Beginnings
They say you can never go back to a place and see it exactly
the way you remember it, I guess that is even truer for a fisherman who spends
time fishing the moving waters of rivers. Rivers are ever changing ,what just
happened has already slipped down steam on the current. Not too long ago I went
back to check out a small piece of water in the town in which I grew up. The
one thing I kept thinking was that it is a lot smaller than I remembered. In
those days, almost 40 years ago now, you didn’t take pictures of your catch you
took it home. My dad, who is still the best trout hunter I have had the
pleasure to spend time on the water with, always brought a trout or several
home. I remember the last time we fished together it has to be 10 years ago now
he would have been in his mid 70’s. I was fishing a bend pool on a small brook
that runs behind my aunt’s house; I was having fits trying to get a big trout I
knew lived there to take my fly. The entire time I was fishing this bend I had that
feeling I was being watched, well I was. My dad popped up off his log roost in the
skunk cabbage and asked if I was done wasting his time. He then proceeded to
crawl too within about 10 feet or so of the water, rub his wet fly in the mud
and flipped it out into the water. It drifted maybe 2 and a half feet and he
tightened up on the line, his rod bent and a beautiful 17” brown was thrashing
away at the end of the line. He stood up to fight it and brought it to hand
relatively quickly. What happened next is what I remember about this trip the
most; he unhooked the trout and then slowly slid it back into the water. That
was the first and last time I ever witnessed him practicing catch and release.
Later when I asked him about the fish he explained he had hooked and lost it 3
times that spring and once the previous fall so he figured he owed the fish a
couple of chances. I have not been back to that spot or fished with him since.
He had a bad heart attack and open heart surgery the following fall and is now
on all kind of meds that thin your blood and he gets cold real easy. Even on
days that everyone else is hot he will wear a sweater. Other than that he is
healthier now than he was 20 years ago. He can still out run me today even at
80+ years old. He has those sharp blue eyes of a Scandinavian fisherman and
when it comes to trout fishing he has an above average intelligence.
While he’s dad in my heart he is not my biological father,
he past away when I was about 5 years old. My mom was a hard working single mom
way before it was posh to be one. She spent as much time with us as she could
by taking a teaching position at the local public school. I was about 10 when
she met my step dad and they got married the next year. He did as good a job
being a father as any man could have. The one thing I am most thankful for is
he introduced me to the outdoors. Actually in two ways the first was the actual
outdoorsy stuff hunting squirrels and rabbits with a pellet gun and chasing
fish in the local pond. I already had a love of fishing having spent a whole
summer when I was 6 or 7 catching brown bullhead from a road culvert that
emptied onto our property. The second was he passed along all of his outdoor
magazines to me. Field & Stream and Sports afield were the two I remember
the most. I would read them cover to cover and just gobble up the info and
photos. One of the ones I remember the most was a article by I believe Vince
Marinaro, about trout fishing with a fly rod. This kind of fishing struck a
cord with me deep down soul kind of stuff. The art of the cast, the subtle way
the line floated in the photos and the beautiful fish I learned from reading
were trout. I wanted to learn more about them and this seemingly ancient way to
fish.
What happened next in my young life probably has more to do
with who I am today than anything else. 2 years after they were married my mom and
step dad decided to move to his house in a small farming town about 15 miles
south east of were we lived. The town we lived in was growing at an ever
increasing rate. The year before we moved the public school went to double
sessions to solve an overcrowding problem. I was already in a catholic school
due to my mom’s desire for me to get a “better education”, that was the public
line; I believe it was because she figured the nuns would keep me in line and
make me work at learning. This little town was worlds away from were we had
lived, when we moved there the population of Holstein milk cows was roughly
triple the human population. There were tough times at first making new friends
but for me the biggest advantage was the several small brooks that ran thru
town. None of them was very large but they held water for the whole year and
had some “trout” in them. The Best
of them ran thru my Aunts property and there was about a half mile of it we
could fish. It held mostly stocked browns and rainbows with a few hold over
fish as well as native brook trout. It is a classic small freestone brook with
normal pool / riffle –pool riffle make up. My dad and his sister are very close
so most every Friday growing up the families would get together for dinner. During
the spring and summer as soon as I had finished, off I would race out the door
get my rod and head down to the brook to fish till dark. Early on I did more
exploring than fishing but as I learned the water I took my share of fish. To
this point most of my fishing was done with an old 8' 8wt fiberglass rod ( a noodle) . I fished this way for a year or so I was about 14 when I saved enough from
mowing lawns in the neighborhood and baling hay to buy my first good fly rod. It was
nothing fancy a Daiwa 8’6” 6wt fiberglass rod and a couple of weeks later I
bought a Pflueger 1492 with a weight forward Cortland 333. I would ride my bike
to the only sport shop that was close enough and pick the owner’s brain. He was
an avid fly fisherman with a more modern sense of the sport than my dad. To dad
a 15 foot cast was a long one and he used a section of Dacron to a 3 foot piece
of mono as a leader. I had it set in my mind I was going to be modern fly
fishermen just like in the magazine articles. I would practice casting in the
back yard for hours. I would always imagine myself on some far away river
chasing after large trout. Little did I know that 39 years later I would be
back haunting those same little streams I wanted to so quickly leave behind.
That summer just before my freshman year of high school we
began to camp seasonal at a new campground. My mom was still working at the
public school so she had the whole summer off. We would spend the entire summer
vacation at the campground with my dad commuting to work form there. This new
campground was smack dab in the middle of some of the best trout water in the
eastern part of the state. The “swimming hole” was actually the beginning of
the Natchaug River Willimantic River to form the Shetucket
River one of the large tributaries of
the Thames River
so look back on your beginning even if it has only been a few years I bet your already building that foundation. Life has slowed down this year so I will actually have time to post more so look for more stuff to come ............and I mean it this time.
" Got one"
