“Quill Gordon! Come out from under there, you fool!” said my old friend, Milt Audette. “Hiding from Marge Feely again? Very unbecoming, you know. You’re in serious danger of compromising your standing with me, hiding under the porch from a seventy year-old woman.”
“Oh, yeah?” I countered. “Concealment is a dying art. It’s a manly art. Like that time you got burned, hiding behind your furnace at home.”
“I was hiding from my wife. That’s different. What has gotten into you?” Continue reading
I sometimes carry a pipe in the evening, puffing on some Captain Black when the mosquitoes are particularly aggressive. Some evenings are just not complete without a nice cigar but smoking no longer holds the allure it once did. There was a time, though, when (male) anglers were almost expected to smoke and the image of an angler with a pipe in his mouth became darn near iconic.
My old friend, Dr. Marcus Feely, recently spent four days here at Fish in a Barrel Pond. He will be back in August, with his wife and family, and again in September, with some lucky young receptionist from his office. Last week, however, he was here by himself.
I hate to say it, but when he is alone he gets lonely and if I stopped to chat every time he wanted to talk I would never get anything done.
I don’t exactly hide, but I can be difficult to find and I don’t exactly skulk, but when Doc Feely is here I do tend to skirt the edges a bit more than usual. My stealthiness is tested during his visits, especially when he stays in the Cahill camp, which I must pass on my way to inspect our overflow spillway. I got out there just fine on Tuesday, crawling on my belly beneath the kitchen window while Doc sat on the front porch, listening to the Red Sox game, but coming back, as I drew near I heard ice in a glass and froze.
Doc Feely was making a drink in the kitchen and I had to think fast. I could stay right where I was and wait, sauntering past after he toddled back out to the porch or I could find an alternate route and be on my merry way. Instead, I panicked when I heard the kitchen screen door squeak open and slap shut, followed by the approaching tinkle of ice in a drink.
I don’t remember the lie I must have told when Doc Feely asked what I was doing 35 feet up a pine tree, but I remember a few of the lies I tried when he insisted I come sit on the porch with him. They weren’t very good ones and I finally climbed down, figuring that if I was going to spend the next part of the afternoon listening to Doc prattle on I might as well do it on the porch with a drink in my hand instead of halfway up a pine, getting covered with sap. Continue reading
Some folks feel a reel is for nothing more than holding line, keeping it out of the way when it is not needed for the cast at hand. A simple gadget at a modest price is all they need. Others disagree and will spend as much as they can for all the prestige, societal standing and fancy finishes that money can buy.
Some folks feel a fly box is for nothing more than storing flies, keeping them handy even though we all know a large percentage of those flies will never touch water. Most any old box or container will do, as long as the price is close to zero. Others disagree, understanding things beyond our comprehension. Fortunately for them, this is fly fishing and manufacturers are more than happy to target those among us who don’t mind spending a little more.
That’s a Hardy De Luxe rod up there, priced at $67.50 (I’d like two, please), along with a monogrammed landing net ($4.50) and a nice collapsible canvas creel ($6.50). Throw in a six-compartment Wheatley fly box for less than five dollars and a fellow could be outfitted to hit the water for under a hundred bucks! Continue reading
My friend Eugene and his pal Purly decided last fall to see if they couldn’t make a couple of bucks taking advantage of the angling craze that is Tenkara, so I helped them introduce their own line of Hand Crafted Vermont Artisinal Tenkara Rods. We even went so far as to introduce a whole new system of angling, based on the art of “barking” squirrels, employing the principles of “concussive shock” to virtually guarantee fish (and lots of ’em!) nearly every time.
Initial responses were encouraging but it soon became apparent that the ranks of Tenkara practitioners had been infiltrated by one of the baser elements of society; a group that can take any activity, try to make it their own, and suck the fun for everyone right out of it. That’s right, I am referring to the purists. Continue reading
JUNE XX, 20XX
4:07 a.m.: Fell asleep last night dreaming of fishing for trout. Every cast on the mark, every retrieve bringing another fish to net. Adoring throngs lined the shore, waving handkerchiefs and shouting, “Huzzah, Quill Gordon, huzzah! Working where others come to play, huzzah! Such fine fly fishing always so close at hand and fishing privileges to boot! Huzzah, Quill Gordon, Huzzah!”
My casts shot out true — back-hand, under-hand and behind my back — and each one hooked a trout. As I motored past the main dock (where twenty beautiful women wearing bikinis and waders went positively bonkers over my patented dipsy-doodle, backwards-between-the-legs triple haul) the cheers changed to whistles and I began to wake up.
The whistles in my dream were in reality the songs of birds, serenading the arrival of first light. Very few people get to experience a real dawn chorus of songbirds any more. Thrushes and warblers, finches and wrens, robins, cat birds, chats, flickers, phoebes and sparrows joining together with dozens and dozens of their neighbors to sing in the morning with what most people interpret as melodious joy. In reality, the songs of birds are more likely to be challenges and threats — territorial exclamations tossed into the dawn — and, when taken that way, it is more an early morning cacophony than lovely dawn chorus.
Stupid noisy birds. Continue reading
A tree fell last week (see “If a Tree Falls …”) and I showed that I can still stick a saw with the best of them. Ken G (from Waterdog Journal) wondered what it is about men that makes them continue an action, even when they can clearly see it’s not a good idea.
Mike (from Mike’s Gone Fishin’ … Again) could relate and expressed his love of power equipment.
Paul Cowell (from Paul’s Angling Journal) reminded me to keep plenty of gas in the saw, in case of zombies, and my post began take on a rather masculine air — at least until a comment appeared from a girl.
Girls who like chainsaws are okay by me, especially when they also fish and can write like Erin Block does on her blog Mysteries Internal. She has a way with words I … I … well, you know. After you’re done with this you really ought to go read her piece “The Dancing Cast“.
I am not surprised when I see a woman with a chainsaw but there was a time when such a thing was unheard of.
Homelite started marketing their saws to sportsmen, back in the days when clearing campsites and building log shelters were still acceptable practices. Even at only 19 pounds, I can’t imagine wanting to lug a chainsaw along on a camping trip, unless I was heading into zombie habitat, and I’m not so sure that anyone — man or woman — would actually look forward to running the thing.
That was more than half a century ago. Women didn’t run chainsaws. That was work for a man. An outdoors man. The kind of man girls really go for.
It’s not often I am the only person on the pond.
When someone complains about the fishing and I say, “You should have been here on Tuesday!” they think I’m kidding or don’t believe me. Hatches of mayflies can come off as a mere trickle of bugs being chased by a couple of trout or the water can erupt with fish as a blizzard of faeries fills the air. Then, as if someone flipped a switch, the hatch will end and an angler passing by five minutes later won’t know it even happened.
This evening, I was right on time. Continue reading
(Knowing which day of the week it is has a different significance to me than it does to most other working stiffs. I must keep track, somewhere in the back of my tiny mind, but other than to check which camps need to be made ready by 4:00 p.m. I don’t really need to know. As far as most members of the Neverwas Nonesuch Angling Society are concerned, my work week begins the moment of their arrival, no matter the day, so I labor while they recreate and what everyone else knows as Friday has become just another day of making beds.)
Five light fixtures, a rake, a broom, a 5-foot chunk of 4x4, some rope, some stove wood, trash and laundry.
That is just my way of saying that, with the season underway at Fish in a Barrel Pond, Flashbacks can occur at any time.)
I must point out, now and then, that the Neverwas Nonesuch Angling Society and Fish in a Barrel Pond are figments of Quill Gordon’s imagination. I should further point out that Quill Gordon is also a figment. In other words, with the exception of gear reviews and nature writing, most of what appears in this blog is (mostly) fiction. The thing about fiction is that it must be believable and, with the good folks I associate with as an ever-flowing source of material and inspiration, if I were to share the stories of what I really see and hear you would think I was just making stuff up.
There are elements to certain stories we all can relate to. True or not, tales of young boys and large fish are near universal.
Even the goofiest anglers among us get lucky sometimes.
My friend Owl Jones wrote a post the other day about fishing with barbed vs. non-barbed hooks. Actually, it wasn’t much of a vs. since the title was “Why you should fish with barbs”.
Personally, I pinch down the barbs on my flies because 98% of the trout I catch are released and the hook comes out much easier if there is no barb. The less time spent removing the hook, the better. A barbless hook is also much easier to remove from an ear lobe but we won’t get into that again. It was an accident and I said I was sorry, okay? Continue reading
The View from Fish in a Barrel Pond 