Quiet Time

Just a drop of oil upon the spindle and the pawl, and this sleek St. George is ready for the rod I’m working to have ready this season. She’s never held a line nor reeled in a trout of any size, waiting patiently in her soft leather case and box, as more than twenty years have passed since the gents in Alnwick tucked her in and sent her off across the Atlantic. Such thoughts come freely with that little drop of oil.

Now the Leonard rests in my hands and I can feel the surge of last May’s six pound brown pulling toward sanctuary in a fallen tree! It’s well more than sixty years since they slipped her into her shiny new tube in Central Valley, but she’s still proving to be up for every challenge. Ah, the memories that must lie within that slender shaft of cane! I know she’s already made some special ones for me.

It’s warm here in my tackle den, and there’s bright sunshine beyond the window, making it easy to sit back and dream. I know that its below freezing outside, but I cannot see the snow and ice from the high window above my tying bench, only that sunlight and blue sky!

My seventh season lies ahead, it’s number well associated with good luck, and that gives hope when the winter winds rattle the siding, and the ancient furnace fails to outperform Jack Frost. My thoughts wander through the hatches in my idle quandaries. Will it be a good year for Gordon’s Quills? I’ve tied so many in various styles. Perchance river levels will be perfect when the time of the Hendricksons arrives, their currents just better than fifty degrees on the cooler days so the hatches do not stutter, but spring forth and drive both trout and anglers to the heights of ecstasy!

There’s snow up high this year, to fill the reservoirs and melt slowly to recharge the aquifers and springs that begin the chain of bright water that envelopes those big brown trout on the Beaver Kill. Here’s hoping for a water year to follow last season’s drought!

Could the Green Drakes mount a return? I cannot imagine a more welcome event. Great duns drifting on a cloud filled afternoon, the rises as violent as some giants stoning the river!

These thoughts of what might be make it hard to concentrate too long on tying flies. I’d like to get some off to the Fly Fishers Club to salute their 76th year; and soon the Museum will be looking for filled boxes for their season’s first event. Winter does that to me each year, bringing distractions born of too many days apart from some bright river’s caress.

That sun’s got water dripping from the roof, and I can hear it ticking away the minutes of this drowsy afternoon. Likely some time will pass before sunshine once more greets the day, for a snowstorm is coming with a cold snap riding it’s tail.