Summer’s here
June 10, 2008• (1) Comments
Jack’s ready for school to end.
What do you think?
May 27, 2001• (0) Comments
My friend Kenton is eager to fish together again soon and, regretting lost opportunities that might have been saved if we’d fished just one hour more, has sworn a vow of depression until we return to the Catskills.
Following our trip earlier this month to the West Branch of the Delaware, my friend Kenton Wiens engaged me in an exchange of email under the title “Post-partum Depression.” Kenton is eager to fish together again soon and, regretting lost opportunities that might have been saved if we’d fished just one hour more, has sworn a vow of depression until we return to the Catskills. I ended my own post-partum depression this afternoon on our local stream, the North Branch of the Raritan River. Water is high this weekend because of all the rain, but not as clear as usual and I couldn’t see the bottom.
November 1, 2000• (0) Comments
What better way is there to celebrate the arrival of November than an hour on quiet water with a good cigar?
I slipped off alone this weekday afternoon and parked behind a ball field at the Polo Grounds in Far Hills. Moments earlier, a police car had chased off a fisherman from the usual parking spot behind the old grandstand, and I didn’t relish getting a ticket for ignoring the “Road Closed” signs that have been up the last month. Thirty feet away, the North Branch seemed lower than a week ago, but I rigged up and tugged on my waders and boots anyway. Another fly-fisherman drove in as I did so, and we exchanged waves.
October 21, 2000• (1) Comments
Today, I waded into the North Branch of the Raritan River alone and netted my very first trout on a dry fly. In fact, over the course of half an hour, I hooked up a dozen of them and landed nine small hatchery Browns, none larger than ten inches.
These followed a fish that was something else altogether. It had scales, was silver in color, and fought like a little rocket. When I brought it to net, it measured a good eleven inches in length. Its vigor thoroughly embarrassed the trout, and, without knowing what it was, I released it back into the pool just south of the Rt.202 bridge. Having every intention to continue in this solitary sport, I hope that this unexpected fish and I will meet again. Until we do, I am prepared to regard it as a wayward, clandestine tarpon, land-locked and stream-bound, high up here in the Somerset Hills.
Everybody knows how James Bond likes his martinis, but not even The New York Times understands why he digs them that way.
It is little-known but true that my brother was the first human being to ride a skateboard on the continent of Antarctica.
My friend Kenton is eager to fish together again soon and, regretting lost opportunities that might have been saved if we’d fished just one hour more, has sworn a vow of depression until we return to the Catskills.
What better way is there to celebrate the arrival of November than an hour on quiet water with a good cigar?
Long before my first fish had taken its fly, I’d considered the irony of my investment in fly-fishing.
Days passed in a welter of boxes, blankets, and labels, bubblewrap, some newsprint, much tape and sore muscles; in rapid order, choices were made, discards jettisoned, and goodbyes hastily arranged. And when moving day abruptly arrived and the shipper’s Bill of Lading presented for scrutiny, we slowed only to empty bank accounts and acknowledge toll booths.