Sept 24^th

Where are the little Menhaden? 

People are asking and wondering and are becoming alarmed.

It seems strange and ominous.

Global warming?

Overfishing?

A part of the natural cycle of Nature?

Time will give up the answers and worry will lead to more worry and that will feed fear and fear is debilitating.

If it is overfishing then the lack of fish will dry up the coffers of that fishery and they will not be able to fish for them because the money will not be there and so…

The stocks will recover and perhaps politics can change the regulations to protect them from overfishing because of the crisis.

If it is Global warming maybe some political genius can pass a law that will make people feel better and get him or herself elected president.

If it is one of the cycles of Nature then pay attention and do not fear.

No one gets off this planet alive.

The more things change the more they stay the same.

Nothing new under the sun.

                                                   A passage through time

There is a time when the remembrance of days gone by comes upon you strong and hard and whole.

It comes unannounced and it is on you, a passage through time with no time to prepare.  A photo from the time of youth or an old fly, a twisted hook, a piece of chenille in the bottom of a feather box and you are there. The scent of it is an absolute. The smell of the life you have lived and its treasure takes you and carries you to times that are not known and then are full and rich and flowing with vibrant meaning in an instant.   Since the beginning men have known this passage to their core.

Men have always told stories and still the stories they tell are old and new and change with the telling.  The boy who sees the sunset in a way that touches and kindles a fire in his soul knows the story of Icarius with no prerequisite.  This will never change.  We fishermen have stories that are old and new and change with the telling and are always fresh and full of meaning.  

The ancient elements were the Earth, the Wind and Fire and Water, interesting that these elements have an energy of transport and motion and are both fixed and fluid in their usefulness to man.  These elements are still functional but in a more primal metaphorical way that escapes notice by our modern cultures’ rational base of quantative comparison.. 

These are the elements of life’s reaching out to itself with meaning and are the tools, the language, of its unfolding revelation to the connectedness of all life and the knowledge of, and perhaps for some of us, the meaning of one’s place within the journey.

Once upon a time, when I was a just a small boy my father went fishing and came home late in the day with three beautiful fish. They were very special fish.  I knew they were and although at the time I did not know what they would mean to my life, they were in many ways the definer of it’s unfolding.  He told me their names.

I did not know at the time that fish had names nor did I know that they did not. That was the day I learned that for some people; fish have names. He told me about them, the fish with names and told me about the place where they lived and the name of the place he had gone to find them.  It was called Austin Farm Pond and had a brook and springs and nymphs and mosquito larvae and then he showed me flies and told me how he caught the rainbow and the native speckled trout and the brown and told me of peacock herl and stripping a quill to make a fly that would look just like a mosquito larvae.

A nymph is magic to a small boy and so is a rainbow and a native speckled trout and an Austin Farm Pond and brown trout and springs and brooks and an evening of stories with

Imagination to fill in the connections and the promise of mystery and adventure and a Giant who is your father to take you there and show you it all.

I know it is the earth the wind the fire and the water that is the binding story beneath it all.  And it is fathers and sons and men and the sharing of the lore through the passage of our living and sharing our stories and touching the mythical energies of our life’s passage.

The stories are all true in an elemental way and they are ours to tell and to savor and pass on.  They are the same and different for every one of us and there is no measuring their worth except in the place that they touch in the core of our being.

Aug 29^th, 08

This is the last tourist weekend.  Next week will be quite different along the ocean.

There will be a quit that descends.  It is real not imagined.  There will still be crowds from time to time and there will still be vacationers and there will be lots of boats and engine noise but there is a difference in the way the earth feels after Labor Day weekend.

It is a change of season, not of nature independent of man, but of man independent of nature.  Summer is over! School has started. Time to take the boat home and pack up and shut the vacation house down.   Christmas is coming, Halloween, Thanksgiving. Spring will be here before you know it and we can go fishing again.  That is the cultural norm; every year shuts down exactly the same way. 

I thank God year after year for the gift to fishermen of Labor Day.

The beaches will soon be open all night and the toll booths will shut down with plywood over their doors and windows.  The petty tyrants that cloak their selfish arrogance of illegal faux ownership of rights of way go home to their small worlds and the beach associations quiet their shrill nagging protests against the use of, “Their,” ocean by the general populace. 

Labor Day brings peace and right order back to the shoreline again.

Summer lingers for a while as evidenced by beach shack restaurants staying open on weekends for a month or two weeks and - thanks for a great season - signs start to appear.

In September people who like to run offshore start catching White marlin.

Tuna are here and in increasing numbers.

The tiny albacore that fly fishermen love start appearing in those places where they can be cast to from shore and actually caught from time to time and the stripers begin to stage for their migration and Labor day is in the forgotten zone of the, used to be, past.

Summer is still here and will be until the 21^st and the fishing is easy.

Like the songs says. “Summer time and the living is easy, fish are jumping and the …

Or so it seems in my memory.

This a great time of year to rent a cottage and bring your boat and do some serious fishing.

Labor Day is the beginning of the best time of the year for those of us who love the peace and quiet that arrives in the fall.

Aug 27^th 08

Last night was a beautiful night to fish.

The ocean was calm with a small swell rolling in.  The water was syrupy and gentle.  The waves were soft and easy and there were some fish in tight as one of the fellows caught two.  That is often the case one fisherman catches and the others cast.  The fish are there but not everyone can catch them.  That is the way it is and always has been.

Good fishermen, those who have the gift, always seem to be able to find a fish or two that are willing to take a fly cast and presented by them while others do not catch.  I wonder what separates those who can do it from those who can not.    I watch them fish and I can often tell by their body language if they are going to be successful.  Not always but often.  There are those times when everyone who is fishing will catch fish because the fish are aggressive and hungry and excited by an abundance of easy prey.  Those times make for lots of excitement and a carnival atmosphere and is the stuff of tall tales and magazine articles.  Fishing is not always this way and many people do not realize that fishing often takes a bit more time and thought and persistence and crosses over from an active entertainment scene to a contemplative energy.   Crowds gather to reap the harvest of excitement and easy fish and when it is over the crowds fade away. 

I enjoy both the contemplative and the excitement.

I like to watch crowds of anglers casting and catching and having a ball.

I like to watch them more than join in the fray but sometimes I do join in and that is a good thing to do.  You never know what is going to happen and that is worth the price of admission (being there) by itself.  You see the experts running up and down the beach chasing schools of fish as they pass by and you see families sitting around beach blankets and in chairs with their radio playing and kids running up and down the beach tossing out plugs with way too large spinning rods or way too small ones that are designer toys pink for girls or blue for boys with small close faced toy spinning reels.  Then there are the four wheelers with rods sticking out of their trucks at every conceivable angle with fish boxes bolted on to the front bumper and the bait fishermen with an array of sand spikes with five to ten rods baited with chunks of fish or clams resting on the bottom waiting for a hungry fish to gobble them up.

It is a fall festival of fishing.  In some ways it is like a weekend music festival with crowds moving and sitting and making noise in harmony with the degree of activity that is happening along the edge of the water.  A school of bluefish appear (the band) and the folks, young and old, go running down and cast their lures and bait and bobbers and secret special thingy’s with hope for making contact with the big one and the experts coolly walk down suppressing their excitement but secretly wanting to jump right in and grab a fish or two.  The kids will try that unless they are stopped and given a lecture about the dangers of bluefish biting their fingers off - in times to come they will dutifully pass on this, “Wisdom,” to their children

It is pretty hard to grab a fish,

Or a bird for that matter. 

September and October are wonderful months to be along the ocean front in the daytime.

The people who come to participate in the spectacle are just as interesting to watch as the fish. It is a migration of people from the cities and suburbs and inland rural areas to the ocean front and it happens every year right on time.  The RV folks come and camp out in all the places that are designated for them to come and camp and many of them follow the fish all the way down south moving weekly to keep up with the event as it moves along.  It is like the plains of Africa in a sense although not at all the same in terms of crossing rivers full of crocodiles and plains with hyenas and lions and other critters to numerous to mention.  It a migration of people and animals none the less with stops at McDonalds and gas stations and convenience stores all along the way.  Maine to Cape North Carolina, I would like to make that trip one fall stopping along the way and see people that I do not know and meeting them and getting to know them as I move along on a shared journey that has no purpose other than doing it at least once.  I have always stayed behind to enjoy and savor the sparkling November nights alone on the beach with the bass and hard core friends who I fish with once the crowds have moved on. 

Fall is almost here.

Time to make plans.

Date: October 23, 2003 at 01:15:26
From: ken, [pool-64-223-44-236.prov.east.verizon.net]
Subject: Re: Nuts are where you find them?

I do not know all the options or any of the finite answers. I am not looking for the answers any more. When I find an answer I know there are many more just under the surface. Many more, and always much more than I can hold. You may not agree. I do like finding out more ways to do and view the same things from different perspectives. I search, but more for the questions and those different perceptions that show different facets of the same situation. So I do think that I am a student  but not with the focused hope that I can acquire enough knowledge to succeed or to even be a contender but with the opposing hope that I can let go of all that I carry (nuts) so I can see and not be bound by what I do not need. I know where they are, some of those nuts of value that is, and I can go and touch one now and then when I need to but I do not have to possess them and carry them with me or feel like I need to show them to others unless there is a reason other than the one of being considered a knowledgeable fisherman by others. There are many reasons to show the nuts but never to those who fixate and are stopped short in their journey of discovery by being given gold mines before they know the value of gold.
It is not necessarily a good thing for a man to catch a world record striper on his first cast. He will be famous as a fisherman indeed but it may be the first and last time he ever fishes. “Knowledge puffs up,” it is said and it is true. I have been a victim of puffery both my own and others and I do not like it nor will I practice it knowingly and I like to prick it with a pin even if I have to stick myself.
At this stage I let others hold and know the answers. They are, all of them, correct and even though all answers may contradict each other from time to time; they are still correct at the proper time and circumstance because the truth contains all the possible answers and solutions. I do not follow the tides and the winds anymore.

Once upon a time I did, but now I just go.
But I do know the feel of that cold Northwest wind in Fall Hole and I know the feel of the large fish I have I caught there on light aired Northwesterly nights and some other strong Northwesterly nights and I prefer the Southwest for the softness and the magic of it under the headland and the rare Southeast is by far, when howling and screaming wild and the water in the hole reverses and goes to the north straight across from the south…. It is the wildest best by far and away- the very best. And never in my life on those wild nights have I seen anyone else unless they were with me there in thirty-five years but before that I did.
I do not do what the others do as I do not care to and there is no need to.
At this stage in my fishing I like it unplanned and then it is always an adventure and every night is beautiful and glorious whether it is rain or snow or warm or windy and any direction and tide is fine and a November night with the Northeast wrack sailing by close overhead with a full moon shining behind …. It can mesmerize you and hold you in your tracks, gazing up, walking up the cobble beach at the Sheep Pen in a timeless mosey.

When I need to catch a large fish for someone who asks for one - I go with the purpose of catching one.
I don’t just fish for the fun of catching them anymore. Catch and release is not a license to catch as many fish as possible to me and it is not an elevated stance at all but one that disregards way too much that is questionable at its root to suit me. I have given that up, too many unnecessary holes in the mouths of fish for me to contribute to that anymore. I will fish to catch numbers of fish to learn something but body counts for no purpose bother me.
I have come to like fish the way people like birds and animals and I enjoy watching them and I care about their well-being. I think it is good to develop a love for animals you care about and are familiar with and fish are marvelous animals and the more you learn about them and see them in their natural world the more amazing they become to you. To me a menhaden is an incredible animal and that is only because I have learned more about them then the idea that they are to be considered - just “Bait.” They are fish and they are fascinating and worth watching and studying and finding out about. The way they move is spellbinding.

As I get older I do not want to hurt fish other than to feed someone or to learn something or to help some one become a better fisherman. I believe these positions are clean ethically. I do more looking and observing and seeing and trying to help others and sharing what ever I can, so that some can enjoy fishing in deeper, closer to nature ways and perhaps get more out of the experience of fishing than just the catching if they choose to.

I love to fish more now that my relationship with nature has become larger than when catching fish in smart and familiar ways was of prime importance to me. I am glad that I let the nut go and was not taken prisoner by holding on to it.

I am thinking about how monkeys once were caught. The hunters would take a jar with a wide neck and put a sizable nut inside of it. Then they would tie the jar to a big tree with a long rope and wait. The monkey would come along and put its hand in the jar and grab hold of the nut. When he did that the hunter/s would make an appearance and the monkey would bolt only to come up short and have its hand stuck in the jar. The hunters would come closer and closer either with clubs or with nets and the monkey would screech and howl and jump and scream but he would not let that nut go. His fist held him prisoner. All he had to do was open his hand and he could run and escape the hunter.

I am sure that he had his reasons for holding on to the nut. The only problem is those reasons cost him dearly. He lost his freedom to either a pot or a cage. Sometimes we have a nut that we know is good and we will not let it go and because of that - year after year and season after season the year comes and goes and we have our nut and never let it go and never know what changes outside of our vision come and go and how things evolve and we never see the things we may hear about with our own eyes that do work and we do not make room for that growth. We do have our nut and it is good.

There is a big world out there once we let go of the nut. A different world a world other than the world of the nut. The nut will still be there if we let it go and when we come back to the familiar and the safe we can pick it up and perhaps for the first time let it go and…. pick it up when we need it and smile at all that we have learned. Just my opinion.

Aug 11^th 08.

Last week I went west to Ct. which I have been finding to be a wonderful place.

It is full of rivers.  Lots of them and they are quite beautiful and rich.

I have never been a camper, not because I do not like it but because I was not exposed to it at all in my life.  I have always stayed in cabins or motels or at friends homes and camping never crossed my path until earlier this month.  I went to a music festival to see my son play with a band in Hudson NY and I had a great time.  It rained and the wind blew and there was a tremendous thunderstorm which lingered all night and lit up the sky over my head.  I loved it.  It was incredible and satisfying to be there present to a storm and in the middle of it in a way that I had not experienced before. 

It changed me somehow and I decided to try camping for myself so I made a reservation at the campground at the Farming ton river in Ct and. Went.  I thought I would be fishing from dawn till dusk and doing all the fishing things that I could think of continuously.

No phone, no internet no people to interact with.  Alone by a river with a tent and a stove and my fishing stuff and trout and blue winged olives and other native critters and just me with nothing that I had to do or figure out or be aware of at all.

I looked at the river and got my ice and firewood and set up the camp and put all my gear on the picnic table and wandered up and down the paths along the river behind the campsite and saw lots of rising fish and few people and felt quite content in a new way.

I had a book that I was going to read and …

I did not do much at all.

I do not know why it happened but I found myself content to just be there near the river and I did not fish very much at all but I was filled with satisfaction just because I was there and not somewhere else.  I took little rides and couldn’t wait to get back to camp.

I looked at pools and places along the river I had not seen before and stopped the car and walked along banks that were a bit out of the way and I did not bring any fishing gear with me at all.  I just walked and looked and listened and saw mushrooms and birds and

Allowed my mind to wander and wonder and sat on rocks and noticed flowers growing along the banks and watched the water striders and corixia bugs whirling and hunting on the surface of the pools and eddies and time was not a factor, it all seemed timeless somehow.   

I fished the first evening for about an hour and that was it.  The second day the river was full of rising fish and I liked that but I did not fish for them.

I went through my flies and re-arranged them and set them in order.  It took me hours and hours and that too seemed timeless. I have lots of flies from long ago and I got to see and touch and arrange them.  I re-discovered many tiny flies that I had no recollection of until I saw them with little strands of leader still tied to their eyes and realized that I fished with these flies in a past life when I was much younger and then I could see well enough to tie them on easily and in this reverie of physical evidence I found a fly that I remembered very well.

Seeing it right there in front of me for the first time in over thirty years was pungent.

IT brought me back to Aug 13^th many years ago.  I remember the date because it was the first time I fished after my father died. There was a time in my life when I did not fish and it happened before my dad died and lasted for several years afterwards.  It was a strange time in my life.

That day was a Sunday afternoon and I was sitting in my kitchen futzing around getting on my wife’s nerves and she said, “Why don’t you go fishing.”?  That was a memorable event as she did not like fishing and it was like a thunderclap in my spirit. I remember being stunned and the next thing I remember is driving to a trout stream with my flies and coming down a hill and starting to lose control of the vehicle and hearing a voice yell “Kenney,” as loud as any voice I have ever heard and it startled me back into being present to my driving and it was my fathers voice.

That shook me and I could not disregard it as imagination.  I knew and still know that somehow he crossed the divide and reached out and rescued me from disaster.

I went to a place on the river that we had often fished when I was a boy and felt all those feeling that came up that were tied to memories of the place and him.

I waded far down the river in a wide deep pool that had very little current and very wary fish.

I waded right to the top of my waders on tip toes and moved very slowly and then I saw a tiny rise under some bushes with a tiny space that I could get a fly into if I cast accurately and perfectly and the spot was a few inches long, a tiny indention in the bank.

I got in range and started to watch the fish.  HE was eating back dancers and some other small flies, tiny midges and he was content sipping and feeding at will but very sedately.  The rises looked like tiny raindrops.

I remember that I tried many flies and did not put the fish down and then I tied on a tiny size 36 gold hooked midge with a whitish body and a brown hackle and started to cast over him continuously.  I remember that I made many casts and frequent ones for a very long period of time.  Then he rose and I set the hook and he was on.

He fought very well and was a big brown trout by the standards of those times, He was fat and beautiful and I landed him and I was pleased with my success.

I felt my father smile.

I thanked him and knew that my time of not fishing was over.

That little fly got put away in my jumble of fly boxes and was not seen again until the day I went camping by myself last week.

It is a magical fly.

I know where it is now.

Thank you Dad for giving me fishing from your fisherman’s heart.

Amen.

July 31^st 08

When I opened the site this morning I was surprised to see a new one up there.  Thanks Sean for all your effort and good work.  I have hopes for an easier site to work with and one that is more user friendly and easy to edit and change.  I am sure that this one will be exactly that.

I plan to create a separate site connected to this one that will have more in depth articles and video’s showing many hard to describe techniques like mending in the surf and deep

drift fishing both with salt water flies and with fresh.  I hope to do some steelhead trips this coming fall and winter and perhaps make some video’s that are helpful to others who want to try that kind of fishing for themselves rather than ones focused on catching fish alone. A bit of how too mixed with practical approaches to the situations we all run across. I am wide open to suggestions by the way and appreciate all ideas however small or large.  Perhaps this addition to the mix will be a password site - I am not sure right now but I would like to keep it free of emotional debris.

I am pleased that the store is up and working and with the rod orders that many of you have made.  I plan on designing several more new rods in the future for both fresh and salt based on practical fishing needs and I appreciate all of your support.  It has been soothing to my spirit to know that people are willing to look at old problems with new insights to find solutions that are outside of the box of what everybody says or does.   That is where the good ideas are always found not through mimicking the Status Quo but by discovering them and trying them out for yourself. 

An aside… not a rant.

I have been reading European web sites of late and I find them to be quite different in terms of content from the ones we have here.  They are fishermen focused not manufacturer focused and the innovations and new ideas are always from the fishermen themselves. I was reading one from Wales and I was surprised by one paragraph that was a part of a story about Spanish nymphing techniques.  It said words to this effect.

(Unlike the Americans we are not led by what is sold in the shops or by what the manufactures put out for us to buy.) I found that interesting to read coming from a source so far away because it does put a focus on what we do here to a large extent, which is look to the manufactures to tell us what flies to use, what rods to use, how to cast and where to go and what techniques are popular and must be used. We look to the experts.

He went on to say that most of the flies being used over there and he includes all of Europe, are not sold at all in the shops and are designed and created outside of the industry by fishermen themselves

I find that to be true here in New England also.  The best flies are not manufactured overseas in mass and sold in the fly shops. The popular ones are but not the cutting edge ones.  It is a catch 22 situation.   People trust that the manufacturers are giving them the very best choices that money can buy and they are right.  They are but the innovation in fly design is always grass roots in origin and based on practical solutions to particular fishing problems not general solutions or generic solutions.  Manufacturers cannot be that diverse or specific and so must sell what is popular of lose money.  The whole product line of the fly fishing industry in America is manufacturer generated as of now and that is one of the reasons why everything is so similar in all the shops around the country. I find it interesting to be aware that the flies one chooses to use; if based solely on what everybody says are the best flies are in fact the only ones that are sold in shops.  There is no room for new ideas in that scenario.  Only the flies that get the most press in the advertisements will be carried because they are the ones people will buy.  Same is true with rods and sundries.  This if fine and normal - but - it is interesting to think about why certain flies are popular from a marketing perspective alone - if you want to think about it at all.   New ideas are not welcomed by the industry if they upset the fixed and predictable mass marketing apple cart.  They have to move the stock in house or …Give it away.   They stock what already sells.  Why take a risk if you are controlling the market already?  It just doesn’t make good business sense to take risks with no certain monetary outcome.. It is timid at best and opposes and suppresses new innovative ideas being offered in the marketplace at worst. There is a fundamental truth in what the Europeans are saying about the way things work over here.  I don’t like hearing it but I recognize it even so.

I like what the grass roots fishermen come up with.  I am always amazed by how creative and innovative they are when faced with difficult fish. I like the internet because it gives the ordinary fisherman a forum to express ideas and it is not controlled by the internet police. It is a boon to all and I hope it continues to grow in importance as it truly is of the fisherman by the fisherman and for the fisherman and - that is a good idea.

Freedom of expression - an American birthright.

Went trout fishing again to the Farmington. Stayed with Paul Rossman again and fished with the same two fellows I fished with the last time and Denise.

Went way down river the fist day and had a very good time fishing for trout in the middle of July in the daytime and there were no lack of trout. The water was cool even so far downstream fro the trout management area and there was more than enough water flowing to make it interesting and fun. I had thought of fishing the rips at Watch hill this weekend in my boat but decided to take a bus-man’s holiday and enjoy the woods and sweet water and I had a new rod I designed and wanted to try it out and see what it could do. I designed it to be able to cast down to a three weight so I could offer a Salmo Sax in a lighter version that would be suitable for trout and a few other things and it is that and more.

I wanted to see how it would fare as a nymph rod as it is ten and a half feet and has the length and flex to handle long lines and cast to the far side of the river if needed. It casts short and medium and long and loads with a three weight line to boot! It also handles a nine wt line with ease and holds it high in the air with no effort and I have been catching stripers with it for about three weeks. This was its debut with trout and deep nymphing techniques. I am very pleased and am going to do a bit of tweaking but I won’t have to do much. Change a guide here and there and redesign a new reel seat for the fresh water version. I won’t have it ready to sell for a while maybe close to a year but hopefully less. The other thing it does is handle line beyond my hopes and if you have to make a long cast in glass water with a tiny dry it does it with very little effort at all. Long leaders straighten right out. The range is amazing and it also fishes short. I am a bit excited about it.

So, enough about that rod. Except for this. A three to a nine and effortless with both ends and everything in between. 

Where we fished was rocky and cold and slippery as one can imagine. Tough wading and greased cannonballs everywhere and long hikes but well worth the effort. No people either where we fished the first day or that is no small thing. What a great trout river the Farmington actually is over its whole length or at least as far down stream from the management area that I have seen. That is about twenty five miles down maybe a little less. What a gem.

Last night we fished into the darkness up above the management area for fussy trout in glassy water. They were rising in good numbers and were on something that I never discovered but I have a few ideas. I had two nudges and one take but I was dozing and never struck. There were Light Cahill’s hatching and Denise was watching the cedar wax wings eat every one as they left the surface and the swallows were homing in on them both in the air and on the surface. She rescued a couple and walked them to the shore and placed them on the leaves of trees and wished them luck.

I love the not knowing that comes with trout fishing and the challenge of wanting to come back and figure it out the next day or the next week or the next month and I wish that, that river ran through my back yard. I have met a few people that moved there so that it would run through their back yard and I envy them. For many years now I have been saying that I was not old enough yet to enjoy trout fishing the way I would like to do it and have stuck mostly to the salt for about twenty of those years. I am old enough now and I am happy I am still around to savor the real fishing challenges that it offers.
Fly fishing for trout is a perfect way to fly fish.

I am so grateful to may dad for initiating me into it at such a young age. I am also grateful to Denise for the Beaverkill the Esopus, the West branch and the East Branch of the Delaware and the Housatonic and the Willowemoc and the Farmington and soon the Ausable and the upper Conn. 

And, I hope I have enough years left to add many more incredible rivers to this list.

When you have fished a long, long time you notice that your old haunts come back to haunt you. Places and times and memories of fish and ways of fishing that you have not done in decades return and simmer in your unconscious wait to re-emerge again.

Giant tuna you have caught and the fights and the excitement of the first one. Marlin lighting up and crashing a bait so close to the stern that you could touch it if you thought of it at the time but you never do. First trout on a nymph when you were six or seven. First striper on a fly rod when you were with your dad in the boat at five.

Casting a big swimming plug with an eel skin on it and seeing an explosion the size of a Volkswagen beetle engulf it and the feel of that fist run when you were nine or ten.

Endless memories of fishing all night in the bay with your dad for days on end eating crackers and peanut butter and drinking Nehi non-carbonated orange soda and a sandwich now and then. Fishing in the canoe all night for largemouth bass with jitterbugs and crazy crawlers. Abbot Run and the blizzard hatches of light Cahill’s all through May and bluefish at Barrington beach every day all summer long.
Fishing the Hex hatch on the Wood River for years and years all alone and never seeing a soul there after the middle of May. Trolling Flatfish lures for trout on opening day in Wallum Lake and drinking hot chocolate out of a thermos and sandwiches that my mom made. Living at the beach all summer every summer and having my own outboard boat when I was old enough. Eleven years old was old enough then.

Riding my bike with a tackle box and waders and two rods and…
I do not know how I managed to do that all the time but I did.
Stalking Grasshoppers and catching them every time.
Watching a family of mice move along a mouse track with the mother carrying the little ones on her back.
Friends.

So much to remember and remember I do.

Life is sweet.

It has been over a month since I had time to sit and write. It has been frenetic and full.
Been lots of places and fished with lots of people. Sean Ransom has been working on the web site and a new one will be up soon, easier to work with and update and post pictures and all the rest of the modern improvements. 

Stripers are everywhere and people are catching them. The Atlantic Herring are on the move out of the harbors and the blues and the bass are paying close attention. 
The ocean front is fishing well and there are bass in the waves. The upper regions of the salt rivers are full of fish and some of the ponds are a little slow unless you know where to look. The crabs have probably done the mating thing already and the little 1/8 to 1/ 4” tiny ones will be around soon and the bass will be feeding on them making everyone crazy. The ocean is an amazing place.

I have been fishing a lot with three weights and have had no problems landing fish quickly. It is actually more in keeping with the size of school bass to catch them on lighter gear and learn how to fight fish yourself rather than horsing them in with heavier equipment if conditions allow for their use. People who dismiss light gear as too light and hard on the fish could learn how to fight fish rather than grouse about it. It is the person’s lack of fish fighting skill that makes the fight last too long not the equipment in almost every case. Five weights are great striper rods. They are strong enough to cast nine weight lines or heavier easily and can handle school bass and even larger fish with grace and the fish is not overpowered. It is a fair fight because it is balanced. 
Sometime you lose. 
That can be a good thing.

It is summer and a great time to fish for stripers that are not moving around but hanging out at home. We are in between moons so many places with soft current will be holding fish that are focused on bait that is staging to move on the next moon. This is normal and occurs near and on the half moons every month. The bait changes but the pattern is the same if you can see it and work with it. Not everyone can but some can and do it with great success. There are squid around and sand eels and the silversides are moving down from the upper bay. Lots going on and we have big menhaden to keep the bigger fish content to graze on the schools and hang out for an extended time. For some people the fishing is easy, bait guys are having a ball.

There are fish to be caught by fly rodders along the rocky shorelines and the cliffs in Newport and Narragansett. This is a great time to try that as the fish are there and willing and they are close and content to stay there for a while.

Fish the little pockets of white water from the waves and the small rip currents that flow out between the rocks. It is much like fishing in pocket water in a trout river. Short casts and short swings through the places where a fish may be hunting for its next meal whether that is a baitfish, a shrimp or a little lobster or crab. Fish along the rocks are opportunists at this time of the year. There are some very big fish in the rocks right now.
In years past the month of July was always a time to fish the beaches and rocks along the ocean front. The bay is great and full of fish but July was a time to explore the open surf again and poke along finding little pods of fish and sometime vast numbers of them that were unmolested and wouldn’t be until September came and the hoards of surf fishermen arrived. The fish are there but few people go and fish for them. I have caught more weakfish doing that along the sand beaches at night the last few years than in any other way.

It is a great time to find perfect solitude along the shore when fishing