A Blade of Grass

…like the glint of sunlight on polished cane.

I wrote those words decades ago, for a story in my weekly newspaper column about a special encounter on the fabled Letort. I was fishing a lie, one where I had glimpsed the tiniest dimple where the placid flow wrinkled gently against a log lying full length along the outside bend of that limestone spring. The fishing itself had been intense, for the magic of the water had told me that a great trout resided there, in that impenetrable lie. I had wanted that trout, and thus I had taken the only route available; I had waded in the treacherous marl bottoms of that Letort meadow. I was up to my chest, the footing precarious, and I was left not simply with a very long cast, but the knowledge there would be only one chance!

I had no classic cane rod in those days, just my grandfather’s old H-I that I had fished a time or two for it’s connection to my own past. I wielded a feather light graphite wand casting a three-weight line, and I put my Letort Cricket perfectly in that one spot to drift to and along the current beside that log eighty feet away. All that line, my triumph and my defeat, as it proved too much to manage when the fly vanished. Missed!

In that moment of anguish, I felt the brief sensation that I was not alone. The magic of the place, the storied S-Bend, brought to mind the ghosts of the Regulars as a warm breeze brushed my neck. I wrote the story from that inspiration, a commentary from two watchers, long departed, their spirits tied eternally to those water meadows. When I walk bright water with a rapier of rent and glued bamboo these days, I think a lot about old ghosts.

The ghosts who haunt classic trout waters are a benevolent lot, and I feel their goodwill as I cast to the ancestors of the trout they pursued. Whenever my hand grasps a vintage shaft of Tonkin cane, my thoughts cannot help but wander back in time. Is this old Leonard familiar with this pool? Has it cast a dry fly for another whose spirit remains? Fly fishing, when practiced properly is a spiritual experience, particularly so when awash in historic waters, whether those that flow through my new Catskill home or the gentle limestone valleys of my past.

So much of the energy and the magic of this angler’s life begins with a simple blade of grass! The shoots prosper in the mountain soil, and the culms grow tall and strong in the winds that torture the little river valley – Arundinaria amabilis, the lovely reed, the rodmaker’s cane. Grown, cut, carted down the mountain and cleaned in China, floated on to market and eventually to American shores, there is a special life in this bamboo. Touched by so many hands, particularly here in little conclaves where the craft has survived for a century and a half, the bamboo the Chinese call tea stick becomes a magic wand!

Though I cherish days angling with historic artifacts, rods and reels with mysterious histories of their own, I draw great pleasure from tackle crafted by a small group of friends. Dennis Menscer, Wyatt Dietrich, Tom Whittle and Tom Smithwick all came to bamboo rodmaking by different paths, yet they are united by their common love for the history and the art of the bamboo fly rod. These men make magic!

I felt that magic the first time I cast a Smithwick rod, Wyatt’s DreamCatcher, Dennis’s boldly flamed hollowbuilt and Whittle’s Shenk Tribute, and I feel it again each time I cast a fly with one of their miraculous products of, devotion.

I seek serenity throughout my time along rivers, the caress of current upon my legs, the smooth arch of the bamboo as the line rolls from back cast to presentation. The light twinkles through the trees and reveals some hint of the secrets of flowing waters, and I smile to myself as the fresh breeze touches my face. Angling draws it’s great pleasure from simple moments.