Good Stuff

I'll preface this by saying life is short. Do the things you talk about before you cannot, tell the people you love that you love them before you cannot.

Some moments you never forget. When Jill and I heard the news, we were just into Friday night Happy Hour in front of a fire. Rich was gone. I dropped the phone, told her the news and was speechless for a long while. 

We had talked at the end of the summer about a visit here in May. The opportunity for early season stripers in skinny water, a side trip to fish for browns and bass with my other buddy Rich, a trip to Fenway and God willing, a trip to Sully's on the way to the Garden to see the Bruins in post season play. I had meant to call at Thanksgiving to catch up and get the ball rolling. I didn't. And now, as hard as I try, I can't recall what was so important I had going on that I didn't make that call.

He was a big dude. To those of us who knew him, he was a giant, both in presence and stature. When you got to know him, you found that his size and strength were only surpassed by the depth of his heart and infinite devotion to his family and friends. I only spent a few days in the presence of my friend. At my age it seems awkward to refer to someone I had very little personal interaction with as one of my best friends, but he was. Our friendship began on Instagram. Like all good ones, it started over a dog, fly fishing and a shared passion of the Boston Bruins. He read everything I've written here on Backwater Flats and commented either in text or calls on every piece. Whether I thought it was good or poor, he always urged me to keep writing in my voice because "some will get it, some will not but some of us love it."

I wrote about the beginning of our friendship in 2014 at Dog Tales. In 2016 I wrote about our family visit to Folly Beach and time spent with Rich and Jeanette at Low Country: Chapter One. We had talked about additional chapters. I regret now they won't be written.

Rich, Jeannette, their dogs Tuck and Murphy, and their family were talked about in this house as often as any other family member. When Tuck passed, we spent nearly an hour on the phone laughing, crying and talking about the impact of all the dogs in our lives and how the special ones really alter your life.  Facebook check-ins, text messages, Christmas Eve phone calls, random conversations. Family stuff. That's the way I will remember it. And all bonded on one short conversation while he and I were fishing with Tuck in That Place That Shall Not Be Named while we were there for my daughter to visit the University of South Carolina. It became the anchor of our friendship and will remain in place as long as I live. 

He handed me a beer, climbed back up on the poling platform and said, "If Abby comes here for school, there's always a place for her here, we'll watch over her like she's one of our own."

After that, we ended all our conversations with, "Love you, brother."

Friends like that don't come along often.

Which is why Jill and I, flew down to Charleston to be with Jeanette, family and friends for Rich's Irish Wake. Exactly how he wanted to go out, his people all together telling stories and being together to remember him. I wanted to be there for Jeanette but also to meet two of his friends, Nate and Jeff, who he had introduced me to through social media. There had been talk about me making a trip to South Carolina fish with these guys. It just didn't happen. Jill and I thought under the circumstances, it would mean a lot to Rich for the three of us to meet. I'll say this, Rich chose his friends well. That fishing trip just might happen yet. And I hope to reciprocate with a trip onto my water with them in Rich's stead. 

As I start to write this, we are waiting for our flight back to Boston. My heart is broken but full. For the last two weeks all I've had on my mind is a comment Rich put on one of my blog posts detailing a trip out to Martha's Vineyard to fish the Derby in 2015. He wrote:

"Life goal: to be included in one of Mike Rice's fishing stories 'cuz they are about fishing and yet so much more. Good stuff, man. Good stuff."

These words bounced around my head as we all gathered in the living room and his daughter Lauren gave the Irish Toast. Up to that point I had held the tears back. As she spoke, they fell from my eyes. I looked up and saw a print on the wall of Rich and Tuck walking out on a grass flat. I had seen it before. I actually shared a similar moment with both of them. For a second I felt like I was in that image. And then reality hit me, and I realized he was gone, somewhere in the hereafter.

I cried more.

Jeanette came across the room and hugged me. I tried to speak but couldn't. She said, "He loved you." There are no better words to describe our friendship. That's the way I'll carry it with me. 

Before we left, I took another look at that print on the wall.

Rich Walker, I'll say this, thank you for including me and my family in your story. It started out about fishing but ended up being something so much more.

Good stuff, man. Good stuff.

Slainte! 

We love you, brother,

Mike, Jill & Abby

4 December 2022

Littles Pond, MA

Fire

 I'm sitting in front of the first fire of the season. The first fire has always held a special place in my heart: the end of summer and the beginning of winter. Fall has never been a season to me, just a jumping off point from one life to another. The transition between water to snow. Those times are past me now. These days it's become a merge down the on-ramp from mowing the lawn to the highway of (in the words of my friend Mike McAuliffe) "goddamn snow management." But still, it's my favorite time of year. The Credit Card Captains have had their boats put up, the flats are empty Monday thru Friday, and the package store isn't quite as busy. It's always been a time to be out there on the water and do what I do in honest silence. A time to get back to where I came from and appreciate where I am now. 

I throw more wood on the fire as my father is upstairs in what Jill and I call the "Lincoln Bedroom." I carried his bag upstairs a few minutes ago and as I got an extra blanket out of the closet was suddenly awash in memories of going back to the farm in college and my twenties when he would do the same for me. Walking down that long hallway from the garage to the kitchen, past my old bedroom, the smell of birch in the woodstove, sunset over the lake, pizza on the table, a beer extended from one hand and a hug from the other. My favorite memory of going home. For those first few minutes, there was nothing else but family. Tonight, Jill and I reciprocated. Drinks on the patio looking out on the pond as the sun dropped behind the pines, pizza in the kitchen and stories and current events from back home in front of the fire. 

Now I sit here as everyone has retired for the night. Jackson Browne, John Prine, the Allman Brothers and the Eagles on my set list, just like it was when I would sit up on the farm in front of the fire when everyone else went to bed. In those moments I wrestled and reconciled with where I was, where I was going and where I came from. Comfortably grounded by what has always been while anxious about tomorrow, the next step and the unknown ahead. That's what going home should be. 

I'm a short distance from turning another year around the sun. I've gone from everything to nothing and back again more times than I care to remember. In all of it there's been a constant source of strength, a light to guide me home. In my house tonight, in front of the woodstove, sitting next to my dad I was awash in that light again. Home.

Call your dad. 

Littles Pond

23 September 2022  

  

Three Rivers

The idea for this trip was first talked about just before Christmas last year. Plans and itineraries changed as often as the weather did while winter passed through spring into summer. By the first of July we had set the date for me and Matt to meet up with Rich somewhere in Montana. His plan was to drive out there with his drift boat a week in advance of his wife and daughters travelling out for vacation. Once the girls were headed home, Matt and I would arrive, fish for a few days and then drive back east with him. In the midst of the airlines being FUBAR in early July, Matt and I opted to jump on Amtrak and catch a different view of America. 

Photo: Matt Smythe

On a rainy Monday night in August, just shy of midnight we boarded the train in Rochester, NY bound for Essex, MT. The train ride is a story in and of itself that I'll file away for some other time. Thirty-two hours later the train stopped in Essex, the conductor ushered us out on to a small concrete platform alongside a dirt road, wished us well and then the train was gone. We threw our gear in the back of Rich's truck and got to the campsite just as darkness fell. 

The next morning, we headed into Columbia Falls with plans to fish the North Fork of the Flathead River. We stopped at Lary's Fly and Supply to get what current information we could and pick up some local flies. As I poked around the fly bins, I heard the term "hoot owl" a couple of times in the conversation Rich and Matt were having with the girl working the counter. When we got back in the truck, and as I was obtaining my Montana fishing license on my phone, I asked what I thought was an obvious question.

"Where's this Hoot Owl River?"

There was some laughter and then an explanation that it referred to restricted fishing between two in the afternoon and midnight on water with low flow and high-water temperature. Luckily where we were headed was not "under hoot owl." I finished entering my information, hit submit and laughed to myself remembering a line from Driving on the Rim by Thomas McGuane while I waited for my license to appear.

"Giving freaks a pass is the oldest tradition in Montana."

It was written in a different context but seemed fitting as we headed out of town. 

The Flathead and the scenery surrounding it took my breath away as we waded upriver. I've felt small out on the ocean and in the mountains here in the northeast, but this was different. It might have been the romanticism of finally being there reconciled with the images I had in my mind from what I've read about Montana. Or it might have been because it really is a big damn sky stretched out over mountain peaks, valleys and flat expanses that words and photographs really cannot fully capture. 

Photo: MR

Rich and Matt both began fishing with dry flies. Being the neophyte of the group, I stripped out line and started bombing small streamers across the river as I would for stripers here at home. Eventually I worked my way up to Rich as he started catching small cutthroat. Across the river, Matt began doing the same. I stood off Rich's shoulder and watched as he explained the process. A few fish later he rigged my rod with a dry fly and gave me pointers as I struggled with this new form of wizardry. He told me to keep at it and wandered downstream a bit. I watched him as he stood frozen staring at a small piece of water on the far bank wondering what he was seeing that I was not. And then he started casting. Short perfect casts, mending line and working the fly with a, for lack of a better description, delicate touch. He's a big dude, one of the physically strongest people I know. Watching him fish dry flies can only be described as a beautiful contradiction in constant motion.

Photo: MR

We kept moving upriver as the day went on. I kept practicing. Before leaving home, I had made peace with the fact that I most likely would not catch anything on this trip. I saw it as a learning experience, something to build on. At the end of the afternoon my Intro to Trout Fishing class was upgraded as Matt handed me his rod, gave me some instruction and stood with me as I pulled the fly out of the mouth of a dozen cutties. And then something clicked. I set the hook and brought one to hand. Matt sat back with his pipe as he and Rich continued to coach me up and I caught a few more. I'll never forget that first cuttie, on that river, in front of those mountains and under that sky. 

Photo: Rich Strolis

That evening at camp we discussed where to go next. While I looked through the photo's I had taken during the day, Matt fired up the handheld computer and he and Rich looked at options based on what they had learned at Lary's. By morning coffee, it was decided to head south to the Blackfoot River. Along the way Matt found a place to camp at the junction of the north fork and the main stem of the Blackfoot. We got there mid-afternoon, quickly set up camp, rigged rods and set off up the main stem into a box canyon. 

The boys alternated setting me up on pools, pockets and riffles. Eventually we spread out, Rich fishing above, Matt in the middle and me below. I took a break to get the camera out and watched Matt. Being on this river held great significance for him because of his lineage. We had talked about it on the train. Several years ago, he had written a poem titled "Give Me Trails."  I thought of his words as I watched him move up the canyon and a few lines of the poem came to life before me:

"Give me trails.

I run solo but I am not alone.

It's in my blood. My Blackfoot ancestry. I feel them running with me and the hair on my neck and forearms stands on end. I hear them in the wind off the lake and in the song of leafed branches overhead."

Photo: MR

A few moments later an osprey flew overhead clutching a trout. I'm not saying there was some cosmic meaning to that event, but I will say there was a palpable energy in the air. We all felt it and mentioned it at the same time later that day.

Photo: MR

We continued fishing up through the canyon. I found great joy in one tailout as I pulled the fly out of the mouth of two rainbows. I had studied the water, got myself into position and pieced together what I had learned so far to at least get the fly to a fish. Success in failure.

I caught up to Rich about the time we heard thunder in the near distance. The forecast had been for rain, a thunderstorm was a surprise. We decided it was time to get out of the river about the same time Matt came from upriver and said, "We oughta get out of the river." We worked our way back down through the box canyon looking for a way up and out. We had seen the canyon driving in so the road to camp had to be close. Matt took point and I brought up the rear trying to keep up without falling in. At the low end of the canyon Matt found a draw leading toward the road. I moved slow, deliberate and winded up it. We're all beat up and broken in places, I've just been around longer and earned a few more beatings. I fear it's starting to show. They waited for me at the top and I saw a momentary look of concern as Rich grabbed on to help me up the last step. Brothers, that's what we've become, not from a bond of blood but one of shared respect and allegiance. And they laugh at my jokes.

We found the road and got back to camp just as the wind picked up, the rain started and lightning followed. We pulled out the chairs, sat under a canopy of trees and watched the storm over cold beverages. This was the one time, at least for a few hours, during the trip that we weren't moving. 

The next morning Matt got on the board early with a bull trout. This was what we had come for. A guide floating by offered us his net and I was able to net it for Matt. His first bull but more meaningful that it came from the Blackfoot. A moment both of us will remember.  

Photo: MR

We moved up the north fork to catch up with Rich and along the way Matt gave me a lesson in swinging streamers. Cast, mend, raise the rod. Cast, mend, raise the rod. We fished our way past a sandstone cliff. In my mind I could see Butch and Sundance (the Newman-Redford version) crouched on the top looking down saying, "Who are those guys?" Cast, mend, raise the rod. Around the next bend I made a cast in front of a brush pile, mended the line and got bit hard as I raised the rod. Again, success in failure. We continued on for a while but after discussing the low water we decided to return to camp, pack up and head for Wyoming.

Our last day of fishing was on the Wind River. This was the highlight of the trip for me for the reason that it afforded the opportunity to use everything that Rich and Matt had taught me on my own. We parked the truck in a campground and walked the bank. Right off the bat there were rainbows holding in front of rocks and boulders. Matt worked one with a dry fly for a half hour while Rich and I did the same downstream. Matt eventually caught his, I was pleased with myself for getting mine to move on my fly several times. We waded our way upriver and I switched to swinging one of my own flies, one named after Matt that has caught just about everything in saltwater and freshwater. I really wanted one fish on the fly from the Wind. But only on The Poet. I fished below Rich while Matt went way upstream. Eventually I raised a rainbow on it, saw the fish take the fly, felt it on the line as it turned into the current and then as quickly as it happened it was gone.  That was it for me. I hadn't brought it to hand, but it was enough. 

Photo: MR

I made up my rod, stepped out of the river and walked up to Rich. He looked at me and said, "I'm done too, let's go have a beer and wait for Matt." We walked back to the truck, broke down the rods, changed into dry gear and were sitting down at a picnic table when Matt caught up to us. We sat and talked about the trip as we looked down the Wind. Since I wasn't driving, I opted for a second beer and walked back to the truck as Matt packed his pipe. On my return I looked at them both staring at the river in silence and was reminded of a passage Norman Maclean wrote in A River Runs Through It:

"It was here, while waiting for my brother, that I started this story, although, of course, at the time I did not know that stories of life are often more like rivers than books. But I knew a story had begun, perhaps long ago near the sound of water."

Taking my seat at the table I realized this story didn't start in a series of text messages or at a train station in Rochester. It didn't start on the Flathead, the Blackfoot or the Wind. It started long ago in the Pioneer Valley of western Massachusetts, the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York and the western foothills of Maine.

Photo: random English lady

Three lives.

Three brothers.

Three rivers.

Littles Pond, MA

16 September 2022

Gravity

I followed Rich from his house to the put in. Staring at the raft in the back of his truck reminded me of last year's trip. It had been my first float in the freshwater scene. He and Matt had coached me up during the day as I threw albie flies and Baby Poets at bass, browns and rainbows. I've fished up and down the east coast and the islands and thought that some of those days would never be bested. I was wrong. At the end of that day, exhausted from catching a ton of fish and laughing endlessly like schoolboys, we agreed to make it an annual event.

Over the winter this year's group trip got postponed until later this summer. More on that after it happens. Rich and I had talked about fishing for stripers here on my water this spring but after reading all the information and listening to the "industry experts" leading up to Amendment 7 of the Striped Bass Management Plan, we both, individually, decided to cut back on fishing for stripes this year. For both of us it was a personal decision based on our own observations and history on the water, not meant to incite debate or seek comment.

So, instead we headed to one of his favorite pieces of water. We dropped the boat, shuttled his truck to the take-out and grabbed a coffee and one pound cream cheese muffins on the way back. Stepping into the raft last year was like stepping back in time. It was the same on this trip. Back to my childhood on those days when I was free to leave the house early in the morning on my bike. A green stick shift three-speed Schwinn with motorcycle handlebars and a banana seat with a backrest. A fishing rod tied to the backrest with bailing twine, my grandfathers' army knapsack with a water canteen, peanut butter and cucumber sandwich, Buck knife and a book of matches, I was set for the day. I roamed the lakes, ponds and streams around North Norway in search of adventure until it was time to be home for dinner, keeping track of time by the position of the sun in the sky (yes, that's how we did it in the 70's). Pure freedom.

Being in the boat of one of the best fly tiers in the industry and author of Catching Shadows: Tying Flies for the Toughest Fish and Strategies for Fishing Them, you might assume I'd be fishing his flies. No way, man. I was rigged with one of my favorite albie patterns just like last year. Rich looked at it and said, "Throw it." A few casts into the float and the bass were on it. And then a rainbow. And then more bass.

Photo: Rich Strolis

And so it went for hours, with Rich on the sticks calling out shots at pockets, cuts in the banks and ledges. I skipped the fly in under some overhanging branches and got hit hard. We both saw the take and knew it might be the bass of the day. It would have been for sure, but it popped off just as I wrangled it boatside to the net. Disappointing for a second but we had both watched the whole thing happen. That was enough. 

Photo: Rich Strolis

By noon my arm was spent. I wasn't going to say anything about needing a break. We had both been dealing with elbow and wrist tendonitis and he had a shoulder issue to boot. I knew even after rowing for five hours into the wind he wasn't going to say anything about needing a break. So, I kept casting. Finally, after a few half-assed spaghetti casts and long pauses in between he told me to take a break and we stopped for lunch. While we ate, I asked questions about the bugs in the river and their lifespans and all the stuff I've seen in books and articles but never read. He started flipping rocks over to show me what was going on underwater and how to "read" the bug activity to know what and how to fish a particular stretch of water. More things to add to my "more things to learn list."

While I finished my Strolis River Sandwich he got out a rod and started casting. We joke at times about being born a hundred years too late and that about the only place we feel at ease is as far away from people as we can get on some piece of water just fishing. For the sake of just fishing. After listening to his talk on egg, larva, pupa and adult stages of aquatic bugs and then watching him at work in water that surely runs through his veins as it does the riverbed, I know that he's found his place.

We got back in the raft and continued on. I switched over to a Baby Poet and kept racking up bass. All sizes. It didn't matter. While we drifted along Rich talked about the possibility of a spinner hatch going off at dusk close to the take-out. It would mean staying out until dark, but it might be worth it. This is something I've never fished so I was in. Until then there were more bass to catch.

Photo: Rich Strolis

Late in the afternoon we happened upon a bald eagle. It flew off downriver and joined another one high up in the pines. Rich dropped anchor and we sat there for close to thirty minutes watching them. Two grown men sitting silently in the middle of a river in awe of these two remarkable birds.

It was about then Rich started seeing spinners start to hatch. We picked up the pace and got to the section of river he had had talked about as the sun was sinking in the trees. He rigged a rod with a dry fly, made a few casts to show me the basics and then had me make a few practice casts. In golf it would be the short game. In baseball it would be small ball. All finesse and strategy, a little different than what I'm used to, but I figured what I lacked in experience I could make up for with enthusiasm.

We sat and watched the spinners rising off the water. Every so often there would be a small delicate ripple underneath them. Rich made a few casts in the area of these ripples and picked off a beautiful brown. He handed me the rod and talked me through where and when to cast. After several casts I finally made a somewhat suitable presentation, mended the line and was on, just long enough to know I was on before I was off. More experience, less enthusiasm. Apparently, there's this thing called a trout set. I've heard about it, never used it. Now it's on my list. 

I handed the rod back and told him to have at it. He made some ridiculously long accurate casts and brought to the boat the largest brown trout I've ever seen up close and personal. It was an amazing thing to watch. 

Darkness fell and we floated the rest of the way to the take-out. I was a little skeptical about getting the raft up the bank to the truck, but the winch made short work of it. I collected our gear, set it to the side of the truck and stepped back into the river for one last look. I thought about that old green bike.

In a world that seems increasingly smaller and troubled as each day passes, there are still places here that feel like a different planet. Places where the heartbeat of the sights and sounds and the pulse of a river can transport you to another time. Places that pull on you to return to the more you think about them.

It is a special kind of gravity.

From the field

31 July 2022   

hay bales and whiskey

It was the summer of 1992 and a day much like today. It was hot, humid and the breeze pushing the hot air around only made it worse. Growing up on the farm, my family joked that we always picked the hottest week of the year to hay the upper fields. On the years that we did two cuttings, we seemed to also pick the second hottest week of the year. Despite the conditions, when that last bale went into the barn, well that's a feeling you wouldn't understand unless you lived on a farm.

It was a Friday. I was heading back to Burlington after working a case in the Northeast Kingdom. I kept looking at my watch and plotting my course to get to back to the city in time for happy hour at Esox. Around three o'clock it dawned on me that I wasn't really sure where I was. I had a general idea, so I kept heading south looking for the next main road to turn right on. I knew if I kept following the sun, I would eventually end up somewhere familiar.

I kept driving but no crossroads appeared. I finally came upon a farm on my left. It was iconic Vermont. A white two-story farmhouse, big red barn, tractor-shed and a farmer's garden planted out back. Across the road were large hay fields that had just been cut. The smell of dried hay carried with dust and chaff rolled in the window with the wind. I passed the lower end of the fields and saw an older gentleman throwing hay bales onto the back of a flatbed trailer being hauled behind an old F-150. An older woman who I assumed was his wife suddenly jumped out of the cab, truck still in gear, ran up to clear a bale or two to the side and then got back in. Then she would stop while he stacked what he had just thrown on. I laughed a little because that's how my dad and I did it for years. And how I learned to drive.

I passed by them and pulled over thinking I probably should ask for directions. I looked back at them in the mirror and saw the old man give his wife the hand signal to stop and then he sat down on the bale at his feet. Memory lane came knocking and I recalled riding home from a jobsite in dad's truck one hot afternoon when we passed a neighbor's farm with hay down in the field. Thunderstorms were approaching and he pulled into the field and said, "Let's give them a hand." 

I looked down the road to the south and saw thunderheads building. Then I looked back at the old couple in the mirror and for an instant saw my dad's face. So, I turned the truck around and pulled up behind the hay trailer. I got out and walked up to them. Me with long hair, camo BDU pants, a Metallica t-shirt and an earring. The old man stood up and asked if he could help me. I said, "No sir, I'm here to help you."

He introduced himself as Ed, his wife as Mary and handed me a bottle of water. I sipped the water as we agreed Mary would drive, Ed would stack on the trailer, and I'd throw bales. As Mary got back in the truck, I pulled a bag of Levi Garrett out of a pocket and packed a chew. Ed looked down from the trailer and asked if I could spare some. I threw him the bag. He packed one, threw the bag down and said, "Don't tell mother." I laughed, gave him the nod and started throwing bales. 

It didn't take long to fill the trailer. Ed looked at the gray clouds approaching from the south and then at the forty or so bales left in the field. It was obvious he wasn't going to ask me to stay and load another trailer so I told him between their truck and mine we could probably get the rest of it pretty quick. And we did. We got back to the barn, stacked the hay from the trucks in the loft and then got the trailer into the barn just as the thunder started and rain began to fall.

"We'll leave that right there. I like to have something to feed out if I need it. Appreciate your help. Can I buy you a beer?"

Before I could answer he ducked into the tractor shed and came back with two bottles of ice-cold Miller High Life. We stood in the door of the barn watching the storm blow through and talked about my life growing up on the farm, deer hunting and his sons. Two years apart in age, the oldest was a JAG lawyer in the Marine Corps, the youngest a helicopter crew chief in the Navy.

"Those two couldn't wait to get away from here, said no way in hell they were gonna be farmers." 

"Take it from me, Ed, every farm kid says that. I did. But I go back every chance I get."

"Yeah, yeah, they do too. When they can. The youngest thinks he'll come back after his twenty is up in six years, the oldest will probably stay in as long as he can."

Mary appeared on the porch and waved Ed over. He came back and said, "Mother's got supper in the oven, it'll be about a half hour if you can stay."

I looked at my watch and decided Esox could wait and accepted the invitation.

"Good. You like to fish?" I said yes. He went back into the tractor shed and came out with an old Zebco set up and a fly rod. "Which one you want?" I pointed to the Zebco and he told me to follow him. 

We walked past the barn and through the cows in the pasture a short distance to a pond about the size of a hockey rink. A small, almost dried up stream fed into the north end and another flowed out the south. A split rail fence, falling down in places, encircled the pond. I said, "It looks like a hockey rink."

Ed laughed and said, "Close, just shy of regulation size but we watched a lot of hockey games out here when the boys were growing up. It's spring fed out there in the middle. We got bass, crappie, pumpkinseed, bluegill, the boys used to catch fish in some of the other ponds and lakes around and then bring 'em back and put them in here."

Mary caught up to us carrying an old wire milk bottle carrier with three Mason jars of brown liquid and what looked like a knitting bag. We walked through a gate near the inlet where there was a wooden platform with a small dock jutting off it into the pond. On the platform were two Adirondack chairs and a small table. She handed us each a Mason jar, took one herself and raised it in a toast.

"To old farmers and new friends."

We clinked glasses and I took a sip. After throwing hay bales in the heat and dust it was one of the best things I had ever tasted. She saw the look on my face and said, "Jack Daniels, ginger beer and a splash of our maple syrup." Then she sat down and started knitting. Or crocheting. I don't know the difference. Turned out this was their Friday night ritual. 

Ed stripped out line and started casting off the dock. While he did so he told me about the flies he tied, showed me what looked like something between a dragon fly and a grasshopper. Then he showed me his fly box lined with a few dozen small insect looking flies. I had no idea what I was looking at. At the time I had zero interest in fly fishing. I look back now and realize I missed a great opportunity to learn something.

Ed caught a few fish while we talked. I made a few casts on the Zebco but caught nothing. And then Mary said it was time for supper. Meatloaf, roasted potatoes, summer squash and a cucumber tomato salad. Dessert was a sponge cake with a buttery lemon sauce. The best meal I'd had since the last time I was home. We finished with a cup of coffee. Sanka, out of the jar. 

I helped Mary with the dishes and then bid my farewell. Ed tried to slip me a twenty. I told him we were square and handed it back to him with the bag of Levi Garrett when Mary wasn't looking. I shook his hand, hugged Mary and got into my truck just as the last of the sun slid down behind the trees. I looked in the mirror as I stopped at the end of the driveway. They were standing in front of the barn waving. I looked twice because for a split second I saw that old barn in North Norway.

I got back out on the road and noticed a paper bag on the truck seat beside me. I opened it. Two meatloaf sandwiches. Still warm. I decided missing happy hour at Esox was probably a good thing and opened one of the sandwiches. A short time later I found a right turn and in about ten minutes knew exactly where I was. I remember laughing and almost choking on the last of the sandwich because I'd never really been lost at all. Just in a different place.

I thought of this old story tonight as I stepped out on the dock and caught a few fish in the pond. I don't know whatever happened to Ed and Mary. I'm sure they've since passed. I hope that their sons returned to the farm. And I hope they throw flies on that pond and sip one of their mother's cocktails on Friday nights.

Littles Pond

22 July 2022

Turnstiles

I went out to the pond tonight to make a few casts. I've been sidelined from time on the water and on the vise while I deal with some issues in my elbow and forearm. It's been interesting these past few weeks. I've filled the time I would normally spend walking the mud with a nine weight or spinning at the vise with things I used to do or that I had forgotten to do. Part of all that has included going back through these old posts and notebooks tucked away here and there with scribbled notes and obscure thoughts. There's also been time for silent introspection.

But I can only take myself seriously for so long, so after I shut the woodshop down, I grabbed the six weight and made a cast. It didn't hurt as much as I thought it might, but enough that I wrote off the idea of learning to play the guitar or the piano anytime soon. The pond in the setting sun was beautiful and quiet so I stood and stared at it. Some would say I pondered. I wondered for a moment if the arm will ever be the same, if this might well be it. I saw the reflection of my face in the water and two words I had just re-read in one of those battered notebooks answered my question.

I remember the exact moment I wrote them down. It was years ago, on the way into a job meeting at one of the office towers downtown. It was one of those buildings with the fancy marble street level lobby and glass front with multiple revolving doors. The day was much like today: clear, bright and hot. Nobody in Boston wanted to be at work. I checked in at the front desk and was told my contact was still at lunch and running late. I sat in a leather chair and waited. I watched people pass the front windows. Some were obviously taking their time to get wherever they were going. Most were clearly intent on getting to their destination as fast as possible and seemed to be agitated navigating around the slower moving ones. In those few minutes I realized I had become one of those people. I took a deep breath, got up and told the receptionist I was going to have to reschedule. I walked outside, bought a four-dollar coffee in a twelve-ounce cup and sat down on a bench in a postage-stamp sized greenspace. People continued whizzing by while I put on my dark glasses and wrote down two words.

Outside within.

I didn't know what it meant at the time, just one of thousands of fleeting thoughts I've written down over the years. I still don't know exactly what it means, but the idea is still as clear tonight as the day I wrote it down.

Somewhere in my childhood I saw an old lion in a zoo. He was sitting on his haunches in the shade of a bush just staring at all of us staring at him. There was a lioness in the background with two younger lions pacing back and forth. I recall locking eyes with the old lion through the fencing and the glass of the enclosure. It may have been a split second or a full minute, but I wondered at the time if in his mind, through his own memories or in genetic memories passed down, he was somewhere in the grasslands of Africa. Wherever his mind was, it was beyond the confines of the walls around him. I've seen that look a lot in my lifetime, including in the mirror. I always think of that lion.

I've seen it in the face of my best friend as we talk about our lives and our families. I've heard it in his voice when we talk about what we do and what we've done. We have ongoing discussions about not being part of the herd, about taking care of our own the way we were raised to in a world that we were not raised in. Change is inevitable, and in most cases is a good thing, but there's still a lot of good in what got us all to this point in time. Reconciling old with new and vice versa, well that's a discussion I'm not having here. It's a personal thing. Or it should be. And it is for him. He does it far up, or down, one of the many rivers he fishes by himself. Unplugged and disconnected for a few hours, it's his savanna.

I've seen it in the eyes and heard it in the voice of the pride and joy of my life. Six months ago, at the age of twenty-one, she made an audible and changed the course she was on. She came to me and said things were not working for her, presented a plan and asked me what I thought about it. After we talked about everything, I said it was a good plan and I supported her. Then she went out and executed it on her own, in a new place among new people, with a re-lit brightness in her eyes and self-built confidence in her voice. I'm doubly proud because up until now I've held the family record for jumping off the moving bus and figuring things out after I landed, carrying the old and forging the new.

So, in the falling light tonight, I switched the fly rod to my left hand. It's going to take some time.

Hold my beer.

I'm stepping through the turnstile.

Outside within.

Littles Pond

13 July 2022

Please, don't bite your cork

At the start of the 2021 season, I said this year will be great. New job, no more 20 to 30 hour per week commute, work from home...I'm fishing. And it started like that. The problem was the striped bass were few and far between. The fishing Gods on social media posted a plethora of pictures of bountiful stripers on a regular basis, some were obviously of the same fish at different angles and views, I think there were even some wardrobe changes involved. But what I saw on the tube was not what I saw on the water.

 I hit it hard for the first month. Twenty plus years on the same water, more time now to fish, I figured it would be, as the cool kids say, epic. It was not. The movement patterns of inshore stripers here combined with tide, moon, wind, weather and all the things I've watched over the years never materialized. It's been on the decline on for several years but last year left me shaking my head. To the point that by July I just didn't go out. I made a few short excursions just "to see" but I got black and white striped more than I saw silver stripes. By August, I resigned myself to hoping for the fall run. I just didn't fish. I went out in September a few times, picked up a few rats here and there and one fish over 28" but the numbers were not there, and they were not in the places I expected them to be. So I waited.

My birthday is in early October. It usually coincides with a big push of fish through the river eating anything that gets put in front of them. Over the last 15 or so years I've opted to spend that day or one near it by myself on the water. It usually starts about a cup of coffee after sunrise and ends about a warm can of Bud after sundown. This year started with the coffee but was fueled all day by water and Gatorade because I paddled and walked more miles in the backwater and marsh than I ever have. And I found fewer fish than ever.

I started out down The Avenue. First light, start of the incoming, usually a lot of small fish. Nothing. Stopped at the Sure Hole, spent longer than I should have. Nothing. Moved around the corner to the Bathtub, even the cormorants were confused. Shot up the Expressway, no signs of fish. A ton of bait in the breakdown lane, no striped bass. Took the exit to the Escape Hatch, usually good for one or two at the interchange over the Big Flat. Nope. Crickets. Ducked into the Small Bathtub, got out of the kayak and walked the edges and spent way too much time there. Still nothing. Took the Back Road up to the Branch. Years ago it was always a sure thing along the edges of the grass. This time, nada. Made it to the Branch and got out to walk the grass around The Bellagio. I got my steps in, practiced casting into the wind but that was it. Screwed out of Bellagio and parked across the river at the Back Door. I've never not caught at least the smaller striper I've ever seen there. Well, this time I caught one almost bigger than the smallest striper I've ever seen. And for like five minutes I thought this could be the turning point. And then it was ten minutes. And then fifteen. After twenty I bailed and headed into the marsh to the Secret Hole, The Big Hole, The Dirty Hole, and lastly the Branch Hole. Bait everywhere, cormorants freebasing sand eels and silversides, no striped bass.

I paddled out of the Branch about midday, headed for the mouth and picked my way out to the outside. I turned the corner and headed for the Olive Garden. This time of year, slack tide, they used to congregate in the rocks. Even bluefish would be mixed in. Not this year. I fished the Garden, the Outback, Sully's Tavern, the Mudslide, the Rockslide and the entire length of Bluefish Alley. One fish, about 20" came out of the boulder field at the bottom of Rockslide, Almost seven hours in and two fish. Happy Birthday.

I headed back inside and went upriver on The North to The Place That Shall Remain Nameless. Usually this is a low tide spot, but I was grasping for straws. The top of the mud was starting to show as the water dropped so I got out and walked its edge and made a couple hundred casts. About cast number Two Hundred and Six I went tight. A small shad, not what I expected but I was grateful. Grateful enough to get back in the boat and back to the South. 

I peeled into the Bowl got out of the boat and walked the edge of the Back Corner and the Corner Store. It was getting late, I hoped it was all going to start to happen as it has so many times before. About the time I was ready to call it I got lit up just off the Corner Store. One nice fish on, two following it. I thought I was in. I was wrong. No code had been cracked, no pattern had been figured out, I just spent another hour practicing my cast.

The sun was getting low, I paddled across the Bowl to Dog Piss Beach. This is where I planned to make my stand. Drink my Birthday Beer, howl at whoever heard me and catch some fish. When I beached the boat and took stock of my perishables, I realized I didn't have my Birthday Bud and no one would hear me if I did howl. But I threw line anyway. Over and over. And then it was one fish. And a few casts later, another. And another. All cookie cutter 20-22" stripes. Four in about 20 minutes. And then crickets. But I kept casting. Into the dark. And then I headed for home. Paddling in the dark I recalled years past of twenty-five or thirty fish days, sometimes upwards of fifty on my birthday sabbatical. The times they are changing.

I'll fish again this year. But it won't be all go no quit big nuts Harry Stamper (obscure Armageddon reference) fishing. The stock in my view, whether you "catch and release" on your own, meat fish or 6 Pack it all day everyday can't sustain it. 

Striped bass are in decline. It cannot be disputed. We've seen it happening since almost the resurgence after the last crash. We've all played a part in it. We've all kicked the can down the road. So, what can be done? We can stop bitching about it on social media. Stop pointing fingers and get behind a management plan. The people who make these "management decisions" need to hear from those concerned with the state of the striped bass stock. Read my words, not the "fishery", but the actual stock.

The deadline for comments on the Draft Amendment 7 to the Striped Bass Management Plan is today, April 15, 2022. I'm not smart enough to understand all the science, I'm just a fisherman (fisherperson), but the folks at the American Saltwater Guides Association have put a ton of information and avenues for action together at

 American Saltwater Guides Association | Linktree

and

Striped Bass Amendment 7: Public Comment Guide - American Saltwater Guides Association

Today is the last day to make your voice heard.

And please, in this year's posts, don't bite your cork.

 

South River, MA

15 April 2022