The days that keep you young…

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…