I had planned to leave a few hours earlier to be able to fish the first part of the outgoing tide. Now I would just catch the last of it, the flow steadily slowing, stopping, and with the near new moon, it would hang at low tide for a good long time, nothing stirring, before everything stopped, turned back again, flowing in the opposite direction. So I decided to head to an old, secret spot well upstream from the mouth of the river where the tide would hang on a little longer, a poorly tended dead-end road, a sliver of public land providing access, a narrow, thorn-filled path leading down the river.
As I coasted over that last rise, the Housatonic river, broad, gray and swirling, finally coming into sight, and I felt the thrill of my first spring outing for river striped bass (schoolies), maybe even a bigger migratory bass arrived early to see if the herring had started spawning, I was met with all manner of no trespassing signs—large, red lettering, secured to trees at eye level every few feet all along the last bit of dead end road that in the not too distant past was a doorway to a half a mile or so of wadeable river, a large back eddy where hungry schoolies would congregate just outside the strong current, smacking your fly on nearly every cast. I stopped and got out and looked down at the river just a few yards away, remembering the many times I had parked here in the past, rigged up, caught a whiff of feeding fish in the air, heard a few other anglers whooping it up as they reeled in fish after fish. Now no one was here, the posted signs too ominous to ignore. A car came by slow, a man leering at me where I stood looking down at the river. Right there. So close. He slowed, and I got back in the car, emphatically pulled my seatbelt across my body and started the engine. The man rolled by, watching for me to pull away.
I would lose another 20 minutes of fishing time now to drive to the mouth of the river, plus the near-mile-long hike out to the point where you will often find dozens of anglers shoulder to shoulder, most of them spin fishermen tossing their heavy jigs and plastic lures far out into the current. It was getting unseasonably hot as I arrived at the parking area, pulled on my neoprene waders, instantly making my legs sweat, and rigged up. With the tops of my waders rolled down as far as possible, my stripping basket pushed around behind me, rod in one hand, a small water bottle in the other, a shoulder bag with a fly box, spare tippet material, tools, slung down along my side, walking in the mid-tide sand was awkward, hard work. Just as I neared the point, a man appeared, his waders pulled up high over his protruding gut, a cigarette fastened to the corner of his mouth, spinning rod and tackle box in hand. He said, “you haven’t missed anything. I’ve only seen one fish taken all morning.”
My heart sank further still, but it made sense, somehow seemed right. When the fishing isn’t good, when the “skunk,” as they say, is in the air, you know it well before it happens. All those no trespassing signs, my late start, the unseasonable heat (it was now well into the 80s in April) all led up to this man’s proclamation. Stepping over the final sand dune, the mouth of the river now finally in sight, I saw just one lone angler casting a fly line out into the last channel of the outflowing tide. What the hell, I was here, I hadn’t cast a fly in months, and it had been longer still since I’d fished for ocean-going species; I’d give it a go.
As I waded out through the ankle deep water that just a few hours earlier was a ripping channel of deep, mid-spring, impassable currents, I pulled my waders up high, stripped out line into my stripping basket, stretching the coils so the line would unfurl straight and true. Soon I was up over my thighs, waist, the water feeling colder still with the air so warm, and I was casting again, settling into the familiar rhythmic tempo, pull-stop, push-stop, feeling the line let go with each back and forward cast, making a “double-haul,” my left hand pulling hard at the line as my right hand snapped the rod back, taking in any slack, the line shooting out behind me on the back cast, then grabbing again with the left hand and pulling down hard before letting go, pumping the rod forward, and all the line in the stripping basket lifting fast, shooting up and out through the eyelets of the rod. And far out in front of me my small fly, a chartreuse and white Clouser minnow, making a small splash into the midst of the fast current.
The low-tide, pungent-salty smells, the churning diesel motor of an oyster boat rumbling by, the gusts of wind stirring up the waves into small white caps, the calls of gulls out along the break walls hovering, looking, waiting, hopeful, like me, felt as familiar as the 9-weight rod in my hand, the cold river holding tight to my legs. But the slight tap between strips, the strip-set—instinctively pulling back hard on the line —the light graphite rod suddenly bent, the unseen alive thing running off line, feeling bigger still in the fast current…never occurred. And soon, the expectation of that waned as well. Then the cold of the river, my feet now just blocks of coldness, took over, so finally I made my way back up onto the beach, the walking even harder now with my feet gone.
By the time I returned to the car, my feet burned as they started to feel again, and as I pulled off my waders, I found one whole leg, right up to my waist, soaking wet, my waders having sprung a new leak I would now have to seek out and patch. I found an old grocery bag to sit on for the long ride home, so I wouldn’t soak the car seat, remembering many a fishing day like this, no fish caught, cold, miserable, that one time I had flipped my canoe up river from here taking a friend out with promises of multitudes of fish to be caught. We dragged the canoe to a sandbar and tried to dry out and warm up, but ultimately had to give up, the cold too penetrating, and we shivered the whole ride home even with the heat on full.
But now, oddly, I was feeling OK, good even. I had cast my line many times out into the river with such expectation. I had drunk in the beauty of a spring day where a river flows out into the ocean immersed in the cold flow of the river, half of me warm in the sun. I had been skunked, I was cold and wet, a favorite fishing spot was lost, so why was I feeling so good? As I drove home I was struck with the awareness that I just might be growing older, finally maturing, finding simple joy in things that at one point in my life would have left me only feeling decidedly unhappy, wronged. I am 60 years old. In the 1920s the life expectancy of men in the U.S. was just 54. Back at home, I rinsed off my salty gear, hung my waders out to dry, showered and put on dry clothes, poured a hazy IPA, and sat out on the deck watching the sun sink lower as my foolish, young dog careened through the yard in search of a toy.
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