Stolen Hours

Part of the dream of a rewarding retirement is interwoven with the friends we make along the road of life. Special moments along bright water, shared with our closest friends, make memories. Chances are there are a handful of truly close friends an angler prefers to share the water with. It seems so easy in concept. Hey we’re retired right, what’s to stop us from fishing every day? Life of course has many facets that can get in the way of best laid plans.

During the first couple of years of my retirement, my friend JA and I fished and hunted together quite a bit, before our retired lives found a way to get complicated. The past three years though, our opportunities have been sorely limited, and we have fished just once a season. So far this year, we have made it to the river twice, and I am thankful for that.

Setting up our tackle at the roadside, we caught each other up on our most recent trials and tribulations. When we were geared to go, I handed JA a small puck containing the two recently conceived dry fly patterns that had produced some remarkable results in their infancy. I am no slouch as a fly tyer, but JA is better. He’s been at it for more than fifty years, still ties commercially for several fly shops, and can craft gorgeous examples of everything from midges to classic Atlantic Salmon flies. I’m the experimenter, always thinking, tying and designing in my own quest to better mimic that image of life that brings a wise old brownie to the surface.

We waded in and turned in opposing directions, each gliding into the trout’s world as gently as possible. I re-learned an old lesson very early, as the first trout of the day took my fly on a long cast to a bubble line. I heard the plop, saw the white mouth open out there in the gloom of early morning, and raised the rod to a complete lack of resistance. Missed him, was my thought, and I continued to pepper the area with casts, despite knowing that trout would not come again. Imagine my expression, twenty minutes later, when I retrieved my fly for another dose of floatant, finding the remaining four inches of tippet and nothing more. No doubt I had nicked the tippet when tying it on in the early gloom so that it parted cleanly with the first attempt at striking.

I found no other signs of life, finally turning upstream to work my way to JA, hoping he had found the trout to be more receptive. When I had approached within talking range, I related my mishap and learned he had taken one brownie and elicited a bow wave approach from an unseen hunter.

We enjoy fishing within talking distance at times like these, comparing notes and thoughts amid the quiet of bright water. Our history began that way, walking the banks of another old friend, the Falling Spring Branch in Pennsylvania’s Cumberland Valley.

Eventually, my patience was rewarded with the unexpected rise of a very good trout. One of the new flies was selected, knotted to a new tippet, and thoroughly checked in daylight this time. That fellow rose again, this time in the closer edge of the current line before me, where I placed my first cast to no avail. A few turns of the reel freed enough line for my second cast to settle onto the furthest edge of that current.

I saw him come for it, his flank flashing as the long body knifed softly to the surface. He took the offering softly and I paused the required half a breath before striking.

I was wielding Dennis Menscer’s eight-foot five weight and needed the power of it’s crisp, faster action as I lowered the tip and let that big old brownie thrash his displeasure, keeping him from burying himself in tippet shearing cover nearby. The CFO ‘s voice crackled amid the quiet of the new morning, letting my friend know what was afoot.

Netted at last, I lifted that bronze flanked brute briefly and whistled softly to attract JA’s attention before I slipped him back to the embrace of cold water. There was nothing spoken just then. Two-foot trout deserve a moment of silence.

I stretched my back a bit, feeling redeemed from the pain of that opening miscue, told JA that the fish had taken “that brown fly I gave you this morning”. Turns out he had drawn the interest of a big hunter with that pattern himself.

Another friend tells me I should market some of the patterns I have designed for trophy Catskill trout, despite my lack of interest in commercializing my fishing. Perhaps JA and I could team up, designing and testing, and letting him produce dozens of perfectly tied specimens for the trade with his commercial speed and precision. Hell, we would never find time to go fishing if we did that!

The morning closed with a slow walk down river. We talked quietly. Once more life is taking a toll, and JA revealed that the week he and his wife had planned to stay at their Catskill cabin and fish had fallen victim to family responsibilities. I know they would have welcomed the break, and a real chance to relax.