Having harbored two sons in the waters of her womb, my mother considers herself something of an authority on human foetuses. The normal foetus, she says, is no swimmer; it is not a fish-, seal-, eel-, or even turtlelike: it is an awkward alien in the liquid environment – a groping land creature confused by its immersion and anxious to escape. My brother, she says, was such a foetus. I was not. My swimming style was humanoid butterfly-, crawl-, back-, or breaststroke: mine were the sure, swift dartings of a deformed but hefty trout at home with the water, finning and hovering in its warm black pool.
The River Why, David James Duncan
My mother never really fished. I recall one story from the days when she was dating my father when they took a day trip to fish for cod but I’ve never seen her with rod in hand – not even a picture. No, she was not a fisher, but she brought me into this world, on a dark and stormy night in early March – the month of the sign of Pisces. She let me emerge from a warm pool that kept me safe and formed who I am today.
At a young age I was already wading a nearby brook catching all the squirmy things I could with my hands and a bucket, returning home wet and dirty but all smiles. On trips to the shore, it was sandy seashells and jellyfish that my mother allowed in the bathtub of our motel room, despite the protests from dad. She always put fishy things under the Christmas tree. And when I ventured forth as a boy to test the waters with rod in hand, she ensured I was dressed for the weather, properly stuffed with a hearty breakfast, and drove me to all the places I wanted to fish – the Saddle River, Wood Dale Pond, the Woodcliff Lake Reservoir and countless others places in suburban New Jersey.
Then I went out into the world and fishing expanded for me. I fished big rivers, water that went on to the horizon, places beyond my little land of upbringing, places where the little hands and buckets and zebcos of my youth would never have been enough. But always I would return to my mother and father – holidays, birthdays, Mother’s and Father’s Days, and on some occasions just to visit and fish Barnegat Bay, where my parents retired. Even then, my mother was up early to make breakfast, prepare a lunch, and cook or help cook whatever I caught. Every time I visited them, there was a copy of the local fishing paper waiting for me along with clippings of fishing reports from the Asbury Park Press.
Now, some 60 plus years since I emerged from her, I am still at home with the water, but sadly, my mother has passed. There are no more fishing papers waiting for me when I visit, and the house, attended by aides for my ailing father, is just not the same. It is not home as I knew it and I loved it.
Down deep, that pool of life – the very one that nourished me and kept me safe before – has ebbed, but a flood tide of love, the same one that brought me to my watery world, still runs strong in my heart.
I remember it when I fly fish the bay. The moon and the earth do their thing and as sure as fall sets leaves on fire, the water turns, from the emptying as life does for us all, to the flooding, the filling, and the rising tide that brings life back to the bay. That is when I remember Mom. She always flooded my very being, my heart, even now…
A recent post on a popular fly fishing website reminded of something I’m very thankful for this Thanksgiving: our endless opportunity as fly fishermen. While it is easier and easier these days to decry what seems like our nation’s going to hell in a hand basket, I can and will, with drumstick in hand, be thankful for the fact that there’s too much water to cover.
Consider this quote from Andy Mill’s well-written interview post about tarpon fly fishing guide Steve Huff:
“It makes me crazy when people say, “Oh. I know the whole Islamorada area.” You know what? Nobody knows this stuff. I mean they do not fully know it. You could never know it. There is not enough lifetime to really know it all, especially here in the Everglades. There is not enough lifetime“.
There’s not enough lifetime. We fly fishers should always be thankful for that.
I am thankful for the fact that I can fish an entire day on the Susquehanna, the Tioughnioga, the Chenango, and so many more rivers, and never see another fisherman.
The Susquehanna River
I am thankful that I can rise early and spend time over a steaming cup of black coffee, and still not know where to fish, so vast are the choices. I am thankful for the spring days, when mayflowers abound…
West Branch of the Delaware in Spring
and I can’t quite decide whether I should fish for pre-spawn smallmouth, or the wild rainbows and browns of the Delaware.
A West Branch Delaware River brown…
I am thankful that I can fish coldwater and warmwater, moving water and stillwater, freshwater and saltwater, in the same weekend.
Party boat fishing at night for blues off New Jersey…
And I am thankful for the spawn, and the great fish that are driven up small creeks to pass on their noble heritage.
A landlocked salmon caught from Fall Creek…
I am thankful for the endless drive of Mother Nature – for nature’s drive to procreate, for the force that fishes have to feed, and for the excitement these forces can cause. I am thankful for everything that depends on water – eagles, heron, wood ducks, mergansers, deer, otter, beaver and bear. I am thankful that they too are drawn to water.
At the end of an early morning on the river, with the fog lifting, and the day just starting for most in this world, I can’t stop pinching myself for the very fact that there’s not enough lifetime.
It’s odd how disparate interests sometimes fire randomly like so many synapses in our brains and connect in new and interesting ways. Consider, for example, my interest in fly fishing and the sweet science: boxing. If you’ve read my “about” page, you already know that I’m the lone fisherman in my genetic line, save the possibility of some great uncles on my mother’s side who headed out to Montana in the early 1900’s. Whether they ever wet a line on the great rivers is unknown, but the thought consoles me in my fly fishing addiction.
Boxing is another story, one that’s a little more understandable in that my maternal grandfather, who passed long before I came into this world, was apparently quite the fan (being Irish descent didn’t hurt either). My mother told me of his interest only when I revealed my own love for the sport. She recounted his sitting by the radio, listening to the great bouts of Dempsey, Braddock, Louis, Baer, and undoubtedly, Jack Sharkey, the only man to have fought both Jack Dempsey and Joe Louis.
Joe Louis is sent to a neutral corner after dropping Jack Sharkey. Louis would prevail after knocking Sharkey down 4 times. It was Sharkey’s last fight in the ring – August 18, 1936.
Jack Sharkey was born Joseph Paul Cukoschay on October 26, 1902, in Binghamton New York. The son of Lithuanian immigrants, Sharkey left the family home in New York when he was a teenager, ending up in Boston. Sources report little of his early life until, at the outset of the First World War, teenaged Joseph repeatedly tried to enlist in the Navy. Turned down because of his age, he was not able to enlist until after the end of the war.
“Every time Louis hit me, he said, ‘Sorry.’ Every time Jack Dempsey hit me, he said, ‘How come you’re not dead yet?’”—Jack Sharkey
Sharkey wasn’t much of a fighter growing up – it wasn’t until he served in the U.S. Navy that Sharkey first stepped into a boxing ring, and that was only because a midshipman told him to substitute in the next fight at a Navy smoker or he wouldn’t get shore leave. Tall and husky, Jack quickly established a reputation as the best boxer aboard any vessel on which he served. Sharkey stood 6′ and had a notable 76″ reach. During his brief returns home to Boston he took part in his first fights for pay, the first on January 24, 1924, against Billy Muldoon, whom he knocked out in the first round. By the time of his honorable discharge just short of a month later, he had won a second fight and was already earning write-ups in the Boston papers.
Interestingly, a promoter declared his Lithuanian name unusable and so Joseph Paul Cukoschay became Jack Sharkey – “Jack” after Jack Dempsey and “Sharkey” from ‘Sailor’ Tom Sharkey, who fought Jim Jeffries to a 25-round decision for the heavyweight title in 1899.
“Who hit me hardest? Dempsey hit me the hardest because Dempsey hit me $211,000 worth while Louis only hit me $36,000 worth…”
Sharkey’s career statistics show an admirable record of 37 wins, 13 defeats, and 3 draws. One of his most noteworthy fights was against his “namesake”, Jack Dempsey, on July 21, 1927 in Yankee Stadium. Despite out-boxing the “Manassas Mauler” for 5 rounds, Sharkey lost the bout in the 6th round. “I turned to the referee to complain I was getting hit low, and I got hit with a haymaker,” he once recalled. “That was that. I was out on the canvas.” “I came home and I went in the hospital,” Sharkey recounted more than 40 years later, in Peter Heller’s, In This Corner (1973). “I passed blood there for a long time . . . this is never brought out in print, the after-effects of a fight. You dry out like a lightweight, you’re dehydrated, pains that you have, you come home you soak in a tub full of Epsom salts, the pain and the aches. No one knows what a fighter goes through after the fight.”
When asked why he had hit a man who wasn’t looking, Dempsey replied, “What was I supposed to do, mail him a letter?”
Sharkey is remembered less for his title victory over Max Schmeling than for the controversial manner of his defeat to the ‘Ambling Alp’, Primo Carnera, in his first defense in 1933. Carnera, whose enormous size had been caused by a boyhood glandular disorder, was controlled by racketeers and had been built up through fixed fights. Carnera was thought to be an easy mark for Sharkey. But in the sixth round Sharkey went down from a punch which many ringsiders claimed they did not see. For the rest of his life Sharkey would face claims that his loss was rigged.
His final fight was against the up and coming Joe Louis. But this was 1936 and Jack Sharkey didn’t have the same legs, and Louis was a different kind of destroyer entirely. From the start of the fight, Sharkey foolishly waded into Louis’ punching range and found himself on the canvas three times before a combination put him down for the count in round three. Sharkey said to W.A. Hamilton after the fight, “Louis convinced me that I have no business in trying to continue, and now I am relegated with the others before me who tried to cheat time and nature only to be revealed in their true light.” After being knocked out by Joe Louis in the third round Aug. 18, 1936, Sharkey retired from the ring to open a restaurant in Boston and pursue his love of fishing.
A beaten Jack Sharkey decides to hang up his gloves after losing to Joe Louis.
Sharkey was and has been largely considered second best, however unfair that may be. He was, after all, a fisherman who found himself lacing up a pair of boxing gloves by accident, not a desperate pug who had nowhere else to go. That he made it into the big leagues of boxing is considered by many, incredible.
Boxer, fly fisherman, family man…
“I started out as a fisherman,” Sharkey told The Ring in 1979. “When I was a kid I used to catch bass with my bare hands and sell them. Old-timers still remember me walking down the street carrying eels on my back.”
Sharkey acquired further fame in retirement from his exploits as a fisherman who could land a fly on a dime. Jack Gartside, noted fly-tier and author of many angling books, said he lived a dry-fly cast away from Fenway Park in the 1950s when Williams and Sharkey were demonstrating fly casting at a sportsman’s show in Boston. “When I was 8 years old, I was at a sportsmen’s show at the old Mechanics Hall in Boston. Ted Williams and Jack Sharkey, the boxer, were conducting fly casting demonstrations,” Gartside said. “After the casting, they both went to a booth to tie flies.”
Sharkey, pictured left, sits with Jimmie Foxx (center) and Ted Williams (right) at a fly fishing exhibition.
One New Hampshire angler who replied to my request for information on the boxer / fly fisher said Sharkey was a hell of a fly fisherman. This man’s father fished with Jack on occasion and staked out his own spot on the bridge at Alton Bay, but woe betide the flatlander who took Jack’s spot! Sharkey was known to be irascible and cantankerous, particularly in later life.
Sharkey could tie – no small feat for a guy whose hands went through a lot of abuse in the ring!
Sharkey was Ted Williams’ fishing partner for many years. When asked which he liked better, boxing or fishing, Sharkey replied, “Fishing, it doesn’t pay as much but then the fish don’t hit back.”
Jack Sharkey had his last “boxing” contest with Max Schmeling decades after leaving the ring. Jack held the record as the oldest living former heavyweight champion, living to the ripe old age of ninety-one, only to be beaten by Schmeling, years later, who lived to be ninety-nine.
Boxing and fly fishing may seem odd bedfellows, and many might question my sanity as a follower of both sports, but after reading about Jack Sharkey, I’m feeling a bit better about fist and fly. In a sense, Jack Sharkey, our own Southern Tier hometown hero, battled for a living but lived for fly fishing. And isn’t that what most of us do in a figurative sense in our own lives? Sharkey, in my opinion, was a hero for the everyday sportsman – the guy who slogged it out in the trenches, just to marry, raise a family, and maybe, just maybe, eke out a little time with the long rod on a pretty river. Rest in peace, Jack…
In a scene from the movie “Forrest Gump” – a Southern Tier Fly Fisher favorite – Forrest and his good friend Bubba are introduced to Lt. Dan Taylor, their platoon leader. Lt Dan, as he is referred to by Forrest, is a pretty straight-forward type of military leader who instructs his “FNG’s” in a few basic essentials on his way to visit the hooch. Among his words of advice is the following:
“There is one item of G.I. gear that can be the difference between a live grunt and a dead grunt: socks, cushioned sole, O.D. green. Try and keep your feet dry. When we’re out humpin’, I want you boys to remember to change your socks whenever we stop. The Mekong will eat a grunt’s feet right off his legs.”
Most of us anglers have some idea of the importance of Lt. Dan’s advice. Socks can make a huge difference to the fly fisherman, particularly in cold weather. For soldiers in combat, proper foot-wear is even more critical. Trench foot may be the best example of what happens when soldiers don’t take care of their feet in the field. Caused by prolonged exposure of the feet to damp, unsanitary, and cold conditions, it can be prevented by keeping the feet clean, warm and dry. Trench foot was first noted during the retreat of Napoleon’s army from Russia but it was the horrid conditions of the trenches in World War I that brought it to the attention of the medical profession. A key preventive measure that was implemented during that time was regular foot inspections by officers. It was also encountered in WWII, and in the Korean and Vietnam Wars. Trench foot even made a reappearance in the British Army during the Falklands War of 1982. The causes were the same: cold, wet conditions and insufficiently waterproof boots.
A WWII GI with a bad case of trench foot.
So feet, it turns out, are of high interest to the military to this very day. A work colleague of mine recently told me of his time in the Marine Corps – where he and his platoon would do forced marches and then be told to sit down roadside and remove their boots and socks for a foot check by a navy corpsman…
Foot inspections – a preventive measure…
The lesson learned through all of these wars is the same: take care of your feet by wearing good quality socks and change them as often as necessary…
When it comes to good quality socks, there’s a pretty big selection out on the market these days. One could purchase a pair of authentic Vietnam-era socks, the very socks Forrest Gump would have worn in the Mekong Delta, for example.
Straight from Ebay…
The socks pictured above are the real deal – original unissued Vietnam era olive drab green, wool cushion sole socks made of a mixture of wool, nylon & cotton material and available on Ebay for the nostalgic fly fisherman. While wool is a great material for its wicking and drying capabilities, the use of cotton these days is a big no-no. Cotton tends to absorb moisture, saturate quickly, and dry slowly – a perfect recipe for blisters and worse!
Forrest, Bubba, Tex, Cleveland, Phoenix, Detroit, Dallas, and Lt. Dan would have been a whole lot better off with today’s sock which include advanced synthetics and fine grades of wool, such as merino wool.
So what would I recommend to these men or anyone venturing forth in the cold and damp? Darn Tough is the brand of sock I like. I was sold on them after spending a rather bitter winter afternoon watching my son play hockey up in Pulaski, NY, where the indoor rink temperature seemed colder than it was outside! I stood there in full shiver along with the other hockey parents – all of whom were doing the same – with one exception. Rich, who works as a NYSEG Lineman, seemed unaffected by the arctic air. He watched the game without one shake from the cold. By the end of the first period, stepping out to the concession area for hot coffee, I had to ask…
“I always used to get cold feet” he confided to me when asked why he appeared Eskimo-like in the midst of Frigidaire conditions. As a lineman, he explained, he was frequently up in the bucket in some pretty bad weather. And he was tired of being miserable because of his feet. He searched a while for a better sock, and found them in Darn Toughs. He added that they were pricey, but the company claimed free replacement for any reason, forever. He’d yet to have to take one back – they were as hardened to wear as their label suggested.
Needless to say, I decided to give these socks a try and I was not disappointed. In fact, I’ve been a loyal customer ever since, even buying them for my daughter who often tends the playground in Syracuse winters as a teacher’s aide. There are other brands out there, such as SmartWool, Under Armor, and Icebreaker. Some of these brands blend These are good options, but I happen to like Darn Tough’s just fine. The price tag is on the hefty side for a sock, but it’s nice knowing they’re the only sock you’ll ever need to own. Your feet will surely thank you.
Ever since my Salmon River conversion, I always let my friend Rich know how darn good his Darn Toughs are. He just smiles, asking if I’ve hooked anyone else on the brand. Turns out he finally wore a pair through. “They took them back and replaced them free of charge, just as promised”. Try a pair – they may just be the only pair of socks you’ll ever need.
Father, you are not yet past the summer of life; your limbs are young. Go to the highest hill, and look around you. All that you see, from the rising to the setting sun, from the head-waters of the great spring, to where the ‘crooked river’ is hid by the hills, is his. He has Delaware blood, and his right is strong.
James Fennimore Cooper, Pioneers
It’s been over ten years since I first took a trip out west to meet my brother-in-law, Jeff, and fly fish the Bighorn River. This was my first trip to Montana and the Bighorn lived up to its reputation as a fly fishing mecca then, as it did on a 2017 trip, recounted here. Jeff and I spent three days with a guide on that first trip, nymphing the deep pools and fast riffles, and we each caught over 30 trout per day. But the highlight of that first trip for me was not so much the fishing, but discovering the meaning of ‘place’ in one’s life.
Towards the end of our trip, we drove into the mountains overlooking the Bighorn River Valley. The road zigged and zagged its way up into the highlands. The grass on the hills waved softly in the light breeze and in the draws we saw cattle and mule deer. When we reached the heights we found a road-side monument surrounded by a rough-hewn rail fence. Within the fence was a tall stone obelisk monument, each broad side oriented to a cardinal point of the compass with its own tribute to the Crow Indians, the first human inhabitants of the Bighorn Mountains. Below, spread before us was the river valley, carpeted in the gold of wheat, and cleaved by the Bighorn River, a blue-green ribbon fringed in cottonwood. We stood in silence and read the plaques, one of which resonated in my soul…
“The Crow country is a good country. The Great Spirit has put it exactly in the right place; while you are in it you fare well; whenever you go out of it, whichever way you travel, you fare worse. It has snowy mountains and sunny plains and all kinds of good things for every season. When the summer heats scorch the prairies, you can draw up under the mountains, where the air is sweet and cool, the grass fresh, and the bright streams come tumbling out of the snow banks. There you can count the elk, the deer, and the antelope when their skins are fit for dressing; there you will find plenty of bears and mountain sheep.”
The words reminded me of my own sense of place and affirmed my belief that just as all people need a home, all fishermen should have home water, a place to learn the cycles of life and to fall in tune with the season’s rhythms so that one day it may be completely understood and in that knowing, truly cherished and revered, a place where you are as whole as you will ever be.
For me, the Susquehanna River Valley and its 3 great rivers – the Tioughnioga, the Chenango, and the Susquehanna, which my house overlooks, are my home waters. It is there that I go most – where I am most confident and connected – and it is there that I feel blessed with fly rod in hand.
Susquehanna smallmouth…
A trip early one summer to the beautiful Thousand Islands region of the St Lawrence River reinforced this belief in ‘home water’. I drove north on a Friday to visit my high school buddy, Bill, and his family. I fished there for two and a half days and, quite honestly, was humbled. After all, Bill and his father had fished these waters for over 40 years. Die-hard spin fishermen, they quickly proved their worth. Bill’s father fished Canadian waters with his son-in-law and grandson, while Bill and I focused on the New York side of the river. From a fly fishing perspective, I had come pretty well equipped for the depths we’d fish. I brought 7 and 8 weight rods and a variety of lines, including a full sink shooting head. It took a while to dial in, but by my 2nd day on the river, I had found the combination of line weight for the various water types. Yet in no way was I high hook on the trip. I quickly realized it’s not easy fishing in another angler’s home waters…
Bill with a beautiful St Lawrence smallmouth…
Unlike the wading I am used to, we fished from a boat. Bill and I found fish in the drop-offs surrounding the abundant shoals of the river. As I explained to Bill, my greatest satisfaction in fly fishing has always been to figure out the bite – the great fishing puzzle; where the fish are, and what they’re feeding on. To do that is the pinnacle of fishing success in my opinion.
One of the many thousands of islands the St Lawrence is known for. Note the stone duck blind…
I left the St Lawrence happy, having spent quality time on and off the water with great friends. And I returned even more reverent towards my own home waters. Like so many places in our great United States, the great Susquehanna rivershed, once called home to thousands of Native American Indians, calls me too. And while the exact meaning of “Susquehanna” remains unknown to this day, the river passes on its own timelessness in a soft steady melodic flow.
Now, years later, I still fish the ‘crooked river’ and its tributaries. Bill’s father is gone and his old place, a tidy trailer in Kring State Park, sits most of summer alone, save a few weeks here and there when Bill and his family go there. In the spring I wait the watershed snowmelt, selfishly hoping for a dry beginning so I can fish the smallmouth pre-spawn, a time when the bass are staging to spawn and feeding voraciously ahead of weeks where procreation takes center stage in their cycle of life. In summer I wade wet, focusing on either end of the day. Summer is when one can find the bass off the river grass, busting bait, and in the riffles during the hot and bright days. Come Indian summer, and fall, the bass are in prime condition, feeding in preparation for the long winter ahead. Then I fish from my kayak, throwing streamers to shaded structure. The bass are often as fat as footballs.
With the bass comes the by-catch, and they are always welcome. Fallfish will often strike a streamer or nymph and fight several times their size. These fish are famous for their nest-building prowess. They spawn in the spring and the males take on a red to magenta hue to their heads, along with “horns” that look like large pimples.
Then there are walleye, some of which can be quite large. They ply the pools and deep runs, jaws bristling with canines, ever hungry.
Carp are always in the mix, too. Even when not fishing for them deliberately, an occasional bruiser will strike a streamer or nymph. They are the bear of fish – dominant omnivores of the river environment.
Channel catfish are another species that will whack a deeply fished streamer with authority. They are the biggest-eyed of the catfish, sight as well as scent-driven, and will fight doggedly when taken on the fly.
At the apex of the river’s food chain are the northern pike, tiger musky, and musky. These fish, in particular the musky, can attain size of 50″ or more. Twice in my fly fishing history on the river, I’ve “hooked” them, but have never landed them. Both times these fish took the 12″ smallmouth bass I had hooked on the fly and both times they surprised me at how hard they fought while not being hooked. They hung on to their prey for 20 minutes each – one of them towing my kayak up river. The fight normally ended close to me with savage headshakes that told me, “you’re really pissing me off now.” As hard as I tried, I never landed either, but they made river memories that keep me coming back.
Musky bait on the fly…
And always surrounding the fishing, there is the river. I have waded her warm waters in the company of so much wildlife: Canada goose, mergansers, snowy egrets, green herons, blue herons, kingfishers, swallows, red-tailed hawks, bald eagles, ospreys, whitetail deer, mink, porcupine, beaver, muskrat, raccoons and sometimes too, black bear.
Once I watched a bald eagle chase an osprey, fish in its talons, flying upriver and into a tree line. The pair looked like a big P-47 Thunderbolt chasing down a Spitfire. Many times have I witnessed the long-eyed scan of the osprey and then it’s mid-air hover and perilous dive. Many times have I stood looking skyward as swallows darted about feasting on a hatch of mayflies, picking off each tiny fly with amazing precision, diving, swooping, careening, hovering, feasting on the emergence of life from the river.
In the late summer, there is nothing like the white fly hatch, the duns racing upriver with their nymphal shucks trailing, like heavy snow blowing horizontally in a blizzard.
And then there’s the fall, the glorious debut, when the silver maples lining the river cloak its banks in gold, the fitting dress for such an old and majestic river – the king of rivers east of the Mississippi. There will be October caddis then – those big orangey fluttering bugs that on occasion will bring a bass to rise. The shiners and dace will be big and the bass, walleye, and channel cats will key in on them, the pike and musky preferring the young of the year fallfish, quillbacks, and bass. They feel the change coming as mother nature pushes them to feed up before the starvation period begins. And feed they do, creating a bounty for the fly fisher…
Those late fall afternoons can take on an Indian summer – the crickets and cicada still in the trees, the sun warming them before the rush of wind and charge of cold. I’ll take a rest sometimes at the end of a day fishing, sitting river-side, soaking-in the end of bounty, feeling then what the Crow perhaps felt about their land – home where the river is plenty enough to be happy…
We had a remarkable day of catching, and he turned to me as he winched the boat onto the trailer. He had a giant cigar clamped between his teeth, and a large grin. “Those are the kind of days that keep you young, son,” he said, and then he cranked the winch handle like a man half his age. Fish Pimping Callan Wink
With the job interview over, I walked out into the warm day, loosened my tie, removed my sport coat and got into my car for the drive home. The route I travelled brought back memories: some 15 years ago I made this daily trip – a long drive up Route 12, speeding north to work and then south back home, the Chenango River a constant companion.
Fall was making its mark onto the year and the once verdant hills around me were proof of it, standing tall cloaked in hues of gold, amber, and crimson. Like me, they were turning with the passing of time. From the youth of spring and the strength of summer, autumn perched at winter’s door in one last stand of grandeur.
Once home, I wolfed down a hastily-made sandwich, chugged a beer, and broke out my fly fishing gear. I cleaned lines, checked leaders, gathered fly boxes, and was out the door in a rush of new-found urgency. While the day was hot, mid-summer like, the forecast forebode it’s staying power. The next days would suffer a cold front with a drastic drop in daily highs and with heavy rain as well.
The Susquehanna was still placid, barely meandering along at late summer flows. The heat and humidity of the day were in stark contrast to the water temperature, however. Once I was geared up, I waded in wet and felt a cool shock pass up my legs. Just weeks ago, the river was as warm as bath water but now it was well into the fall cool-down.
I headed downriver to a favorite place. Despite the calm in the air, the cricket’s song in the surrounding woods, the warm breeze blowing up-river in gentle puffs, I could sense impending change. Fall meant the feeding up and I was sure the cool water temps were sending that signal to the smallmouth bass. The barometer had been falling, another factor in my favor. Maybe, I thought, after so-so fishing earlier in the week, I’d get into them good again.
My first stop was not quite up to my expectations. I cast a streamer across and down a run and picked up a small bass, then lost another of some size that left a boil in the river and an empty fly to my side. Nymphing up the run did me no better. It was 4 pm and the sun was nestling into the river tree-line to my back, casting shadows on the south side of the river. I decided to move to a place I had not fished in a long while. It was a long walk and wade downriver but I had hope that the change would be worth it.
As I walked and waded, I thought about the river. The low flows of summer now exposed its broad shoulders with a veneer of summer water, like the paper-thin skin covering the bones of an old man. I once read the Susquehanna was one of the oldest existing rivers in the world – a river that was born before the mountains that rose up to try and control it. It wore through those mountains, to continue its course to the sea, a testament to the virtues of patience and perseverance.
I fished another long run on the way down-river but no one seemed to be interested in my offering. Beyond this run’s tail-out I spied the riffle I was seeking. I started fishing high in the riffle and stripped a conehead chartreuse “super bugger” across. Water loading my backcast, I single-hauled forward and the fly carried out and across. And with every cast, I braced with anticipation that maybe this part of the river would produce.
Cast and step, cast and step, I moved down the riffle, systematically working the grids my eyes projected on it. I was tight to the fly on each retrieve, moving it slowly so that it danced across bottom. Part way down the riffle, my fly stopped and the water erupted with a nice bass. How many times had I watched this dance play out, yet I could never get enough of the replay. I brought the bass to hand after a good fight, and laid it out on the river’s bank, admiring the purest form of bronze. A picture or two and it was back in the river.
Darkness grew and the thought that I’d need to head back to the access dogged me. After taking two good bass, there was still enough light for a few more casts. The riffle faded into a deep slow pool as I waded down-river and Lady Luck looked down on me once more as I strip-set into a bass that catapulted out of the water and landed with the heaviness of a trophy fish. I fought the bass with my rod tip low, trying to keep it from launching airborne, but it jumped nevertheless – a testament to its strength and wisdom. It always seemed ironic to me that bass would jump out of their watery world – their home – to free themselves in an environment that was hostile to them. For the bigger older fish, maybe it was just their way of showing they still had it in them.
Some give and take followed – I savored the head shakes and short powerful lunges of this bass knowing they very well would be the season’s last. Eventually I beached it, a dandy of a smallmouth with incredible river camo only Mother Nature could create. I cradled the bass – most likely a female, embracing her heft – the fullness of her body – the clear eyes and tiger stripes, a fish in its prime – and I wondered how much longer she would hunt the Susquehanna. This fish was at least ten years old – maybe as old as fifteen – a truly special fish and one that had beaten the survival odds – a fish that had, in the words of Eric Mastroberti, a local fly fisherman, “the genes of an Olympic champion.”
I knelt by the bass at the river’s edge, carefully removed my fly, and waded out again, holding her head-first into the current. She slowly breathed the lifeblood – water as old as time – and came alive in my hands. I held her suspended in the flow and waited until she decided to swim away. And she did, turning with the current and slowly moving into dusk’s river shadows.
The sun bid its adieu, now dropping below the tree-line and I turned and made my way back to the access, a mile or more of a walk and wade upriver. I reflected on the nearing end of the river feast, the winter to come, and on age. I too was up there in years, but unlike fish, humans live a much longer life that tails out to where we made our entrance. Helpless at birth, wholly dependent, we age to a point where we return again, ever fading, losing strength, the life force ebbing away. But fish just grow until natural causes end things. With old age, a fish keeps gaining strength and size and more certainty of survival against all the threats of a river – apex predators, raptors, and fishermen.
As I made my way up a side channel, the water quickened where it swept past a fallen tree. The river was deep there, its relentless push having scoured out the bottom. I waded further along, tenuously holding branches as I made my way past the obstacle. Once clear, I saw a large snapping turtle river walking down current, head extended, its shell mottled brown and green. ‘Another old warrior,’ I thought – it’s believed that snapping turtles can live as long as a human. And like me, this old guy had no doubt taken his share of smallmouth bass.
I reflected on the fact that despite my age, fishing always seemed to remove me from any awareness of time. Indeed, I felt young whenever I fished. Sometimes a leg would ache where it would have been spry so many years ago, and my balance at times, though not an issue yet, benefited from a wading staff by my side. But still, all my years vanished in the midst of a cast. Immersed in that old river, in the company of its old friends, I felt young.
The memory now deeply ingrained kept playing in my head as I continued on my way upriver; that of a big smallmouth jumping clear of its old world. And as it did, I kicked and strode into the river’s current with renewed vigor, and perhaps too, as a man half my age…
This last year has been one of incredible change on so many fronts. Unemployment, re-employment, family highs and lows, extreme national social unrest, and then that monster COVID, have all served to upend much of what I once saw as stability. All of this served to delay the launch of a new and improved version of Southern Tier Fly Fisher, promised to my old blog’s readership back in November, 2019. As a master procrastinator, I’ve dilly-dallied long enough. In the words of Benjamin Franklin, “You may delay, but time will not.” And so I am at last launching this new blog, imperfect as it may initially appear, with the hopes of raising old friendships, cultivating new ones, fly fishing old haunts in the literary sense, and making more discoveries of the piscatorial kind. I am back home, at last…
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