The season is coming to an end here at Fish in a Barrel Pond. Four more weeks before I drain the water lines, close the cottages and take one of my legendary end-of-season naps but, in the meantime, the members of the Neverwas Nonesuch Angling Society are squeezing in as much time here as they can.
There are five weeks remaining in the season, here at Fish in a Barrel Pond, but summer is over. The leaves began turning early, the trees giving up on any hopes for rain and packing it in for the year. Strange sounds fill the nights as owls and coyotes prowl in the moonlight. The Pleiades are visible and I’m sure if I dragged my sorry butt out of bed at 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. I’d see Orion, too. The strings of geese passing overhead in the darkness surely do. Continue reading
With a fairly steady stream of anglers plying the waters of Fish in a Barrel Pond I find flies everywhere. I pick them up and if they are intact I add them to my boxes. If not, I keep them anyway. Mangled and broken, tattered and frayed, shredded and unwound, dropped, stepped on and left behind, it sometimes seems that I accumulate as many un-fishable flies as good ones. I find them in boats, on the ground in the parking lot and stuck in the nap of rugs at the doors of the camps. No fly lasts forever.
Most people wouldn’t give these worthless bits of feather, hair and thread a second look but I just can’t throw them away or leave them behind, rusting away to nothing.
The air is warm, the water is warm, and the fishing is, well, slow. During the day the trout are hunkered down, hanging around spring holes and the feeder streams where the little dribbles of cool water still flow in (boy oh boy, do we need rain). In the evening a few small pods of fish move around, sipping mayflies and other insects blown in by the warm breeze, but a summer’s worth of fishing pressure has made sneaking up on individual fish and groups of cruisers difficult. They’ve been educated and shy away from the boat. Long, accurate, delicate casts are the only way to hook up.
I can do long, I can do accurate, and I can do delicate but all three at once is asking a bit much so I spend a fair amount of time just sitting, watching and waiting. Here’s some of what I saw on the pond two nights ago:
[This is as good a time as any to note that there are six camps scattered along the shores of Fish in a Barrel Pond, each named after one legendary fly or another. They are, in no particular order, the Parmacheene Belle, Gray Ghost, Queen of the Waters, Cahill, Coachman and Mickey Finn (an acknowledging wink to the Neverwas Nonesuch Angling Society’s long tradition of fiery potations and mind-numbing concoctions). The names were chosen by a specially appointed committee charged with choosing from a list of suggestions submitted by the membership.
Certain members were against naming the camps when the issue came up for a vote, not so many years ago (one camp burned to the ground without a name, way back when — see “The Conflagration at Green Damselfly Cove”) and an attempt was made to turn the decision into one the membership would regret. If they had succeeded in stacking the committee in their favor I could very well have just introduced you to the Bitch Creek Nymph, Rat Face McDougal, Quack Doctor, Golden Monkey, Cow Dung and Ethel May.]
The sounds of the loon stir something primal, deep within all of us (see “Sadly Mistaken“), or at least they used to. More and more, as phone signals and broadband coverage improve, I see people mesmerized by the little boxes they carry, looking at each other and themselves but not what’s right in front of them or yakking away about things that, when you stop to really think about them, probably don’t merit a phone call in the first place and I am a bit concerned.
Never again do I want to hear a person say, “Can’t something be done to shut those birds up? I’m trying to talk here!”
I would, however, like very much to hear, again and again, “Quill, I dropped my phone off the dock. Can you fish it out for me?” because I would say “NO! Firstly, that ain’t fishin’ and lastly, I’m glad you dropped it. Might do you some good to be bored out of your frickin’ skull for a week, you spoiled little …” Continue reading
One hot August day, back before we knew computers could handle years beginning with “2”, Dr. Marcus Feely hooked the largest trout to ever come out of Fish in a Barrel Pond. The Neverwas Nonesuch Angling Society had never hung a fish on its walls, choosing not to emphasize trophies, but Dr. Feely insisted. He even paid for the mounting himself and bought the impressive brass plaque that hangs beneath it, engraved with his name, the date and the names of four men listed as witnesses. Sooner or later, whether you want him to or not, Doc Feely will tell you all about that fish. Continue reading
Dr. Marcus Feely (not his real name) is a proctologist, not because of anything like a proud family tradition, but because I think it makes him more amusing. His patients appreciate his slender hands and his practice is well established. The success of “Doc Feely’s Love Rub,” his own line of personal lubrication products, has allowed him to become a man of leisure. His office is open five hours a day, three days a week, 40 weeks a year.
Dr. Feely, along with thousands of other men, took up fly fishing after seeing the movie, “A River Runs Through It” and has since amassed an impressive arsenal of extremely valuable rods, reels, gadgets, do-dads and geegaws. He has traveled the world, fishing for trophies in dozens of countries and he stays in only the finest lodges, hiring only the best, highest-priced guides. I know because he shows me the photos and tells me the stories every chance he gets. Continue reading
It wasn’t long ago that the hillsides seemed afire and I missed fish after fish, standing slack-jawed in awe, bathed in radiant light. Continue reading
This story no longer lives here but there are just too many links to it for one man to strip out and those Error 404 Not Found notices aren’t very polite, so you are seeing this instead.
The short story “Teach a Man to Fish … ” has been converted to e-reader format and is now available for both Kindle and Nook as part of Quill Gordon’s Story Time, Tales of the Outdoors for Anglers and Others!
The Blurb:
“Invited to fish a secret, forbidden honey hole, Quill Gordon can’t resist. Rigging up his favorite antique rod, he envisions delicate casts to difficult fish, but when he arrives he finds that not everyone shares his definition of ‘sport’. Featuring Quill’s unusual friend, Eugene, and Eugene’s unusual fishing methods, an early version of this humorous short story first appeared on the blog The View from Fish in a Barrel Pond in September of 2009.”
The Links:
“Teach a Man to Fish … ” for Kindle (Amazon)
“Teach a Man to Fish … ” for Nook (Barnes & Noble)
The Cover
Certain aspects of fly fishing confound even those familiar with the sport and no one, especially the uninitiated, needs me mucking things up trying to explain them. A quick search of the internet will reveal plenty of sources to confuse you better than I ever could but there is one important concept that is pivotal to this tale – the waving of a rod, causing a length of line to go forward and back.
The forward part of the cast is generally not very dangerous except, indirectly, to the occasional fish. The backward portion, however, tends to be somewhat more problematic. Concentrating on what is in front of him, a fisherman will sometimes lose track of where his line and the sharp, pointy hook attached to it are going, often with unintended consequences.
Ron Hogan is such a fisherman and his sloppy back cast is chronic. Continue reading
The View from Fish in a Barrel Pond 