Traditional Gray

 

The day began in the gray magic between dark and light.  Mornings like this had been the norm for both of us all season but today was different. Everything was different. The light beginning to creep into the sky no longer had the “full speed ahead” energy of summer. Instead it seemed to linger as it spread across the water, softened by the filter of autumn. The air had changed as well, not a lot, but enough to notice.

Seasons were changing.

We met at the boat ramp with the usual handshake and bearhug. Little was said as gear was loaded and the boat was splashed. The breeze met us as we headed out the inlet carrying a bouquet of salt, oil fumes and baitfish. Weighing the time against the tide, we agreed to run in search of bass and blues before heading to “The Spot”. We found a few bass, but no blues. The tide slacked and everything went quiet. Before moving on we changed rods and flies. As he finished, I pulled out bacon and egg sandwiches I had made at 0300 and poured Folgers out of the beat-up Stanley I have had since college. Talk turned to the reason we had planned this day for weeks: albies. His clients the day before had been on them. Hard. We hoped for a repeat performance.

We motored slowly to “The Spot,” watching the horizon for birds and any abrupt splashes in our peripheral vision. They were there. As were three other boats executing the “run and gun” attack plan on them. We joked about the proverbial old bull and young bull and set up on the outside of the circus. I took the bow and began casting, watching the water in front of us for sign. The albies blew up around us and we both got several shots into what we thought was the zone. This happened several times as we moved, reset, and waited. Between the two of us, at least one fish should have made it to the boat. I paused to watch the bait as he continued to cast, curse and retrieve.

Decision time.

I stripped in my sinking line, grabbed my other rod with an intermediate line and opened my fly box. I tied on an off-sized, off-colored fly and began casting. My choice received a chuckle from the stern. I ignored it. A few casts later, as my drag was singing, I heard, “You got any more of those?”

It was a draw for the morning; four albies each. Not a bad day. The action had disappeared and rather than follow the fleet we discussed going back for bass. He pawed through my fly box as he finished the last of the coffee. Holding up a zonker strip Deceiver he had shown me how to tie years ago, he said, “Tie this on, the twelve weight, I know where we’re going.”

I sat in the bow and went to work as he pointed the boat northeast. I finished rigging the rod and returned it to the rod holder. As I took my place beside him, for the first time in all the years of our friendship, I noticed he looked old. His face darkly tanned from another season in the sun and weathered from years on the water. Hair and mustache, once brown, I think, now a multi shade of gray. The kind of gray you only see on the coast in the pilings and wood shingled structures that have withstood the wind and weather and all that the sea can throw at them. Shoulders, still powerful and square despite carrying not only his own freight, but that of others. Eyes, still bright and all-seeing but tired around the edges. Twenty years my senior, I hoped to be half of his sum at his age.

We ran for nearly an hour and then he dropped down to trolling speed. He told me to take the wheel as he stepped up to the bow. “I was here two days ago and found something.” After scanning the water around us he turned to me with that wild and crazy look that only he possessed and said one word.

“Tuna!”

He handed me the twelve weight as we switched places. It took a while, but he found them. It took just as long for me, despite his patient coaching, to get over myself and drop the fly in front of the outside edge of the school. For almost thirty minutes I fought twenty pounds of muscle. I felt like I had just run a marathon and fought ten rounds, all at ten thousand feet. My hands were cramped to the point I could barely hold the fish as he handed it to me. He torpedoed it back into the water and turned to me with that rabid look in his eyes.

“Let’s go get another one!”

“Okay, you cast, I’ll drive.”

“You sure?”

 “Oh, yeah. I’m spent.”

He retied the leader as I motored along looking for the tuna. We caught up to them as bluefin from twenty pounds to a hundred crashed bait on the surface. I tried to get him in for a close shot but kept missing it, apologizing each time as he got ready to cast and then stopped.

“It’s ok, these bastards are smarter than we are, just drive like we do for blues or albies…same thing.”

Eventually I got him on, he hooked up and I tailed the fish for him. A little bigger than mine and proportionately more pissed off. True to his way, he spent the next fifteen minutes explaining his process for approaching bluefin and running me through it at the helm.

And then he pulled two warm cans of Miller Genuine from the cooler and we toasted the ocean, life, and each other. Smiling at me he said, “Buddy,” in that slow, low tone way only he could, “what a fuckin’ day! Let’s get out of here.”

The ride back to the ramp was long. I stood beside my mentor and replayed the events of the day in mind as I fought to stay awake despite the rough ride. I kicked myself for not bringing a camera or thinking to get pictures on his phone. This had been a day for the books, as they say. I wanted some record of it.

We hauled the boat and agreed to meet up for dinner. We sat at the bar at Land Ho’ and ate, laughed and lamented it would be next season before we would see each other again. I brought up the fact we had not taken any pictures during the day, especially of the tuna. He laughed and said something about bringing a camera next time.

“You know, the coolest part of the whole day was that all the fish we caught today were on flies you tied.”

“Yeah, but most of them you showed me how to tie.”

He finished his whiskey, looked me square in the eye and said, “That’s the best part. Family tradition.”

The day ended as it had begun. A handshake and a bearhug in the gray magic between dark and light. At a stoplight I caught my reflection in the rearview as the lights from a passing car lit up the inside of the truck. My face was darkly tanned from another season in the sun and a little more weathered from another year on the water. For the first time, I noticed a gray highlight starting to take root in my temples and in my beard.

 

From the abyss, September 2012

12 August 2020

Traipsing

I followed Matt out of town along Route 30 toward Dorset. Crammed into his rig along with fly rods, wading gear and fly boxes were his wife Amanda, and his sons, Cam and Jonah. We had no clear destination, just some mumbled words from the bar the night before about "...follow the road and you'll see water."

We had been in Manchester, VT at the American Museum of Fly Fishing for the weekend to attend the opening of the "On Fly in the Salt" exhibit and to participate in the annual Fly-Fishing Festival. Saturday night had turned into Sunday morning faster than I had anticipated after finishing a second bottle of Pinot while telling fishing and non-fishing stories with my buddy Alex. Thankfully, as is the case with most New England towns, Dunkin was there and a large regular and an Old Fashioned had muffled the sound of the windshield wipers and brought me back to life. It wasn't raining so much as the air was just saturated with water. But it was August and there was no reason not to go for a walk in the woods in the rain

Matt pulled off onto a side road and crept along as we passed over a small stream almost visible through the branches and leaves from the bridge above. We found parking in a clearing just past the stream and I savored the last of my coffee as he geared his family up. He went about rigging rods with flies I could barely see and gave tips to the boys as they forced wading boots on over neoprene socks, his words and tones seemingly dwarfed by the size of the flies he was tying to leaders. I wondered if he was reliving a similar moment with his father as I recalled my own quietly telling me to load my rifle and what to look for as we prepared to enter the woods next to the upper field at the farm. History repeating; different, but the same.

Gearing up.

I had opted not to fish, choosing instead to bring the camera and notebook along. I was looking forward to traipsing around the woods and exploring a new place. It had been a long time since I had followed a stream through the woods. After two decades of walking beaches, sand flats and muddy salt creeks, the art of silently and gracefully walking through understory and windthrow that was once second nature seemed foreign. Stepping into the trees was like stepping back in time, old instincts and reflexes returned without a thought. We made our way down a short ridgeline through broadleaf's and evergreens to a "flat" of sorts, blanketed with ferns and woody shrubs. The gray light penetrating the canopy above cast a metallic-green glow through the air around us and the drops of water falling off the leaves and branches reminding me of bioluminescent phytoplankton in the wake of ships at sea.

Standing at the edge of the stream, Matt had a few words with the boys and then watched them as they headed upstream on their own. The look on his face as they walked off on their own was one of pride and confidence. This was one of the moments I was fishing for that day, watching my friend, as a father, impart some of what he had been taught and learned on his own to his sons and observe history being passed on and made in the same heartbeat.

Matt and Amanda crossed to the far side of the stream and began making their way down to a deep hole in the elbow of a dogleg. I dropped down the other side trying to avoid getting too close to the stream bank and found a small clearing below where I watched Matt pointing out pieces of water and quietly explaining to Amanda what he was seeing.

Matt & Amanda Smythe

This was another moment I had wanted to see. Amanda had just started fly fishing earlier in the year and while this outing was just part of the beginning of her fishing experience, it was becoming part of their history together. I knew what that meant to them both.

They started casting into the hole and working the water around it making rod length casts and mending their lines in the current. I watched mesmerized by the delicacy and precision of their movements laughing to myself in the knowledge that later in the day I would be back in the marsh throwing eighty foot casts into the river with no concern or regard for anything other than getting the line out there believing all the while that I was being delicately precise in my delivery.

Matt & Amanda Smythe

It wasn't long before we heard Jonah shout from upstream. Matt and I made our way to him where he was beaming with a brookie at the end of his line. I looked around the water Jonah had been fishing, no more than ten or twelve inches deep and maybe six feet between the banks. I'm not a trout fisherman so the idea that he had caught a fish in that water was impressive to me. More so was his concern about releasing the fish without injuring it and the maturity he showed about the whole thing. Jonah just quietly told his father he needed help getting the fly out, which Matt did quickly, made up his rod and with a pat on the head took off to his next spot. The look on Matt's face? Pride and confidence.

Jonah's brookie

I decided to follow the boys from there and would circle around them, back and forth, along the stream watching them not only fish but as they would pause every few minutes to look around where they were, standing silent and seem to ponder it all. They continued separately up the stream bed around obstacles and through overgrowth, naturally moving with the innate and acquired skills of woodsmen. In a world where it seems most people, not just kids their ages, are physically and emotionally dependent on some sort of electrical device to navigate their way through an increasingly digital life it was refreshing to see these two boys make their way toward whatever was ahead and yet to be seen,  fully aware of, and engaged with, the natural world around them.

Jonah Smythe

I even found myself standing silent, immersed in both the mortality and immortality of where we were and what we were doing. Sitting on a boulder at the edge of the stream and watching Cam studying the water in front of him I was reminded of a poem his father had written. Some of the words washed through me and circled my mind like the water flowing over and around the rocks at my feet.

"I run solo but I'm 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.

I was given endurance and two legs that respond when I say go.

I was not given excuses.

I run because I can and carry everything on these two feet and shoulders, until I carry nothing."

I don't think he knew I was there but if he had asked me what I was doing, I would have told him I was watching the poet's son living the poet's words.

Cam Smythe

The title of the poem is "Give Me Trails." Matt and his friends Denver Miller and J.R. Kraus put the poetry to film. You can watch it and hear it in Matt's voice HERE.

Eventually we regrouped and made our way back up the ridge to the clearing. We packed up, said our good-byes and began the trek back to our lives.

We came together to celebrate the history held by the American Museum of Fly Fishing. On our walk in the woods, I hope we made some, and found some, of our own.


Manchester, VT
12 August 2018

the day the music died

I knew it was a bad idea before I did it. 

I had been into fish as soon as I splashed the kayak. Paddling down river into the tide I had run through pod after pod of schoolies crashing bait on the surface. Conscious of mooring balls and channel markers I tactically fished the edge of the grass and waited to clear the hazards before following the bigger splashes in the channel. It was early, the schoolies were eating on every other cast and other than Wilson Pickett lyrics running through my head I had the water to myself.

Up ahead the tails slapping the surface in the channel were a lot bigger than the rats I had been pulling out of the shallows. I caught sight of a Whaler with two dudes in it both hooked up on fish about a quarter mile in front of me. I wanted to get into those bigger fish before they ran up on me. I cleared the last two mooring balls and a few more paddle strokes put me close to the edge of a pretty good boil. I launched a cast into the middle of it and in a few strips was tight. It was a bigger fish than I expected and let it pull line as I put it on the reel instead of stripping it in. When it went tight on the rod, I started singing “Mustang Sally” out loud with Wilson.

You might ask, “Why is that relevant?” Well, since you asked, I’ll explain. The rod I was fishing was a signature 2018 Cheeky Schoolie Tournament Thomas and Thomas Exocett 8 weight I had won in May. The first day I fished it was one of those days you don’t forget, like one of those days when the sky opens up, the sun shines everywhere and angels sing. It was like a junior high relationship,  like we were made for each other and nothing else existed. We brought a lot of fish to hand that day. I love that rod.

When I fish, I usually have an album or mixed play list from a particular artist or time period playing in my mind. That day The Best of Wilson Pickett was on a continuous loop in my head so I christened the rod “Mustang Sally.” Every time I have looked at that rod or picked up since, all I hear is that song. So I sang and as I brought that fish boat-side I let the chorus rip.

   

That’s when everything went to shit.

With a few feet of line outside the last guide I reached into my pocket to get the Iphone ready because as we all know; if something isn’t on Instagram it didn’t really happen. While I was trying to open the camera app with one hand and hold the rod in front of me with the other the paddle started to slide and the fish ran to my rear turning the bow of the boat with it. As the bow turned, the Whaler I mentioned before came into view conveniently at the same second the wake it had pushed reached me. It was right about then that I noticed the tide and current had pushed me back to the two mooring balls and I was close to colliding with one of them. I stuffed the phone back in my pocket, wedged the paddle under one arm and tried to get control of the fish, which had managed to pull out enough line to get on the other side of the mooring ball.

That’s when the music went out. Remember what it sounded like when you’d bump the turntable and the needle would run across the record? Well, that’s what I heard as the music ended and a pink Sluggo went flying by my head. And then everything was quiet.

But only for a split second because as I watched the fish turn back and circle around the mooring ball and under the kayak, from somewhere in the back of my mind I heard Neville laughing and yelling at me.

“Oh yeah, you’re in the shit now!”

I tried to paddle with one hand to get up current of the mooring ball but just got pushed up against it. I was fucked. The fish had gotten one good wrap around the mooring line and was going for another. That’s when Nev came into view (self-diagnosed temporary hallucination) bobbing along on his back with a pair of Aqua-Man water wings and a can of Jack’s Abbey Post Shift clutched to his chest.

He took a sip, looked up at me with a very serious expression on his face and said, “You’re going to fucking break my rod!”

Knowing he was a mirage I chose not to respond and leaned into the water to try and unwrap the fish. What I should have done was back off the line, get the rod and line under control and then figure out how to get to that fish or break it off. But I didn’t. I put the butt the rod between my knees and reached down frantically grasping at the line trying to get to the fish and in so doing nearly flipped the kayak. I didn’t go over but somewhere in the blur of a split-second I heard that sound none of us want to hear. Flopping around in the boat had popped the rod from between my knees and the angle and force of the line with the weight of me and the kayak bent the rod and broke the tip just past the last ferrule.

“Noooohhhh, you fucking broke my rod. Damn it. I told you…I can’t believe it.”

Looking at Nev, who wasn’t really there, I raised my hands up in the air and shrugged.

From the Whaler I heard one of the guys yell, “Yeah, that sucks, man. It happens.”

Neville laughed and pointed at me.

“Just send it to us, we’ll fix it.”

He took another sip of beer, eased back on his water-wings and kicked his way out of my view and out of my mind.

I did get the fish released. Then I called Jill, had her meet me on the riverbank with another rod and went back out. There were more fish that day but no music.

Over the last couple of weeks as I’ve looked at that rod sitting in its tube in the corner of my tying  room I’ve heard the lead-in to “Thunderstruck” faintly fade in and out. I’m getting that feeling. I fucking love that rod.

 I may re-name it Malcolm when we get back on the water and make some more music.  

South River, MA

7 August 2018

Barstander

“Never sit at a table when you can stand at the bar.”

It’s my favorite Hemingway quote and something of a way of life since I first heard it while tending bar thirty years ago. It’s been my experience that nearly everyone passes by the bar on their way to a table. Some just walk through, some stay for a drink and some never leave. The bar is where introductions are made, business is done and friendships grow in the lies of the last round and the truth of the next. Painted in the dim light and white noise of the room, experience passes as wisdom and stories told quietly fade to obscurity or become legend. Much like an estuary the bar serves as a transition zone between environments creating a unique, sometimes primordial, habitat that brims with life of all kinds. If the table is the river proper or the open ocean, the bar is the backwater.

A few weeks ago I was standing at the bar after the annual Bears Den Fly Fishing Show. Seated on one side of me were Bob Popovics and Dick Dennis joined by Scott Wessels and Bri; on the other were Jamie Boyle, Dave Skok, Jeff Iadonisi and Pat Cohen. Tom Harrison and Brian Lynch stood over my left shoulder and in the back were Ian Devlin, Mark Sedotti and Rob Lewis. To a person walking in with no knowledge of the fly fishing/fly tying world it would seem like just a group of friends meeting up on a Saturday night. For me, considering the sum of knowledge and experience the group collectively represented, it was a chocolate factory and I had a golden ticket.

I stood there in the middle listening to the conversations going on around me and imagined the scene at the Dingo or the Ritz Bar in Paris ninety years ago as the likes of Hemingway, Joyce, Fitzgerald, Eliot, Picasso, Pound and the other members of The Lost Generation rode a rainy Saturday night into Sunday morning. I was brought back to the present as I took the last sip of my beer and motioned to the bartender for another. When she set the beer in front of me a voice over my shoulder said, “Put that on my tab.”

The accent, considering my temporary mental visit to Paris, threw me for a second until I realized it was Neville. I turned and said, “Thank you, but you don’t have to do that.”

He grabbed me in a hug and said, “We’re fly fishermen. We’re brothers. Tonight, we drink together!”

Neville Orsmond is the owner and CEO of Thomas & Thomas Fly Rods. I had spoken with him briefly a few times but had never had the opportunity for one on one conversation with him. I’ve read a few articles about Neville, how he came to buy the company and the work he has put into bringing the T & T name back to the forefront of the fly rod industry.  I was curious what would compel someone who had little to no experience in the business end of the fly fishing industry to buy a struggling company in a segment of the industry as tough as the rod market is.

So that was my first question. His answer was immediate and delivered with no pause or further explanation.

“Because I’m a fly fisherman.”

I asked more questions and Neville told me of his childhood in South Africa. He learned to fly fish with bamboo rods and as he developed as a fly fisherman he revered T & T rods as the best not only for their performance but more so for the quality and craftsmanship. As time went on he found himself in the New York area working in a job that provided a living for he and his family but left him feeling a little empty. The upside was that there was a lot of fishing to be found close to where he was living and he was able to take advantage of it.

In 2013, frustrated with customer service, Neville made a trip to the T & T facility to place an order in person for more rods to add to his collection. While he was there he learned that the company was near bankruptcy and that the ownership wanted to sell the company rather than try to keep the brand alive. “All I could think about after leaving that day was that I could not let the tradition that is T & T just disappear and be forgotten.” Seven months of round-the-clock work later he became the new owner and CEO of the company.

For nearly an hour we talked about the challenges he faced, and still faces every day, taking over the company. The infrastructure and equipment needed serious updating, the brand had to be re-energized and customer trust had to be renewed. Most importantly the faith of the entire T & T team in the new leadership had to be earned. That’s the thing that struck me the most about our conversation. Neville has absolute admiration and respect for his team, many of whom helped build the company to what it originally was, and for what they do.

“We’re all fly fishermen,” he said. “That’s what made this company great once and that’s what is making it great again. Not me, it’s our people.”

He went on, “Every rod ever made by T & T has been made here in America. Each rod is handcrafted one at a time. Our rods are more expensive but when one goes out the door to a customer, it already has a soul. That’s not production, it’s craftsmanship. No other rod company does what we do.”

In addition to rebuilding the production and business end of things, Neville knew he had to rebuild the T & T brand and customer relationships. Tom Dorsey, one of the original T’s in T & T is back helping with design and development. Neville sees this as a connection to the company’s traditions of the past that the older generation of fly fishermen remember.

To introduce the younger generation to T & T Neville relies on his Advisors and Ambassadors to help spread the word and showcase T & T products in different fisheries and environments. “We have advisors like Jako Lucas, Keith Rose-Inness and Rebekka Redd who are able to travel the world and showcase and test our rods in destination locations against big fish and extreme conditions.”

He went on to explain he understands that realistically the number of people who can travel to places like the Seychelles or Kiribati for GT’s or Mongolia for taimen make up a small percentage of the customer base. “Every customer is equally important to us. We’re making rods for the customer to trust and enjoy wherever they might be fishing, whether it’s a small stream next to their house or the flats of Cape Cod, we want each customer to be satisfied and confident with their rod.”

In addition to the Advisors and Ambassadors, Neville and his team also rely on a group of guides who are on the water every day to test, critique and advise on T & T products. “These guys know better than anybody what the rods need to do because they make their living using them.”  He pointed to Tom Harrison and Brian Lynch standing behind us and said, “Tom and his crew at Harrison Anglers and Brian fish clients all year long close to our plant. If they have a day off they’re usually out fishing themselves. We can’t ask for better product testing and feedback than that. And it’s in our own backyard.”

“We also rely on shops like the Bear’s Den,” he added pointing to Scott Wessels at the bar. “Scott knows every single rod on the market and is incredibly skilled at matching a customer to a rod. He also has the pulse of the industry…guys like him are an invaluable resource.”

The bartender brought another round. Neville looked around the bar, raised his glass and said, “It’s all about the people.”

Indeed it is. You’re one of the good ones, Neville.

Next time we’re standing at the bar, drinks are on me.

South River, MA

13 March 2017