The water was stained — almost orange, really. And it had the troublesome look of coal mine drainage that so many streams in western Pennsylvania had at the time. “No way there are fish in there,” Mark said. We had parked off the interstate, at a long, wide pull off...
Sitting in the driver’s seat of the 4Runner, intense cold starts to penetrate the cabin just after I kill the engine. It’s seven degrees at seven a.m., and the sun is a half-hour removed from making any impact. The sound of silence replaces the hum of a V6 and...
** NOTE ** This is a story that I wrote and published back in 2014, in the first year of Troutbitten, on New Year's. I'm sitting this evening with my family, on that that same couch, six years later. And I've touched up this story from the archives to share it again....
** NOTE ** This story was originally published to Hatch Magazine in 2017. It is republished here, and it's one of my favorites It's Monday. It’s 35 degrees. And it's spitting rain. That combination of undesirables should be enough to give you plenty of space on the...
At thirteen years old, he has enough experience with the woods and water that I don’t think twice about dropping him off to fish for the evening, awaiting his call when he’s either fished out or it’s getting dark. When I pick him up, he’s full of excitement and stories, or he is calm and peaceful in a way that I don’t often see him. I let him be, in those times, and allow the experience for him to soak in, as he processes a return to the world after a long outing. Leaving the water to rejoin life is sometimes a hard turn.
Kids soak in the rhythms of nature. And later in life, maybe around twelve years old, that base of experience pays off . . .
I was in that stage of learning where I’d read more than I could put to use, while Rich had already fished more than he could ever find the words to tell.
. . . Stunned by the beauty of it all, I fell silent and let time creep along, until the slow motion whitewater of the falls mixed with the endless emerald shades reflecting in the softwater glides. An impenetrable canopy above stood guard against the angle of the sun and disguised the true time of day. This timeless valley was either day or night — with the details of everything in between insignificant . . .
Fishing with a good dog brings a novel joy to average moments. It’s the wet nose on your cheek in the middle of a bankside sit, the shared ham sandwich under dripping evergreen boughs while waiting out a soggy thunderstorm. It’s the simple companionship — the kind that comes without questions or conditions. Our bond with a good dog is pure friendship. It is, quite simply . . . love.
Will climbed up the mountain path and out of the canyon. He walked through the back door and into the old sunroom to sit at his grandfather’s wooden desk. He paused in thought and then put pencil to paper.
When he’d finished, he looked up through the sunroom glass toward the fading orange October daylight. Will walked to the porch and felt the cool stone under his feet as he scanned the landscape of his life.
The rooster crowed before dawn . . .
It started with a walk. When the short gravel-to-dirt trail melted into weeds and underbrush, I followed the narrowing path into the woods. And when that too ended beside the small river, I cut to the right and forged my own trail beside the water’s edge . . .
For every big name piece of water that’s overcrowded, there are hundreds of miles of trout water that are rarely seen by any angler. If ten percent of the water sees ninety percent of the fishermen, then be that small percentage angler who finds wide open places in a high percentage of water.