Southern Tier Fly Fisher

One angler's journey, fly fishing through life

Category: Fly Fishing Miscellaneous

General category related to fly fishing.

Nanticoke Creek

April 28, 2024 / / 0 Comments

On the mainland of America, the Wampanoags of Massasoit and King Philip had vanished, along with the Chesapeakes, the Chickahominys, and the Potomacs of the great Powhatan confederacy (only Pocahontas was remembered). Scattered or reduced to remnants were the Pequots, Montauks, Nanticokes. Machapungas, Catawbas, Cheraws, Miamis, Hurons, Eries, Mohawks, Senecas, and Mohegans. Their musical names remained forever fixed on the American land, but their bones were forgotten in a thousand burned villages or lost in forests fast disappearing before the axes of twenty million invaders. Already the once sweet-watered streams, most of which bore Indian names, were clouded with silt and the wastes of man; the very earth was being ravaged and squandered. To the Indians it seemed that these Europeans hated everything in nature – the living forests and their birds and beasts, the grassy glades, the water, the soil, and the air itself.

Dee Brown

Last month I enjoyed a two-day spate of good fly fishing for stocked brown trout in a small put-and-take fishery in northern Broome County. The weather was much un-like March with temps reaching the mid 60’s by late afternoon. With those afternoon highs came little black stoneflies, fluttering clumsily to lay eggs on the water, bouncing off the creek’s surface as if suspended by silly string from above.

I’ve fished Nanticoke Creek in early spring for years as a general tune-up for spring, summer, and fall fishing to follow, just as I have it’s bigger and better brother to its west, Owego Creek. It’s stocked in late March with one- and two-year-old browns, the 8″ to 10″ one-year olds far outnumbering the 12″ to 15″ two-year olds.

A typical 2-year-old brown from Nanticoke Creek

Nanticoke Creek runs from its headwaters near Nanticoke Lake some 22 meandering miles to where it empties into the Susquehanna River. It averages 20 feet in width and has a gravel and rubble bottom, though lower reaches can tend to silt up. It flows through forests of hardwoods and majestic hemlocks above the junction where the East Branch joins the Main Branch. Below this stretch, its environs are more typically abandoned farmland and residential areas.

Nanticoke Creek is stocked at three points along its 22-mile length. The lower stocked reach consists of half a mile of mostly featureless water from the confluence with the Susquehanna River upstream to the Route 26 bridge. This section is stocked annually with around 840 year-old brown trout and 90 two year-old brown trout. The second stocked reach runs from Pollard Hill Road upstream to Cross Road and is stocked with around 1,780 year-old and 190 two year-old brown trout. The last of the three stocked sections is the East Branch of Nanticoke Creek, from the confluence with Nanticoke Creek upstream roughly a half a mile. This reach is stocked with 170 year-old and 20 two year-old brown trout.

Nanticoke Creek is considered decent trout water above Maine, NY: the farther downstream one fishes, the warmer it gets once Spring matures. I’ve been told by conventional fishermen that the mouth at the Susquehanna can be a great place to catch large muskies, that apparently lay in wait for hatchery candy to foolishly foray into the river.

Looking upstream towards the junction pool on a snowy winter day.

J. Michael Kelly, in his excellent book, Trout Streams of Central New York, rates Nanticoke Creek a 3 out of 5 in terms of its trout fishing appeal, noting that the creek is fished hard in Spring by Broome County residents but adding that “it’s reassuring, in this age, to encounter a decent trout stream that has so few KEEP OUT signs.” Indeed, according to the DEC, there are 1.3 miles of public fishing rights (PFR) along Nanticoke Creek and three official PFR parking areas.

Looking downstream on the Nanticoke towards the Ames Road bridge. This stretch is characteristic of the upper Nanticoke, which is a pretty little stream, in places flanked by deep hemlock groves that no doubt preserves snowpack and casts shade, keeping its water temps more suitable for trout.

By late spring the creek is largely forgotten by anglers, the stockies having been hammered for weeks, their destiny often a well-buttered skillet. Given the annual stocking Nanticoke Creek gets, there is always the possibility of a holdover. I remember one such fish reported at a TU meeting at well over 18″, but this is the exception rather than the rule.

Despite is piscatorial mediocrity; Nanticoke Creek is still worthy of respect. It is named after the indigenous Nanticokes, who by fate, were the first native Americans to have contact with Captain John Smith in 1608. While exploring Chesapeake Bay, Smith and his crew had sailed up the Kuskarawaok River. The Kuskarawaoks, later known as the Nanticokes, cautiously watched Smith’s ship from the shore, climbing into the trees for a better look. When Smith approached the shore in a boat, the Nanticoke answered with arrows. Smith prudently anchored for the night in the middle of the river.

Several Nanticokes agreed to serve as guides for Smith to continue his exploration of the Kuskarawaok, now known as the Nanticoke River. Smith described the Nanticoke as “the best merchants of all.” In Algonquian, the common Indian language of Northeastern tribes, the word Nanticoke is translated from the original Nantaquak meaning the tidewater people or people of the tidewaters.

Over time, of course, the Powhatan Tribes faced conflicts with European settlers. Some of the Nanticoke, tired and disgusted, chose to accept an offer from the Six Nations of the Iroquois in New York, Pennsylvania, and Canada. Though they were once enemies, the Iroquois promised the Nanticoke both land and protection. Starting in 1744, some individual families left in dugout canoes and traveled north up the Susquehanna River, settling near Wyoming Pennsylvania and along the Juniata River while others migrated slightly north into New York, where they established a settlement in what became the town of Nanticoke.

Someday I hope to bring my grandson to Nanticoke Creek so that he may feel the tug of a feisty brown on a fly on the swing. There we’ll spend the better part of a day in the quiet of the woods, where I’ll tell him about the indigenous people who once walked these same paths, hunting, fishing, and harvesting, far from their tidewater home. And maybe, if we listen carefully to the wind song of the hemlocks, we’ll hear them speak for themselves about the great beauty and provision that is Mother Nature, and so worthy of a future much like they enjoyed.

For Liam…

Fluke in Chablis Sauce

April 20, 2024 / / 2 Comments

I opened a favorite book and found the laminated recipe, titled Fluke in Chablis Sauce, handwritten in my mother’s perfect script. As with all things her, it was both beautifully positive, ending with Bon Appetit! Reading it brought me back to the day we followed it.

That day dawned bright pink around the edges of the horizon, and I was out fly-fishing Double Creek, a place where the tidal flood and ebb of Barnegat Bay etches deep channels in its soft shifting sands. I was fishing the inside of the dike, a man-made spit of land and a place of bayberry snags, sod banks, and with the west wind, horrendous swarms of biting greenhead flies.

An aerial view of Barnegat Bay. To the right is the inlet and at center pointing north (up) is the dike. To the left of the dike is Double Creek, the haunts of big fluke that hold below the channel edges, feeding up during summer.

Fluke, known as summer flounder in the south, are a favorite species of anglers there. They are a staple of summer fishing on Long Beach Island, NJ, a place of memories that still brings me back. Fluke enter the saltwater bays of the mid-Atlantic in early summer. They are drawn by the warming of the water and return to the home of their rearing with the turning of the season to summer. There they take up haunts, hiding in the bay bottom, perfectly camouflaged, ambushing prey. They are there for the plenty of the season, becoming larger and highly predatory as they grow into their 12 – 14 years on this good earth.

Some fluke caught party boat fishing – my nephew Jake in the middle and my father to the right.

These were the early days of my mother’s shining light dimming. She stood beside me as we followed the steps, adorning two large fluke fillets from my morning trip with the recipe’s contents, a work of art to be delightfully enjoyed and not forgotten. At this stage in her disease, my mother was still “with it” as one might say. You could forgive her repeating or forgetting things, but you could not forgive where it would go.

We worked together, my mother executing the small tasks I gave her with her usual precision, as she had once done the larger tasks of life, graduating high school valedictorian, marrying and bringing three children into this world, cooking, cleaning, editing papers, reviewing homework, running a sales office, and all else that makes a life.

We placed the dish in the oven, set at 400 degrees, and in 40 minutes, the baking was done. I retrieved and placed the platter at the center of the table, the dish still bubbling, the now-ivory fillets simmering. I then ladled the Chablis cream sauce over the fillets, thin slices of lemon atop them. Mom was seated and seemed well-pleased with the meal. Garden-fresh asparagus was served alongside the plated fluke, with a spring greens salad. We all toasted the meal with chilled martinis.

I’ll selfishly admit it was a delicious dinner. The fluke was velvety mild, the Chablis sauce like butter with a touch of fruity nose from the Chablis. We sat and quietly enjoyed the meal – my father characteristically silent as he inhaled large portions of it – meaning it was very good. My mother ate at her piece, eliciting compliments all the while but never truly cleaning her plate.

Years after she passed, my sister and I shared such a meal during a visit. “You know”, she said, “Mom never liked fish”. I was dumbfounded – never had I heard or thought such a thing. She always raved, even when I prepared the strong-flavored bluefish we’d catch through summer and fall. But that was Mom – never self-indulgent, ever selfless. Always the focus was on you.

We had more meals of the bounty of the sea in the following years as my mother’s candle dimmed, and they were all good, but unbeknownst to me still then, not to her liking.

Stephen Covey, esteemed author of “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” once wrote about the social-emotional connection that is the foundation of so much of life. One father he knew, sensing his son’s distance, wanted to more deeply connect with his young son, who was a baseball addict. This father decided that he and his son would attend a game in every city in which his son’s favorite team played across the country for a year, an obviously huge commitment in time and money. Upon hearing the plan, Covey commented to the father, “you must really like baseball to do such a thing”, to which the father replied. “No, I don’t like baseball, but I love my son.”

And so it was with my mother to the last of her days, that she loved me far beyond her own likes, favoring my own.

Stockies

April 30, 2023 /

The abundant and willing sunfish might well be the gateway species for almost all fishermen, but one could argue that stocked trout – “stockies” – hold that honor for the fly fisher. Just the thought of them ushers in memories of chilly mornings and swollen creeks colored up blue green with snow melt, and perhaps too, the aroma of bacon, eggs, and coffee before heading astream.

So many moons ago I shivered before flowing waters on the early morning eve of opening day, huddled under a coat too big for my teenish frame and in baggy waders, patch worn. At the crack of sunrise, I tossed a weighted nymph upstream and followed it with my rod tip as an older gentleman, a friend of my parents, suggested. He was upstream of me and watched me between his own casts, correcting me in an encouraging way. I endured his success, as he caught one stocked brown after another, while my own drifts carried untouched. But finally, on the verge of giving up in frustration, a 12″ brown’s take jolted my fly rod and clinched my love for these novitiates of the trout world…

I grew up from there, as most of us flyfishers do when we get serious about this sport. Once one fishes fabled waters and ties into bigger and wily wild fish, stockies fade away for some fly fishers, the looked down upon sand-lot players in the shadow of the big leagues. But not so much I, and I suspect a few others as well. Stockies are mostly pursued by spin anglers armed with panther martins, phoebes, salted minnows or worms, but dotted among these anglers will wade the occasional fly fisher, immersed in a veil of memories of long-gone opening days.

I’ve been driving the same hour-long commute to work for some 12 years now and while most would consider it a tiring slog, it’s made brighter in that a good portion of it takes me aside a pretty little flow that snakes its way on a journey south to the Susquehanna River from its marshy headwaters far north. It’s there all year for me, but in spring, it sings a siren’s song, beckoning me to fish. This spring was no different and knowing it would soon be stocked, I spent the part of a day pulling my gear together to have on hand in my truck when Mother Nature was in a good mood. That day came one weekday afternoon when the creek levels had mellowed. The skies were partly cloudy, the sun peeking out here and there enough to warm the afternoon into the low 50’s, though snow was still clinging to the brown earth. I snuck out of work a little earlier than normal that day like a school kid cutting class and soon arrived at this pretty little creek. To my delight, it was void of any fishermen.

I rigged up not my finer custom 4 weight with its dark green glossy blank and bright hardware, but my St Croix 7.5-foot 4/5 weight. This sturdy little 2 piece has always been perfect for plying stocked waters – a bit worn from use, but no worse from wear, the once-gleaming finish of its dark blue blank and wraps a dull blue, the Fenwick-style grip yellowed and pock-marked from years of use.

There was a jump in my step as I left the truck and followed a twisted path creek-side. The creek ran to the banks, still with the tinge of verdant green of snowmelt. The sun lit the water enough that little black stoneflies were about, flying, if you could call it that, and dappling the water with their clumsy flutter and just occasionally prompting a splashy rise.

I chose a streamer for my fly – a picket pin up-front and a white marabou streamer running tail-end Charlie. I pinched a small shot ahead of the lead fly and pitched the rig across and upstream, mending as it passed, giving the flies short crisp strips as they swung across and below me.

Stepping and swinging down the head of the run, I picked up a bunch of 1 year olds, striking and battling with the vigor all brown trout bring to the fore. And then, casting into a deeper roiled run, I felt a better take. The brown writhed snake-like in the depths, flashing a bit of butter brown, then dug down into the current putting a pretty bend in my 4-weight rod. I landed it and admired it, and continued on, collecting a few more of these two-year olds, amidst a bevy of their younger, slighter brothers, too numerous to count.

Stockies beckon us out in the uncertainty that is Upstate NY spring weather, well before softer May late mornings lure us astream. They put some urgency behind combing through our gear, long forgotten in winter’s doldrums. They hasten us to open fly boxes and get to the tying vise. They force the examination of our 3 and 4 weight rods and reels, our boots, waders and all other manner of the gear we pack, and usually this surfaces at least one issue needing attention.

Figure how many hours you work, attend to family, home, and life’s basics – sleeping, eating, exercising – and stockies prove a bargain in the world of fly fishing. We’re not talking a lot of prep – simple rigging, typically just a floating line and maybe an old leader that can get one more use with a bit more tippet. The put and take creeks are abundant too, and these days the added bonus is that us “artificial lures, catch and release only” fishermen can get out to a bit more solitude before the crowds appear on the traditional opening day.

Some of these small, stocked waters carry the lure of an occasional holdover, smart enough to evade the previous spring’s onslaught. One cold March morning I happily recall a wet fly I swept down into the dark depths of an undercut tree and the solid stop of the fly. My hookset was poorly timed, but good enough to light the darkness of the undercut with the flash of a bigger trout than this creek had ever produced. Short-lived though that hook-up was, it seemed a good way to end a nice morning of numerous 1- and 2-year-olds, brightly colored, ragged-finned, and ever ready to play and a perfect transition to warmer days and “better” trout.

Early Season Bronze

April 28, 2023 /

“Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.”

Frank Lloyd Wright

It’s early April and it’s about this time every year when you gird your loins for early season bronze. The weather is still typical of spring in upstate NY – cold days interspersed with near summerlike ones, rain showers, spitting snow and just about everything in between. The hills come alive with the newness of pea-green spring leaves. Dogwood and redbud dot nature’s canvas with white and pink. Occasionally you’ll hear a gobbler looking for love and if you’re lucky enough to be fishing on a river with a tall white pine, you just might witness an eagle on the nest, its spouse roosted nearby.

But you’re always cautiously optimistic. The rivers are dropping and clearing of the blue-green of snow melt. Their feeders, the little fingers that start high in the surrounding hills are no longer gushing. You find yourself checking the USGS gauges, looking ahead at the 10-day forecast, and stopping riverside to get a read on water temperatures, anxiously awaiting spring’s turn.

Those days leading up to early season bronze are always too slow in coming and then too quick to arrive. The spring of winter departing is spent chasing stockies or steelhead and shaking the casting rust free. But all that time you’re waiting for that window to appear. Like the eyebrow windows of old houses, they are there but barely windows at all.

You’ve already geared up. The tackle, vest, waders, wading staff and net are ready and waiting in the truck for windows of opportunity are never convenient; they taunt and tease in their coming and going, and so when one finally arrives, you’ll make up any excuse to be late to work so you can be on the water well before the sun pokes its head out from behind the hills.

You’ll pull up to the river in the truck and 4 wheel it across a cornfield just spread with manure. The river on these spring days is guarded by mostly barren trees, save the conifers, and it calls to you in the stillness of the morning. Your waders and vest are on in no time and you’re soon stringing up an 8 weight with an intermediate sink tip line and a relatively short leader. You pick out a big wooly bugger that fished the fall bite well. It’s long with a marabou tail that doesn’t meet the standard for Fly Tyer magazine, but does it ever dance in the water. You remember Lefty’s words as you tie it on – something like “why feed them appetizers when what they really want is steak.”

You make the short hike through the riverbank woods beyond the cornfield. Now it’s pretty easy but once summer comes this place will be a tangle of briars, Japanese knotweed, and swarms of mosquitos. Breaking into a clearing, you look down on a shallow bay where a small river braid rejoins the river. There’s no direct current here, just a backwater that’s silted a bit over a gravel to rocky bottom. You gaze into it in the half-light of the dawn, and you focus on a few large dark spots, the size of big dinner plates, on the bottom. On one, is a bass, and a sure sign that the pre-spawn bite is on.

This spot has always been good to you. When you fish it right the fishing can be “stupid good” as they say. Every bass you catch is a good one, meaning 16″ plus with some nudging over the 20″ trophy mark. But length doesn’t do these big female bass justice – they are heavy with eggs, their bellies broad, bloated, and deep. And they are on the feed to carry them through the coming rigors of the spawn.

You quietly slip into the stillwater and do your best to avoid the beds. Across the bay is a high bank and narrow peninsula shouldering the heavy current of the main river stem, built up over years of high-water events. Below the tip of the peninsula is a tongue of fine gravel over which the river runs clean and fast. To either side the river deepens. You wade along the spine of this gravel tongue, casting up and across river and letting your big streamer swing. You’ll swim the streamer with intermittent short strips, letting it pause at times, and continue it back to you. And you’ll do this thoroughly like a well-rehearsed dance as you cast and step downriver. It’s a favorite rhythm you fish to.

Under that log was a big spawning bed with a rather large male on it, perfectly positioned for good overhead cover and well camouflaged.

The mornings are always colder than you’ve planned for. It seemed warmer when you stepped out to start the truck in the dark at home high up in the hills. Now in the river valley, butt-deep in the spring cool of the river, your hands wet from casting and stripping, you’re shivering. The sun is still hiding behind the hills to the east but the promise of it warms you.

Wading downriver and casting, you’re just above a depression in the river bottom and in year’s past, that’s where you’ve always picked up a few big females. You’ve reasoned it’s a good place for them to hold as they stage to move up on the nests the smaller males have dug. Swinging the big bugger through that area rewards you with a solid take, heavy spongey weight, head shakes, and strong surges as the bass fights. You fight the fish with your rod tip low to the water to keep this bass from jumping but it still makes some big boils in the river. You slowly work it towards shore and this one has plenty of fight as smallmouth bass always do.

You finally land her, stepping back to admire her laid out in the shallows, bankside. The barring on this girl is heavy – a pattern that reminds you of a jaguar. The brown and golden hues are near-perfect camouflage with which evolution has adorned her, and she’ll need it as she does her thing in the shallows soon enough. Her gut is distended with eggs, the progeny of generations to come.

The hook slips out easily and you lip her and carefully draw her out through the bank water to where there’s current. Kneeling down, you hold her there, letting the river flush her bright red gills with oxygen. She’s kicking in seconds, ready to go, shaking her head back and forth against the hold of your thumb. Then you release her and watch her melt into the river.

Years ago you might have stayed and fished this stretch for hours, picking up more bass and feeling the accomplished fly fisherman for doing it. But in later years, you’ll limit yourself to just a few. With each coming year it’s less about the fishing and more about the immersion in nature.

And so, you leave the river early, hiking back through the woods to the truck, thanking nature that you took part in such a spectacle for yet another year in your life. It’s not every year mother nature grants you this gift – the vicissitudes of early spring weather and river conditions being what they are, but each year that she does is truly a sacred gift. You pinch yourself to have the privilege to be a part of it and to be able to remove from the day having left as little a footprint as possible, the only evidence of your fishing being the grin on your face and a thumb marked with lip rash.

The Grinch that gave back Christmas

December 22, 2022 /

I am not alone at all, I thought. I was never alone at all. And that, of course, is the message of Christmas. We are never alone. Not when the night is darkest, the wind coldest, the world seemingly most indifferent. For this is still the time God chooses.
Taylor Caldwell

Jack Hoffen arrived at the river access parking lot in the dark of early morning, rigged up and donned his waders and heavy outer clothing, and then hiked a half mile through thigh-deep snow. Once riverside, he looked down-stream in the faint light of dawn and took solace in the view. The silver lining in the dark cloud that followed him that morning was that he was the only angler on his favorite Great Lakes tributary.

It felt good to be fishing, especially without the typical crowds, but most of all because fishing always lightened his emotional load. During his most trying times he had made a point of going fishing despite the weather or conditions, as he knew he would end the day with a fresh perspective on a problem or at least with the will to face it on his feet. Today, especially, he needed to get away from his troubles, for it was Christmas Day.

The morning dawned bright with a clear sky and the sun gave Jack some relief from the bitter cold. But as morning turned to afternoon, snow squalls swept in and darkened the sky, coating the ground with yet another layer of lake-borne snow. Fringed in the white of the woods, the river ran quietly by, its sounds deadened to a soft murmur.

Jack had fished a broad riffle and deep run all morning and early afternoon without as much as a touch from a fish and decided to make a move to a choke point upriver where big boulders had been placed to protect a high bank from erosion. He watched the swirling waters of the eddy that the boulders formed and thought how similar his emotions had been lately. The spot had been good to him in the past but now, absent anglers, he could fish it more effectively than he ever had. None of the egg patterns he used earlier that day had worked and it was bothering him. He had adjusted leader length, weight, tippet size, and changed later to an indicator set-up with no luck. Even the Salmon River Gift, a favorite pattern for killing the skunk, was not drawing strikes. It was as if the steelhead and brown trout had taken the holiday off.

Jack opened his sling pack, searching for answers. Digging deep into his bag, he pulled out a box of woolly buggers. He had not opened the box since the spring when black sparkle buggers had been the ticket for dropback steelhead. The woolly buggers were arranged in tight, orderly rows in the box, much like the sardines he had wolfed down for lunch. He grew sad thinking about the spring of the year and its excellent dropback fishing and how a great day on the river had ended so badly. He remembered returning home that evening and finding the note. He grew sadder still thinking about where his life had taken him: a cold tin of sardines on a lonely river on Christmas Day.

Emotions welled up while Jack looked at the box. Reality bit as hard as the tug of a steelhead taking a fly on the swing. His eyes clouded up with tears, several of which dropped into the box and onto the flies in their neat rows. And that is when Jack noticed a different color bugger emerge that had, until then, lay hidden by its black, brown and olive box-mates. Pulling the fly out, he recognized it as a pattern a guide had him fish on the Bighorn River many years ago, in happier times. The pattern was called “The Grinch”, and for good reason: it was dressed in glorious Christmas colors; a red and green sparkle chenille body, red wire counter-wrap, and an olive marabou tail accented with red flash. Maybe, he thought, this pattern was different enough to rouse a strike. Darkness was approaching as he tied on this last hope of a fly. He decided to fish it dead drift off an indicator, letting it swing as it tailed out downstream.

The Grinch

Jack lobbed the rig up above the river chute and high-sticked it, watching the white indicator as it bobbed down the fast water of the chute and into the run below. Once it had swung out, he let it hang briefly in the current and repeated the process like any good steelheader would do. After a dozen drag-free drifts, he changed his cast so the rig would drift closer to the large boulder that formed the choke point in the river. The indicator rode the heavy water, then shot underwater as it ran along the seam the eddy formed off the boulder. Jack immediately swept-set the take and felt the heavy sponginess of a good fish. It was all he could do to recover the slack caused by the fish as it immediately reversed course and rocketed down the river. At last, the line came tight, and the drag brought the fight to the fore. A lengthy battle ensued up and down the pool.

Jack beached the fish on the smooth gravel at the tail of the pool. The buck steelhead laid there looking almost as dark as the water, with the Grinch prominently adorning the crook of its jaw. He removed the fly, briefly admired the fish, and then held the big steelhead in the current to revive it. Slowly its strength came back and then it was gone, back to its icy black world.

Day’s end neared: the sun dropped behind the hills to the west and Jack began to think about the long hike ahead of him through the deep snow of the woods. He wished he had brought his snowshoes. Before leaving the river, in a moment of charity that belied his troubles, Jack clipped the Grinch off and left it hanging from a small tree, near the pool tail-out, much like a Christmas ornament. ‘The Grinch may have stolen Christmas, but this Grinch gave it back’, he thought to himself. Perhaps some lonely, discouraged angler, like himself, would discover it. And maybe too, it would do more than catch a steelhead on an otherwise luckless day, as it had for him.

Jack hiked back to his truck in much deeper snow now, and he labored against it, breathing heavily as he lifted his legs high to move forward with each step. The sky had cleared again, and the wind had dropped. He could see the stars overhead, bright pinpricks that winked at him amidst an inky black canopy. The woods were beautifully silent and still.

Jack thought about the steelhead and the fly that saved his day. The fly reminded him of characters of Christmas stories whose lives – sad, destitute or seemingly doomed – had been saved: the Grinch’s heart had grown three sizes larger, Ebeneezer Scrooge had changed to keep Christmas better than any man alive, and George Bailey discovered that one who had friends had no troubles to fear in life. Jack could not be sure his wife would ever forgive him or even return to him, nor could he bet that his children would ever open their hearts to him again. But for the first time in a long time, Jack Hoffen looked forward to the future, as dim as it might be. Hope, ultimately, had finally come to him in the form of a fly. He had a lot of Grinches to tie before this Christmas day ended.

A Southern Tier Fly Fisher Thanksgiving

November 23, 2022 /

Perhaps you’re one of the lucky ones, like Jeff, a past visitor to this blog, who, in the company of another angling friend, celebrates the start of Thanksgiving Day fly fishing Fall Creek every year.  Most of us with families, and especially those who have angling-averse families, must resign ourselves to the traditional family get-together; watching football, drinking, and eventually sitting down at table adorned with turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, cranberry relish, gravy, more drink, pumpkin pie, and more drink.  It’s not all bad, mind you.  It’s just that the holiday is all about giving thanks, and what better way to give thanks than to catch and release a few.

Striper on the fly released pre-Thanksgiving…

My destiny this year, as in all years past, is chewing on a drumstick while visions dance in my head of fly fishing for stripers and blues with Captain Greg Cudnik out of Barnegat Light, NJ. Late November fly fishing in the salt can be very, very good. And in terms of table fare, striped bass is exceptionally good, though I release almost all I catch,

Hooked up earlier this November on the Endless Summer with Barnegat Light in the background.

My mother always drummed into my head, no pun intended, that if you’re handed lemons, make lemonade, and so I decided to do a little research regarding this historic event in hopes that my findings might support a change in the family tradition – a change that might even extend to a cultural renaissance of this feasting holiday.  What follows is sure to enlighten…

The Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock on December 11, 1620 – towards the end of the striper run, oh by the way.  Apparently, the Pilgrims were not too skilled with the fly or any other manner of fishing, because their first winter was terrible.  They lost 46 of the original 102 who sailed on the Mayflower, to starvation.  The next year, however, smiled on the survivors, as the harvest of 1621 was bountiful.  The colonists, along with 91 Wampanoag Indians (credited with saving them from complete disaster), decided to celebrate their good fortune with a feast.

Broiled bluefish, Squanto?

And what did that feast include?  Well, my research shows many variations in the menu, but by most accounts, one traditional item that almost assuredly was missing was, of all things, turkey.  Turkey was present in the wild at the time of the first Thanksgiving, but the word “turkey” was used by the Pilgrims to mean any sort of wild fowl.   Good ole’ gun-toting Governor William Bradford apparently sent four men “fowling”, so more than likely, any “turkey” in the center of the table was actually a sea duck or goose.  Also missing from the feast was the potato, considered poisonous by many Europeans at the time, and dairy products, since there were no domestic cattle available.

From other accounts and records of daily life in Plymouth, we know that rabbit, chicken, squashes, beans, chestnuts, hickory nuts, onions, leeks, dried fruits, maple syrup and honey, radishes, cabbage, carrots, eggs, and possibly goat cheese were available, although not necessarily all used in the same meal. The corn was most likely in the form of meal rather than on the cob, and pumpkin would have been served in the form of a pumpkin pudding or stew, and not in a crust.

Most noticeably “on the list” were some items few Americans would ever consider to be Thanksgiving table fare.  Governor Bradford lists bass, cod, and “other fish of which they took good store”, these fish being herring, bluefish, and lots of eels. Clams, lobsters (without the drawn butter), mussels, and oysters were undoubtedly part of dinner, too.

So, seafood, yes, seafood, made up a good part, if not the majority, of the original Thanksgiving meal.  And how might that seafood come to our modern-day Thanksgiving table?  You guessed it; fly fishers could go out and catch, and maybe this one time of the year, not release, their favorite piscatorial delight for part of the feast.  Imagine the pomp and circumstance as the weary fly fisherman returns in the early afternoon to spread the day’s bounty across the table for all to marvel over.  This addition to Thanksgiving would surely strengthen the tradition, put smiles on the multitudes, and kill TV ratings around all the damn football games that play that day.

I therefore propose that the readership spread the word.  This isn’t your grandfather’s Thanksgiving anymore – go forth and fish up some fare, and put a little Thanksgiving in Thanksgiving…

To all, a safe, belly-expanding, and joyous holiday…

Tight lines…

Connections

September 5, 2022 /

Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

John 15:13

One of the great themes in fly fishing is that of connection. We hold a fly rod in hand, to which a reel, our line and a fly of choice are all connected, and we send that fly to the water to ultimately connect with a living thing.

We are also connected to place as fly fishermen. As such, a favorite of mine has always been the Chenango River, a place I’ve enjoyed wet wading in early September when the smallmouth bass are sensing the turn of the river. Their metabolism, then, holds its summer-high and the bass instinctively heed nature’s call and feed aggressively knowing that fall and a long winter of starvation approaches. It’s still early though – the green of the surrounding old hills hemming in the river hasn’t faded just yet, though an errant maple may have decided otherwise with a faint flash of autumn hues.

Seasons play a tug of war this time of year. The nights, cooling with the dwindling daylight, still yield daily to the lingering warmth of late summer. You’re caught casting the river with big streamers to match the baitfish that have been growing since spring, and hoping the fishing holds on a little longer than last year…

Wading slowly downriver, one makes casts to undercut and shaded banks, across soft ripples, and into the deeper pools, and if on a good day the bass are in play. There can be some good tugs from a few dandies with fallfish mixed in, and in one deep hole, a big channel cat may just decide to crush a size 2 wooly bugger swept deep across its hold.

The wade continues and in the dying of the day, I’ll leave the river and return to my truck, not knowing until recently that the river provided a far deeper connection than the tug of fish pursued, and one that represented the highest calling in life.

My parents and much of my family on both sides, grew up in Staten Island, NY, one of the five boroughs of New York City. Back in their day, it was a good place to grow up, and very much a melting pot. They both advanced through the NYC Public School system, ending with Curtiss High School and a sound education. Among their classmates was a good-looking and very well-dressed kid named “Vinnie” – Vincent Robert Capodanno Jr. Both of my parents knew him fairly well apparently, my father in particular, but neither mentioned him until one day, when my mother told me that she and my father graduated high school with a Marine who died in Viet Nam and received the Medal of Honor. I don’t recall the reason this came up or whether she stated his name, but she claimed he had jumped on a grenade to save the lives of other Marines in his company.

Vincent Capodanno went on after high school to become a Navy Chaplain after first being ordained a Catholic priest and serving time as a Maryknoll Missionary. Intrigued by his story in the military and the connection to my family, I searched for this hero over the years but to no avail as my parents had never told me his name. And then one day I hit it right while googling the internet, and up he came with his story of true sacrifice.

Father Capodanno was known as the “Grunt Padre” because of his devotion to “his Marines.” He was unique in that he would intentionally go on operations where risks were the greatest and in complete disregard to policy for chaplain conduct in the field. Even under direct orders to stay back, he would sneak off and hop on a Huey to be where the action was hot and where he could do, in his own words, the most good. It was said he would carry extra supplies, give his poncho to a needy Marine, provide smokes, candy, and Saint Christopher medals. He carried a pack like all the other Marines, slept in the mud, endured the sweltering heat, the insects and the toil of long marches. He said Mass in the field, heard confessions, and offered an ear to listen to the concerns and fears of young soldiers in a foreign, far-away land.

Father Capodanno, saying Mass in the field…

After reading several books about him, I soon learned that Father Capodanno’s sacrifice was a bit different than what my mother had told me, but nonetheless, one that earned him, posthumously, the Medal of Honor and a path to sainthood in the Catholic Church.

Although he served in several combat operations during his tour, some in which he was wounded, his participation in Operation Swift would turn out to be the end for him and many other Marines. At 4:30 am, on September 4, 1967, company-sized elements of the 1st Battalion 5th Marines encountered a large North Vietnamese unit of approximately 2,500 men near the village of Dong Son in the Thang Bin District of the Que Son Valley. Outnumbered by over 5 to 1, Companies B and D were badly in need of reinforcements as the fighting intensified. By 9:14 am, 26 Marines were confirmed dead. At 9:25 am, the commander of 1st Battalion 5th Marines requested further reinforcements. M and K companies were whisked into action by helicopter that morning, and among them was Father Capodanno.

The ground fire in the vicinity of the proposed landing zone (LZ) just east of Hill 63 and the Dong Son village where B and D companies were fighting was so great that the choppers were forced to set down a distance away. This required both companies to march roughly 2.5 miles to the action under extremely hot and humid conditions.

A command post (CP) and aid station were set up on a small knoll, the other side of which raged the battle. Father Capodanno could hear the gunfire and PFC Stephen A. Lovejoy, M company radio operator, calling back to the command post: “We’ve been overrun. We can’t hold out.”

The CP on the knoll, after action. Note the captured rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons used in the battle by the PAVN.

Operation Swift

Father Capodanno dashed over the hill, found PFC Lovejoy, grabbed him by the shoulder and brought him back to the relative safety of the CP. Time and again throughout that late morning and early afternoon Father Capodanno would do the same thing with the wounded and dying. His first wound of the day was a shot through his right hand disabling his fingers. He was bandaged but refused to leave the battlefield on the next medevac. “I need to be where my Marines need me most,” he said. Choking in the midst of tear gas deployed to make the North Vietnamese disperse, Father Capodanno—who had given his gas mask to a young Marine who was without one—got his second wound from a mortar shell, disabling his whole right arm and shoulder. He was bandaged up but again refused to leave the battlefield.

A short time later, Father Capodanno ran to aid another wounded Marine, Seargent Lawrence David Peters, Squad Leader of the 2nd Platoon. Though mortally wounded in the chest, Peters had propped himself up against a tree stump, exposing himself to enemy fire in order to direct weapons fire on enemy machine gun positions on the adjacent ridge. No one dared go near Sergeant Peters, except Father Capodanno, who ran to the dying man’s side despite the intense weapons fire and his own wounds, to pray with the Marine and to care for him in his last minutes of life.

Seargent Lawrence D. Peters, Binghamton son…

The last moments of Father Capodanno’s own life took place near an enemy machine gun nest that three Marines were trying to take out. All three men were cut down, two killed instantly and a third, Ray Harton, shot through his left shoulder. A corpsman went to Harton’s aid but was quickly shot through both legs. As both men lay bleeding on the battlefield, Father Capodanno ran to them. He first went to Harton, who had served the priest’s Mass the day before, anointed him and said, “Stay calm, Marine, God is with us all today and you’re going to be OK.” Then he ran to the side of the corpsman, with his legs shot up—who was also a Catholic—and prayed over him, while shielding him. As he prayed, Father Capodanno was shot 27 times in the back.

Father Vincent Capodanno, Navy Chaplain, LT USNR

It was only after reading several books on Father Capodanno that I found yet another serendipitous connection in this story. Seargent Peters, it turns out, was Binghamton born and raised, and was also awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously for his heroic actions that fateful day. And even more ironic, I learned he was buried in Chenango Valley Cemetery, not far from the Chenango River.

Call it serendipity, chance, or destiny, that my parents brought me into this world and that through them I found a connection to their classmate and friend who would become a priest, Navy chaplain, Medal of Honor winner, and Servant of God on his way to sainthood. That chaplain came to the aid of a young Marine who grew up just down the road from where I’ve lived these last 30 years. On that hot humid day in a part of the world so unlike home, Father Capodanno gave Seargent Lawrence Peters last rites amidst the cacophony of battle before he himself succumbed shielding another mortally wounded Marine.

And so, I’ll never fish the Chenango River the same, as I’ve fished it in years past in search of smallmouth bass on the feed. I’ll fish it reverently on these early fall days and wade it as if walking on sacred ground, knowing the deep and heroic connections that lie just off the river’s banks.

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