Blue Lines

 On the ride into the trailhead Rich pointed out small streams and talked of each one intimately. Some of them were less than shoulder width, some six or seven feet across. Some held just a trickle of water, some looked to be waist deep. All of them held his stories. Boyhood tales of boundless exploration. The intense study in high school years of each stream from the source to the mouth and all the pools and riffles along the trunk. Entomology, seasonal water flow and fly selection through trial and error specific to each stream. Trips to these waters now and how each one has changed. A living history.

At the heart of each story: native brook trout.

We parked the truck and geared up for the walk in. Six-foot-six three weight rods, a box of dry flies and water bottles. The hike-in on the trail was easy. As we walked, he told me of following the blue lines of streams on maps in the early years and drawing in the ones that were not shown as he found and explored them. He said by the time he left for college, some of the pages looked like a first-grade art project. We laughed because I had done the same thing in an old copy of the Maine Atlas and Gazzatteer my grandfather had given me.

About a mile into the woods, we left the trail and descended into a ravine that held one of the most amazing pieces of water I have ever seen. We bottomed out at the foot of a small waterfall cascading into a wide pool of water so clear it takes your breath away. I stopped for a few minutes to absorb everything around me. The birds singing above the sound of the water crashing, the smell of wet moss and damp soil, the touch of cool air rising off the stream to meet the heat of the day rushing down from where we had just been. It had been a long time since I had stood in such a place. I was speechless.

Rich took the right side of the pool and I, the left. We took turns dropping flies at the base of the waterfall. A few casts in a brookie rose from nowhere and hit Rich's fly. As I watched him release it a thought that would continue to build over the course of the morning crept into my mind: how did these fish get into this stream halfway up a mountain?

Photo: MR

While he doped his fly, I kept casting and missed a small fish on the set. I made another cast to the right of the waterfall into a shadowy corner in the rock face behind it. I watched the fly float into a small eddy and seemingly stop in the water. Just as it did, a dark form came up from below and inhaled it. It was not small. I panicked for a moment thinking I was going to do something wrong and lose it. I wanted to see this wild creature. I brought it to hand and Rich said that fish was as close to a "trophy" as one could hope for on such a stream. All the hero shot bullshit aside, that question began to build in my head...where do these fish come from and how the hell do they live long enough in this little stream to get that big?

Photo: Rich Strolis

We took turns leapfrogging down the stream waterfall to waterfall and fishing each pool as we went. Some of these pools were large and gravel bottomed, some were literally carved into the rock and the size of a kitchen sink. Each one seemed ancient. Most held a brookie or two.

Photo: MR

Several times we had to climb up the sides of the ravine through scrub brush to navigate hundreds of yards around deadfall and blowdown. My legs burned, my lungs cried for air, I tasted copper. I felt my age while also feeling like a kid again. The effort put forth to do something, whether it be fishing, climbing a mountain or mowing the lawn, is something that seems to get lost in translation, something that gets left out of the story. Rich and I will remember a few of those fish, the memories of them will fade with time as others come and go. That "day we hiked that ravine" won't be forgotten because getting into that place was the story.

In the last section we fished I set up on a pool while Rich went twenty yards downstream to another. Knowing the morning was coming to an end I just stood and stared into the water. The clouds gave way to the sun and the pool lit up. I could see everything. And in the back corner, just behind and to the side of the whitewater was the outline of a brookie laid up in what was just seconds before a shadow. I made a cast just to the right of it and watched the fish move to the fly and then stop. Two more went unnoticed. On the third, I watched the fish creep up under the fly, almost stand on its tail and sip the fly. It was a beautiful way to end the day.

Photo: MR

We hiked up out of the ravine toward the trail back to the truck. As we slogged our way through the brush, fallen trees and mud I kept running possibilities as to how these fish had made their way up this stream, through waterfalls, some twenty feet in height and found refuge in the pools. By the time we made it back to the trail and I had caught my breath, I had to ask. So, I did. He laughed and said he wondered when I was going to ask that. He had theories but no definitive answer. He left me with, "It's a mystery. Which is why this place is so magical."

A fitting answer I thought as we passed the waterfall we had started at. Recalling a class called "The Natural History of New England" in college, I remembered the ice over this area at the end of the Pleistocene epoch had melted and receded somewhere between 10,000 and 14,000 years ago. Looking down on it from above I could see the thousands of years the water had carved out of the rock as it passed through the valley below. I wondered if the DNA in the fish we had caught could be dated that far back. Regardless, it was clear to me that this place was now part of my brother's DNA.

As we drove down the mountain I thought of the morning, the stream cutting through the rock and the native brook trout that have somehow survived in it. Staring in the side mirror I found an answer in the last passage of "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy.

"Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing that could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery."

I hope the blue lines that lead to these places remain a mystery, that the magic survives.

Littles Pond

14 July 2023

The Little Things

I started writing this on my way to New Hampshire to visit my daughter a few weeks ago. I left early and joined the Monday morning commute through Boston with a legal pad on the seat beside me and a tape recorder in the cup holder. I had no idea what I wanted to write. But I had a theme, more of a feeling I suppose from an Instagram post she had recently shared with me. I’ve since lost it and have no idea who to attribute it to, but it read: “Re-introduce yourself to the things that used to give you joy. Things that used to make you smile.”

 I was headed to mountain trails and alpine air.

 A good place to start.

While we hiked and sampled the offerings of a few local breweries I thought of things that give me joy and make me smile that I either take for granted or simply put off. Little things, like the smell of the freshly mowed lawn under the coolness of sunset. A chapter or two of one of those books in the “unread” stack from the library upstairs over the second cup of morning coffee. Sitting down at the vise to tie a few flies for my own box. Early morning kayak trips with the fly rod and camera.

When I got back, I made it a point to stand in the middle of the lawn after I mowed it. I dusted off a few of those books and had a third cup of coffee. I even tied a few flies for myself. And this morning, Jill and I loaded the kayaks in the truck and were on the water just after sunrise. Cameras charged and a fly rod just in case, we “worked” offsite for the morning.

Mid-morning as we paddled from one area to another, I caught some nervous water out of the corner of my eye. I stopped and watched. A hundred feet in front of me I started seeing bait pop out of the water. I stripped line off the reel, put twenty feet of line behind the boat and paddled closer. Fifty feet away in about six feet of water all hell broke loose. Striped bass rolling on the surface, tails slapping, birds hitting the water. I started to smile. For a second, I thought about trying to get a photo. Hard pass. I made a cast and overshot the melee by fifteen feet. I stripped the fly (The Poet, of course) through the middle of the boil. I happened to look down and saw a silver torpedo coming along the port side. I water-hauled the fly and dropped a back cast as far as I could with my right hand as I tried to spin the boat with the paddle in my left.

Line wrapped on the paddle while I tried to close the box my cameras were in and push it under the bow. I began to laugh. Total shitshow. I cleared the line and started stripping. I could see the fly. A few strips in I saw the bass swim past the fly and then make a quick turn back and inhale it. The dance was on. A few times I thought I was going to break the rod as it crossed back and forth under the boat. In short order I got it boatside and released it. I told Jill, if I don’t catch another bass this year, I’ll be alright with that.

That was a special fish.

It brought back the joy of fishing.

And maybe, just maybe, a smile.

From the water

2 June 2023

Q & A

 I came in from the woodshop around three, marched into the studio and told Jill we were leaving in thirty minutes for a beer and an early dinner. Other than a few quick side trips, we had been working non-stop for months. A couple of hours sitting at the bar at one of our favorite spots was a needed break. It would also give us a chance to pencil out some details on a project we have in the works. And the Bruins were playing.

It was a rainy Sunday, and the lot was nearly full. We got lucky and found two seats at the corner of the bar. We ordered beers and started scribbling ideas on napkins and talked about making the time to get the project going in between filling orders in the studio, working on fly orders, yard work and all the other things that needed to be done. Losing momentum, I ordered another beer and excused myself to the men's room.

As I approached the door, I heard a voice behind me say something about fly fishing. I turned as I held the door and saw a vaguely familiar guy wearing the Patagucci/Costa/Xtratuf uniform complete with a buff. He paused in the doorway as he told me his name and I pretended to already know it. Unfortunately, both urinals were available. I took my place at one and prepared myself for conversation as he stood in front of the sinks looking back and forth between his phone screen and himself in the mirror.

"I heard you quit fly tying."

"Nope, still tying. Just not as much."

"I didn't see you at the shows this winter."

"Nope, didn't go."

"You still fishing?"

"Yup, quite a bit. A lot of freshwater, actually."

"You must fish a lot if you're not tying, huh?"

"I've got a few projects going on terra firma that keep me busy, so I don't get as much water time as I used to."

At this point I finished my business and walked over to the sink as he took his place at a urinal. He kept talking.

"Terra Firma, where's that, Chile?"

"Um, yeah, technically."

"Cool."

I dried my hands with a paper towel and turned to bid him farewell. He was standing there scrolling through his phone with his non-business hand. I had to admire his dexterity.

"I'm on your Instagram page. You don't post much."

"Nope."

"How come, dude? You must have a lot of fish porn on your phone."

"I just fish. I'll see you later, Chief."

I took a step through the door, back toward my beer and anonymity.

"Hey, man, do you still write?"

I smiled.

"I will be."

From the bar

21 April 2023

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