Now and then it’s good to step back from the dumpster-fire of current events and media. A quiet rainy day in the Outer Cape, with my lovely wife off in Europe visiting our grandson, is such an occasion.
I spent the day with my friend Alec, an avid outdoorsman, who has very generously been teaching me fly-fishing. (Being of Scottish heritage, this is something that is surely in my blood, but I’ve neglected it all my life.) The narrow land around Wellfleet is dotted and crisscrossed with ponds and streams and estuaries, alive with trout and bass and pan-fish, and I realized a while back that to live here and not to take up fishing would be to waste a great blessing.
So, little by little, under Alec’s patient and expert tutelage, I’ve been getting the hang of it. Today he began to teach me the art of tying flies, and I managed to assemble two “Wooly Buggers“. It is with immense satisfaction that I report they came out surprisingly well. I think I’m hooked.
We spent the rest of the afternoon in his truck, bumping along sandy fire-roads in the woods, as Alec showed me some of his favorite hidden spots. We’ll fish them in the spring.
I hope you will forgive me for not commenting on the new FISA memo, or the assault on the NRA, or any of the rest of it. My enthusiasm for that sort of engagement ebbs and flows, and just now I’ve had enough to last me for a while. It’s unwholesome to dwell on that stuff too much. Sometimes it’s better just to go for a walk in the woods.
7 Comments
Having some slight experience myself Malcolm (Whitewall?) and somewhat cognizant of our differing regional dialects (we speak on the phone occasionally but the subject never having come up) mighten you have spelled the lure
Wooly Booger?
Admitting of course I’m unfamiliar with any fish from Massachusetts.
Still … I’d suggest you maybe determine whether you’d rather than toast the thing on your grill check with a local fishmonger.
Or I guess you might, considering you’re new to fly-fishing think about whether given that, you’ve expressed “immense satisfaction” you’d consider memorializing etching the facts on a brass plate describing how you came to mount the fish before you place the carcass on your wall.
Okay belay that Malcolm.
https://whiteriverresort.com/white-river-trophy-trout-fishing-links/white-river-fishing-report/
It’s just that Arkansas’ White River neararound where Dad taught me the basics the “proper spelling” wasn’t part of the curriculum.
Buggers, boogers…
I’ve heard about spelling bees, but never fish. So maybe it doesn’t matter.
Malcolm,
…”and I realized a while back that to live here and not to take up fishing would be to waste a great blessing.” How right you are. Fishing, trout or bass or whatever kind is good for the inner man. The sport has relieved me of terrible troubles over the years.
Jeebers Whitewall,
Fishing is a sport? Of course recognizing yourself is likely familiar with something named “Cape Fear” where you’d, maybe, be fishing I mighten ought known better than to call on you for assisting me encouraging Malcolm.
(I’ve gotten myself into many “troubles” without asking an e-pal of mine for help.)
Just that I never considered encouraging a friend to stick to fly-fishing …
JK, Yes fishing is a sport if treated as such. It is also a soul settling activity that can be done alone with the Almighty and his creation or with a friend.
Yes I know the Cape Fear well as any Tarheel would. The region and the river by that name are loaded with history. Until 2015, I owned a water front property in the Historic town of Southport which is across the river from Bald Head Island. It is at this point where the river meets the Atlantic Ocean. I’ve fished the region since the early 1960s.
If your wife likes history at all, Malcolm, she might order two books by Brigitte Hamann who has written intelligently about Vienna: The Reluctant Empress (about Elizabeth, whose portrait is a ubiquitous presence in the city) and Hitler’s Vienna: A Dictator’s Apprenticeship. They’re both good Life and Times works that are accessible to the general reader.