Photo by Sam Larson
When I pull into a parking spot, when I finally see the stretch of river that speaks to me, I tend to lose my calm. The tailgate opens, my gear tumbles out, and I’m lost in trying to do three things at once, to get my waders on, pack my gear, and string my rod.
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Photo by Sam Larson
The first conversations before rigging up are a spell, something to conjure up a best-case scenario. We want dry fly fishing. We’d accept swinging wets. We’ll nymph if that’s what the day offers, but we won’t go home and brag about it.
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Photo by Sam Larson
Goals, if I can philosophize, are the bane of camping and fishing, unless the goal happens to be the destination.
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Photo by Sam Larson
My summers are littered with the trips that I don’t take, all the adventures that never came off or made it out of the planning stages.
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Photo by Jeff Stutsman
The trail to Zimmerman Lake was rough. Late-melting snow was piled thigh deep across the trail, and we were stuck post-holeing through long sections of water-logged slush.
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That last sip of gas station coffee goes down smooth. It’s almost entirely hazelnut flavored creamer at this point, and little more than lukewarm, but I am loving it.
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Photo by Jeff Stutsman
When I picked up a Western rod again I told myself that I’d be willing to settle for bare competence.
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Photo by Sam Larson
By the time I return to the cabin I am dead tired. It’s all I can do to get my boots and waders off, gulp down some food, and then collapse into the bed, a mess of sweat, mosquito bites, and sunscreen. I caught fish despite myself, and a full day’s worth of jumping brookies fills my head, individual fish blurring into a long montage of strikes and releases.
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You’d found an unconvincing, fifteen-year-old report that there were golden trout in the lake, so after dinner, you hike down to the shoreline where you see intermittent rises blinking like radar pings.
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“Just wait,” another angler called without looking away from their indicator. “In another two hours there’ll be forty-five, maybe fifty people standing here.” And so it goes on Joe Wright Reservoir, where the inlet is off-limits until July 1st, and the grayling spawn draws crowds of anglers eager to stand shoulder-to-shoulder while a veritable herd of fish stampedes upstream, deep in the throes of piscine lust.
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It’s the kind of place where, if you start early enough—bringing well-bagged peanut butter sandwiches and full water bottles—you won’t have to leave the water until it’s almost too dark to find the cabin again. On days like this, a small group of anglers can catch so many trout between them that good-natured competition quickly gives way to gleeful confusion.
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Photo by Jeffrey Stutsman
The pile of fleece on the floor stirs as Baxter begins to unfold himself from his blanket fort. I say, “My, what big teeth you have.” But he shakes himself awake in a manner that indicates he is a dog, and doesn’t know what the fuck I’m talking about.
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Sam fails to catch any fish on the Arkansas tailwater and is mocked by ducks
Photo by Jeffrey Stutsman
It’s the ass-end of January, and I longingly remember the sequences I use to tie blood knots, davey knots, and surgeons knots, but when I look down at my hands, dry and cracked from the cold winter air, they feel useless and palsied. They feel old.
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