At Last to Wade the River: Welcome

Some may call it a hobby. Others, an obsession. A way of life. What have you. I'll just call it fishing and you can come up with your own conclusion as to what you might call it for me. I do wonder what you call it for yourself although I can probably guess what your wife calls it (at least in her head as you scrawl yourself out of the bed at 4 a.m. just to get a jump on the dawn). For the record, I am happily married for nearly 14 years and as many times as I've gotten out of said bed at all hours of the morning just to wet a line, she has graciously always let me back in it.

Welcome to my blog. A place where you most likely won't learn anything new but where you'll hopefully get a sense of what I am learning, be it about fishing or, well, just life. Maybe you'll find through this blog that you and I have something in common. Maybe you won't. That's okay too. I'm easy.

I do hope to lend some practical fishing knowledge at times and ask that you politely return some through your comments regarding your experiences on the water. I request that you please respect the old adage "If you don't have anything nice to say..." well, you know the rest.

The title of this blog is just a reflection of how I came back to "wade the river". For many years, I have been actively fishing the great Kensico Reservoir which is just north of New York City. I have had days full of luck and days without but each of those days has been rewarding. It is the rivers that I had neglected for years and the rivers that are at the root of my love for angling.

As a kid of 14 or so my father used to take me along on his weekend fly fishing trips to the fabled Beaverkill and Willowemoc Rivers. He and three or four of his buddies would twice a year swap their collars and ties for flannels and waders and all that came with it. It was then that I fell in love with the sport. It became a part of me without me knowing it. It took a hold of me. I managed for a long time, however, after my father passed in May of 1990, to escape out of it's grasp. I dodged it from one state to the next, one decade after another like a speckled Brown Trout darting from rock to rock. The rivers and streams of my youth held too many memories of Dad. I guess it just took some doing for me to heal. On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of my Dad's departure I began to assemble some close friends and family to revisit my youth on these waters. With fly rods in hand, and everything to learn, we all made the trip. It is now an annual event where we are able to swap our work week with the ease of the current just as my Dad and his buddies had done so long ago. At last I am able to wade the river. I will never look back.

My first trout on a fly rod. This was May of 1988. I was 14 and my Dad snapped the pic.

He was a proud papa. Here he beams while I clean our catch. He would die just two years later.

Since taking our first trip two seasons ago, I have been opened up to a whole new world of fly fishing. It is as if I have found a new lease on an old fishing life. There are many streams here in Westchester and Putnam Counties where I live and work as well as many others from Pennsylvania to Maine and back. I plan to fish as many of these streams and rivers as I can over the years as well as continue to fish the lakes and reservoirs of the area. I hope that you will check in on my journey from time to time. Thanks for stopping by and "tight lines" always. -- Mike