Making More Money!

Well let's just say that I am a man of a certain age who hangs around, once in a while, with men of a certain age. It seems to me that money, and how to make more of it and/or keep more of it, comes up these days time and time again. And again. And again. Don't get me wrong, I certainly have an interest in this matter as clearly it behooves me to do so.

It is funny though how it seems to be the topic of conversation more and more with each passing year. 

Funnier still is how this subject never comes up on the rocky banks of a stream or during the pre-dawn launch of a Jon boat on the cool, clear water.

What does often comes up in these situations is how to make and/or keep something a little bit different. A little bit more elusive than even the Almighty Dollar...

Time.

Tight lines everyone. I hope you find a way to make more time to do what it is that you love and to do it with the people that matter the most.

A picture of my son, Dean, with a nice Smallmouth he caught on a Lightning McQueen push button rod.  This was 4 years ago and I just can't believe how fast it's all going...

LOST

 LOST: 18 inch Brown Trout on the East Branch of the Croton Reservoir.  Thick slab of a back.  Golden hue with large dark spots.  Enjoys eating flashy black and green nymphs and dancing around for five minutes on 6x tippet.  Goes by the name of "Heartbreaker".  If found please return this fish back to the hole that she came out of.  I think she's still got my ego as well.

Oof.  That one hurt.

Did manage a couple of small Browns and a small Bow and had two of the best fishing partners on the banks beside me.  It was a Sunday to remember early in the season.  Hope you all had a great weekend out there.

Tight lines.

Mike

Openings...and Elder Statesmen

I pulled up to the banks of the Amawalk at about 4 p.m. on this cloudy Opener of an afternoon.  I was in a hurried state having dashed from work and pushed the limits on the winding road of Rt. 35 in my small maroon Nissan Matchbox car. After all, it had been opening day ALL day and I needed to get down to it! As I began to put on my waders (the ones I finally patched in three places last night) the Yankees play by play of an eventual Opening Day loss to the Red Sox blared out of the speaker on the open door of my stream side car.  I wondered if I would find any victory this day on a stream that I'm all but unfamiliar with.

"What's the score?", the older gentleman in the dusty-shoulder-of the road spot in front of me asked as his pipe smoke loomed in the breeze.  A "harumph" from him as I tell him of the Yankees woes.

"Any luck?", I ask.  I am unsure if he is coming or going.

"Nah, just came to check it out.  You nymphing?"

"Yeah.", I reply.

"Well, that's good.  Look at them all," he says as three guys stride down the road. "spin fisherman."

I am quiet about it as I don't want to get into any theological debate.  "You're not fishing at all?", I politely but  hurriedly ask.  I am half interested and thinking more about the daylight burning.

As it turns out, he is a dry fly fisherman.  It is the first of April and there will be no rising trout.  Not that it matters.  He is mostly incapable of wading these days.  He's just come to watch.  Check in.  A veteran, or rather, an elder statesman of these waters.  We agree, and I mean it, that he looks great for 77.  He is Andy and when all is said and done I remember that this is what it is all about.  I remind myself to slow down and chat, stream side, before a fly hits the water.

"My wife gave me the afternoon.", I say.

"Mine too.", he replies.  "Just drove all the way up from my daughter's house in south Jersey.  We got home, I told my wife I'm going out.  She says 'You're going to the stream, aren't you?'  I tell her 'yeah.'  She says, 'That's fine. Then I'm going out.' Hahaha."

It's a quick story but I can appreciate it.  I smile inside because here is Andy, just about forty years my senior, and he loves this place.  He loves it for reasons beyond catching trout.  He loves it for reasons that I love it, for reasons I can't put into words.  He's having the same awkward conversations with his wife about "fishing time" as I have with mine, forty years later in life, and he is not even wetting a line.

With this in mind I slow down.  I take my time and really "look" at this water.  This is a stretch I've never seen before.  Does it hold trout?  Where does it hold them today?  Will it look the same when I am 77?  Will I still be able to wade the rivers and fish the streams?  How fast will the years go?

Slow down, Mike, slow down.

I did catch a few small trout.  One smaller than the next.  Small victories that the Yankees didn't find today.

I also found that only two of the three patched leaks seemed to hold.  You win some, you lose some I guess.

There was, of course, one shining victory.  And I found it in a conversation with an old fisherman...on Opening Day.

Happy "Opening Day", Andy. And many more.  Hope to meet again.

April Fools

This coming Monday, April 1st, is Opening Day for trout in NYS public waters.

It is also "April Fools" Day.  

Where will your foolish soul be flipping flies???

A perfect title from my favorite Fly Fishing author.

Tight lines and luck to one and all on the season opener.  

"Two things we're never late for..."

A River Runs Through It.  A classic and a film that never tires for me.

"Church and Fishing."  One of the greatest lines to come out of the greatest fly fishing film, "A River Runs Through It".  I have said that many a time to a friend or relative who has been late to arrive roadside, boat side, stream side or wherever we decided to meet at whatever ungodly hour.  I have NEVER been late for fishing.  Not once.  And then there was today.

I can't blame daylight savings, or an upset stomach due to who knows what in the wee hours of attempted sleep or a faulty alarm (I mean the thing must have gone off...since when has my cell phone ever failed me???).  I guess that just leaves myself to blame.

My patient and gracious brother-in-law took it in stride.  After the fourth text, he went to grab some coffee and came back to the homestead and waited a bit more.  All told I threw the day off by a good 20 minutes, which, as you know, can be a game changer (at least in my superstitious or crazy-when-it-comes-to-fishing mind).  I hoped out loud that the fish gods would repay him for his virtue.

It was 28 degrees when we arrived at the snowy banks of the East Branch of the Croton Reservoir.  It wouldn't warm up for quite some time.  There was ice in the guides and there were leaks in our waders.  As it turns out, the fish gods were on the right side today and my partner netted the one and only brown trout of the four hours or so that we fished.  Nymphs, streamers, droppers, split shot, no split shot, you name it we threw it and moved up and down the river too!  Oh well, them's the breaks and I was late so what's a guy to do?

All in all, the coffee was hot, the laughter was kind and the stones were smooth and slick under ripples of fluid water and the early call of spring birds.  And the sun, when it finally beamed over the hills, felt to me as it must feel to the crocuses that are fledgling here in NY about now, just bursting through the melting snow without thought or reason.  Just kind of opens you up.  Spring is almost here.  The trout will soon be rising.

And I never did make it church.

The man with the patience and the only fish of the day.

(*** As it turns out, in the River Runs Through It quote there were three things they were never late for; work, church and fishing.  Well, It's Sunday and I don't want to think about work on a Sunday, let alone write about it. ***) 

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

A nice looking 17" Brownie that I got in the fall out of a local stream.  The fish was released unharmed.

A late Summer's dawn on the Kensico Reservoir.

Wading the river, at last.

 On the banks of the Willowemoc River, autumn 2012.