Foreword

Fly-fishing is a full-time occupation. Or preoccupation. Increasingly, I find that when I’m not on the water, I’m thinking about being on the water, or about the water itself, what’s in it and what’s floating on it and how pure it is, or about the fish that might be living in it and how I might catch them. I talk with my friends—and with strangers, too—about rivers and fish and flies and rods and reels. I daydream about brooks and rivers, ponds and lakes and oceans. I read fly-fishing magazines and books and watch cable television shows about fly fishing. I go to club meetings and shows. I haunt tackle shops.

Having fly fishing on the brain is almost as good as doing it. Actually, sometimes it’s better. It hardly ever rains on my daydreams, and I rarely get skunked.

The musings in this book are the product of the past several years of my whimsical and undisciplined fly-fishing fantasies and fancies, as I remember the places I’ve been, the people I’ve met, the fish I’ve caught, and the fish I’ve failed to catch. These stories address the situations that make me happy, and angry, and sad, and philosophical, and frustrated.

Mostly happy.

Here there are stories about waters that have meant something to me—small places like Porcupine Brook, big places like the Atlantic Ocean, famous places like the Bighorn River, faraway places like Patagonia. There are stories about fish—particular fish like a tarpon I once met and a permit who met me halfway—and species of fish that especially interest me, like largemouth bass and striped bass and, of course, trout.

I write about casting and strategies, flies and bugs, equipment and rigs, and even how to catch fish, but I urge you not to take me too seriously on any of these subjects.

Here there are stories about people and stories inspired by people. They are all real people, although some, like my father and virtually all of his friends, and Dave Schuller and Don Cooper, are no longer with me. They are my regular partners Andy Gill and Marshall Dickman; my Maine men Jason Terry, Keith Wegener and Blaine Moores; and, my flyfishing, head-shrinking, poker-playing, world-traveling buddies Steven Cooper, Elliot Schildkrout, Jonathan Kolb and Randy Paulsen.

Many other angling companions, too: Dick Brown, Skip Rood, Art Currier, Tom Rosenbauer, Barry and Cathy Beck, Jay Cassell, Phil Caputo, Rod Cochran, Rip Cunningham, Art Scheck, John Likakis, Phil Monahan, Joe Healy, Nick Lyons, Datus Proper, Ted Williams, Will Ryan, Tom Fuller, Spence Conley, Phil and Shirley Craig, Fran Verdoliva, Jack Gartside, Cliff Hauptman, Jeff Christenson, Rick Boyer, Andy Warshaw, Steve Wight, Mike Blaisdell, Bill Sheik, Hans Carroll, Paul Koulouris, Tony Brown, John Brady, Joe Phillips, Sam Downing, Charles Poindexter, John Barr, Jim Smith, Ian James, T. L. Lauerman, Tom Murray, Jeremiah Gulley, Bob White, Gary McCown, Gary Pensinger.

And my father’s partners who always included me: Harold Blaisdell, Ed Zern, Corey Ford, Lee Wulff, Put Putnam, Frank Woolner, Gorham Cross, Joe Bates.

And guides Bill Rohrbacher, Bob Lamm, Fred Jennings, John Gulley, Wayne Reed, Bob Bergquist, Martin Carranza, Gustavo Southart, Taku, Pancho, Neale Streeks, Brant Oswald, Mike Lawson, Randy Savage, Chad Hamlin, Jared Powell, Ben Floyd, Bob McAdams, Harry Lane, Phil Farnsworth, Ed Taylor, Walter Ungermann, George Smith, Andrew Cummings, Nat Moody, Sammy Knowles, Mike Hintlian, Fran Verdoliva, John Sharkey, Tony Biski, Denise Barton, John Berry.

And, especially, my wife Vicki, and my kids Mike, Melissa and Sarah, and my stepsons Blake and Ben.

Of course, there are countless others whose paths I’ve crossed in more than half a century on the water, and who’ve crossed mine, who have inspired me to look at my fly-fishing passions from unexpected angles and have thus inspired me to write about it.

These are true stories, or essentially true. I am scrupulous about avoiding exaggeration and falsehood, but I don’t hesitate to reconstruct conversations or to condense experiences if doing so will enhance the Truth.

I have included here one short story in which fishing (but not fly fishing) is important, although not the point of it. Short stories are always about characters. If you want only Truth, you won’t hurt my feelings if you skip the story.

Most of the pieces in this book have been previously published. Many of them appeared on the back page of American Angler, where I write the “Reading the Currents” column every issue. Several others were first published in Gray’s Sporting Journal or Field & Stream. Editors Phil Monahan, James Babb, and Slaton White deserve all the credit—for their high standards, for their guidance, for their tolerance, and for their friendship, as well as for their uncanny editing.

Chickadee Farm

Hancock, New Hampshire

June 2006