Christmas thing is out of control. I was going to rant about it but it’s just not worth it. Christmas should be simple. On the run back from the lighthouse I thought about the simple things I associate with Christmas’s past. A cold beer on the tailgate with my father after splitting wood all afternoon, a cup of coffee while walking my dogs on the beach, watching my daughter when she was little play with the boxes her gifts came in instead of the toy, seeing a Christmas morning sunrise while fishing alone for holdovers…I’ll take any of them over a box of stuff. Memories and time. Gifts we can’t buy but gifts we can make. The ones that last.

 It’s been said by many that some of the best days on the water have been those with little or no success. A couple of those days came to mind this morning.

Andrew Allyn is one of the smartest people I know. He has researched marine birds for years in remote places, is an NSF Fellow and is nearing completion of his PhD. He is also one of the coolest people I know - his life experience trumps his academic transcript.  I met him through the guys at Cheeky Fishing. We’re all from Maine and grew up hunting, fishing and skiing many of the same places. All jokes aside, put us all together in the same room and after a beer or two the Maine accent comes out and you won’t understand a single thing we say.

In 2012 we were all out on Martha’s Vineyard for the end of the Derby and fished the morning of the awards ceremony. It was raining and the wind was blowing 20 knots plus.  We had heard rumors of albies breaking off West Chop so that’s where we headed. It was nearly impossible to cast but we split up and went at it anyway. Andrew and I set our sights on a short stone jetty about half a mile from where the others were and picked our way out to it. 

With the wind at our back we found that by stripping out sixty feet of line and making one cast at about a 60 degree angle straight up the wind would catch the line and lay most of it out in front of you. It worked well except when the gusts shifted the direction of the main force of the wind, which was about every ninety seconds. We were laughing like little kids throwing rocks in puddles. We stayed at it and eventually Andrew stuck a little rat schoolie. 

I managed one as well but it was so small that pride would not let me take a photo. It was one of the best mornings I have had on the water and it had nothing to do with catching fish - it was being out on the island in miserable conditions with friends and loving every second of it.

Andrew was taking a fly tying class I was teaching that fall at the Bears Den and we made a plan to fish together a few weeks after the Derby trip. We agreed to meet at a late season/winter location that everyone knows about on Cape Cod. That morning was cold and windy but clear as the sun rose, one of those days you can’t help but feel positive about everything. We waded the surf at the outlet as the tide dropped for a couple of hours and just after agreeing to move Andrew hooked up with a surf rat. 

We kept fishing for a while longer but that was it. And that was all that was needed. We had coffee back at the vehicles and shot the shit about all things before heading off in our own directions, grateful for one more day on the water and for that one fish.

Life gives us gifts that don’t always come wrapped up or on a specific holiday. Those days were two of them. I hope those reading this find the same in moments with family and friends this Christmas Season.

Merry Christmas to all!

North River, MA

15 December 2015

Out There

This morning I got up and walked out of a meeting full of people who spent most of it talking of things they really know nothing about but think they do because they watch HGTV, took a DIY wall papering class at Home Depot and got a 17 piece kitchen tool set for Christmas last year. The real world works differently. Come on people, we’re constructing an office building not a lollipop barn on a unicorn ranch.

On the way back to the office I passed by a small creek and stopped to look at it for a few minutes. Along the edges of it where there was still water thin patches of ice had formed over night. Small pieces of the ice periodically broke free and drifted along with the current disappearing around a bend into the woods and out of view. I wondered what was out there.

 In Walden, Thoreau said of going to the woods to live deliberately, “I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”

I’ve read that passage a hundred times as this piece has wandered and meandered while I try to write it. Two friends of mine keep coming to mind. I met them several years ago through fly fishing and though we really only get a chance to hang out a few times a year at the winter fly shows, they have become good friends and people I just like being around. They are an example of how hard work, passion, sacrifice and constant honing of one’s craft result in success. Success not as others might define it but purely as these two brothers choose to.

To me, Dan and Tom Harrison embody what Thoreau was writing about. If you spend a little bit of time with them talking about what they do, you realize quickly they feast on the marrow of life every day. They have reduced life to its lowest terms: being on the water or not on the water. 

Brothers

Photo courtesy of Harrison Anglers

 

 

Dan and Tom own and operate Harrison Anglers based out of Northfield, MA. They are two of the few fishing guides in New England who operate year round. They grew up in the area fishing much of the same water they now guide and then like all explorers went west. After spending four years guiding in West Glacier, MT and a stretch guiding in the Patagonia region of Chile they returned to the Commonwealth in 2007. Since then they have been guiding full time for browns, bows, brookies and pretty much anything that swims in the rivers of the western part of the state.

Over the years I’ve seen a lot of pictures and video of their trips. Many of my friends have fished with them and told me tales of their days on the water in the front of Dan or Tom’s raft. Dan and Tom have told me some of the same tales but from their view in the middle of the boat. What I’ve taken away from it all is that the Harrison brothers are two of the best out there. They know the water, they know the fish and they know how to give their clients a memorable day on the water. I think that maybe what makes them, or drives them to be the best is that they still take time to wonder what is out there.

Photo courtesy of Harrison Anglers

I haven’t fished with them yet. We’ve talked about it. I’m a saltwater guy. I’ve never fly-fished for trout or floated a river. I think it’s time this winter to do it.

Because I wonder what’s out there.

Stay tuned…

North River, MA

1 December 2015

Dirtbags

It wasn’t even light yet and we were already arguing about directions. Heavy fog filled the air as well as my head; the remnants of that extended bourbon nightcap. I turned “Running with the Devil” up a little louder on the CD player as The Beast barked out directions and tried to get the navigational app up on his phone. I drove to the end of the road the house he had rented was on and turned right toward coffee.

“We should have turned left…” was all I heard from my navigator.

“I have the ugliest wife in fly fishing”, I said as I rolled down the window to let fresh air hit my face. He either didn’t hear me or was saving a reply for later.

I first met Mark Seymour out on the Vineyard during the Derby five years ago. Outside of fly fishing we don’t agree on much. It makes for some interesting conversations. Somebody mentioned a while ago that we are like the Odd Couple.  I hope it’s the Lemmon/Matthau version. Regardless, there’s a mutual respect between us built from spending a lot of time together in cold water, cramped quarters, crowded bars, shitty fishing conditions and Steve Bechard’s hedges. The guy doesn’t stop. Wind, weather, breaking fish, no signs of fish…he just keeps at it.  Because of this I started calling him “The Beast” a few years ago.

On this morning we were headed to the Cheeky Fishing Schoolie Tournament. Beast has been my fishing partner in it since its debut in 2012. Our team name is “Team Dirtbag”. He’s a wine guy, I’m a tequila guy but we will both drink warm cheap beer, especially if it’s free. It fits. We have never done well. Not for the lack of effort – in the 2013 tourney we caught over 100 fish between the two of us. They were just all really small.

I had spent the previous two weeks working everyone I knew on Cape Cod for information on where the fish were. I had a plan and felt confident. At the pre-tournament get together the night before at The Sand Bar I had talked to some guys who had fished that day and what they had run into fit right into all the intel I had been gathering. Beast and I looked at maps on his fancy phone, agreed on an access point and settled down with fish tacos and PBR’s. With good intentions we left to turn in early. Good intentions were met with bad influences when we got back to the house and Beast’s business partner Stephen greeted us with a bottle of bourbon. The night was long and sleep was short.

 

Photo courtesy of Cheeky Fishing

After getting coffee we found our way back to The Sand Bar and stood in the parking lot with 140 other anglers waiting for the start of the Tournament. It was an impressive group gathered there in the fog. At 0600 the official “start” was announced and seventy one teams spread out over Cape Cod. Beast and I headed to our secret location and found a few teams already there in obvious spots. We had two options; stay in one place and fish it hard all day or go gypsy and keep moving around. Beast and I had agreed based on the reports, wind forecast and tide that we would stay in this place and just keep at it. The water looked fishy. I had a good vibe going. We kept moving as the fog burned off and blue sky appeared. We found a flat off a sod bank with good visibility and structure that was holding bait and settled in to grind.

 

Photo courtesy of Cheeky Fishing

And grind we did. At 0823 I was tight to eighteen and a half inches of striped bass. Not a great fish but it was a start. It was also the end. The only fish brought to hand by Team Dirtbag that day. I took shots at a couple more fish on the flat as the morning wore on. One even turned on my fly, looked up at me, flipped me the bird and slowly swam away. Crickets.

The Beast and I moved around and covered a lot of water in the final two hours. It just wasn’t to be. Over a beer back at the Jeep we agreed we had made the right decision on staying put given the information we had. Then we argued about the best way back to The Sand Bar and who was buying fish tacos.

And that was it. But that’s what it’s like. Fishing is called fishing for a reason. With the twenty-four hour fishing news cycle and real-time-from-the-water-posting that technology and social media afford it can be easy to forget that there are days you’re not going to catch anything. Nobody posts about those days.

Some days it’s epic. Some days it’s just you and the water. You won’t know if you don’t go.

During the festivities of the tournament I got a chance to hang out with my buddy Ben Carmichael from New England on the Fly. For a better look at the Cheeky tournament check out his write up here.

And please check out The Beast’s retirement project at High Hook Wines. Look for and ask for his wine at your favorite packy and restaurant.

Photo by Mud Dog Saltwater Flies

The Wine Cellar
17 November 2015