But the pile of fly tying materials… It seems to have a life of its own, I cannot control it no matter how hard I try. I clean it up, put things away and brush the scraps off the edge into a trash can with my hand, but no matter how good my intentions, it returns to the same state of confusion as if it were the concierge at the check in of a fancy restaurant. One moment sir, I’ll return momentarily.
As I stripped my streamer back along the far side, a trout, as clear and obvious as watching something happen through a freshly washed window, emerged from the darkness of the undercut bank across and upstream. It was facing upstream and came out of the dark bent like a horseshoe, or like a snake turning to face you when you’ve walked up behind it. It followed the streamer, inches behind it, its mouth half open as if it just wasn’t sure if it was hungry enough to eat or not. It turned away and retreated back under the bank almost even with me, and I finally breathed.
...as I fished a stretch of water shed I knew pretty well. So well in fact that I felt I was giving him the wrong impression that I actually knew what I was doing. I’d tell him something like “I’m going to go crouch in those ferns and get a brookie out of that pocket behind that cropping of rocks.” Then I’d do something like just about what I said, complete with the catching of the fish on the first or second cast, and move on to the next spot. It wasn’t that I was that good, not at all. I’d just fished the hell out of the place the year leading up to this and basically knew the names and addresses of most of the brook trout on the stream. Take me to the next stream down the road and I’d have been the normal bumbling idiot tripping and stumbling on slippery river bottom stones and scratching my head as to where the fish were that I usually am.
It was a piece of ice about the size of your average kitchen table top, and it caught me off guard. Bumped into me from behind as I was concentrating on managing my sink tip line downstream. It wasn’t anything close to dangerous or tragic, just a small piece of shelf ice from upriver somewhere. One that maybe a little bit of sun on a warm weekend had broken loose. Or possibly a drop in the water level caused by the dams far upstream had caused its freedom from the river side and subsequent slow speed collision with my hip. It was a quick moment of “what the…!” accompanied by a skipped heartbeat and then a realization that it was nothing but a small slab of ice. As it pivoted off my right hip and continued on I thought for a second about jumping on to float and cast until its next collision with the river bank somewhere downstream. And then the thought passed, and I made another cast.
The roads were fine. Everyone was once again making a big deal out of nothing. Somewhere over the past few years people have forgotten that they live in Upstate NY and that this is just winter. We call school days on account of two inches of snow, we declare snow emergencies when there might be some lake effect coming, we broadcast winter advisories… when the first and only warning we really needed is that this is NY, and yes, it’s winter. Those of us who still fish how and when we can all winter view it as a huge farce mostly. I guess we’re a dying breed. Fine with me. We’re all dying anyhow. May as well do it with a fly rod in your hand. Let’s get this over with I say.
I stood at the Jeep, a fly box on the hood opened up displaying my tools to the fishing gods while I struggled to tie on a size 16 scud. A red squirrel sat on a rotten limb leaning against the base of a tree, watching me with indifference as it rolled something over and over in its paws, gnawing away feverishly and filling its cheeks. If the truth was told, we were probably both in the same frame of mind. Better get this done now while we still can. A forty-five degree day in December is nothing to take for granted. I rig up a fly rod. The squirrels search out and store away more food. We all have our priorities.
I tied on one more streamer, the same pattern, and made a few more casts. One more time I felt the tug and saw a glimpse of a hint of butter colored brown trout. But that fish wasn’t hooked solid, something I take full blame for as who could blame a trout for not hooking itself well enough? It was a quick chance meeting, more like the time it takes two people to pass each other on a side walk, and then it was over. And then I came to the realization that my fingers stung from the heat that the cold rain had removed from them, and I left the river.
He pulled up in an old gas guzzling 1970’s something car and lifted a brown metal tackle box and a cane fishing pole out of the trunk. I don’t remember what he said, I was preoccupied with doing something in the dirt. Probably playing with some toy, a matchbox car or a Star Wars figure I can only imagine. The car was big and brown, maybe green. I can see him getting out and walking to the trunk and my father sticking his shovel into the ground and walking over to the car. They talked, I played. When Johnny left my Father brought the tackle box and fishing pole over and set them on the ground. I remember him saying that Johnny said he couldn’t fish anymore and that he’d given them to us.
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