We're leaving for Wyoming on Friday.
That means I won't see the river for a few weeks.
By the time we get back, it'll be in its Summer space. 
Low, warm water. High grasses. Maybe some hibiscus.
I wanted to get out in it one last morning before we left.

The water's still high and muddy. 
The bass seem to be settled below rapids or along the shallow water along the banks. 
This one inhaled my slider and immediately took flight. 
​He was in only a foot of water, right along the bank. 

He fought hard down stream.
Jumped a few more times and after a long fight, I finally landed him. 
My personal best smallmouth bass - 21", 

I was lucky enough to have a good friend along to snap some photos. 
This river has some beautiful water and some beautiful fish. 
​Get out and enjoy it. 

Summer is here. 
Nettles are in full throttle. 
I walk through them when I'm looking up, paying no mind to my steps, 
tramping towards the next fence or bend in the stream, trying to avoid another groundhog hole. 
It's never intentional. Sometimes necessary. 
Cold water soothes the sting, but long after my legs are still mottled with the red scratches of their thin hairs. 

Though, just the other day, I thought I was in the middle of a field of nettles, 
mixed in with high grass, but soon realized it was mint. The breeze filled with the cracked leaves
and I rubbed some on my fingertips and on the fly I was casting. 

Another day, last week, I found myself walking
the banks of Penns, watching for the air
to fill with bugs. 

It was morning, which I tend to enjoy fishing
more than the evening. There's an anticipation
that can last an entire day in the morning. 
The evening offers a quick spike
in the denouement of the day. It's subtle and reassuring
but there's always a solemnity in it for me. 

​Looking up, I realize my shoulder just passed through a cobweb full of Green Drakes.

​They got caught as they were leaving their branches to drop eggs into the water late last night. 

​Some of their wings still twitched. 

​I promised Whitman a long walk today.
We explored a couple of ponds
​set back from the trail 
between a copse of trees and a cornfield. 

There, he could bark at the ducks
and I could throw a popper for bass. 

​












Check out the latest issue of Susquehanna Life Magazine for my essay on the Susquehanna River, "Bringing a River into Focus". 

We set off around 8:30 a.m. 
The clouds were coming in from the west over Brunner Island. 
The kayaks, smooth.
The water, muddy. 
The sun couldn't make it out of the east, 
let alone onto our shoulders. 

"You're gonna have wet asses"
Steve's uncle politely mentioned as we pushed off. 
"Eh," we shrugged. We've been getting advice from his uncles for years
and they're usually right and we usually ignore them. 
Just a few weeks ago, they had to tow Steve's boat back upstream
after the engine died,
after they carved a wooden plug so we wouldn't sink. 
Luckily, we were able to paddle hard enough to run into some trees
leaning out into the river and tie off so we didn't get washed downstream. 

Just a few minutes later and a about a hundred yards downstream, just past the first bend, 
it started to rain. 
There was a break in the clouds down past Shocks Mill Bridge
so we paddled. Didn't fish much. 
Past the Conoy
Past the White Cliffs,
Through the Haldeman Riffles 
skirting Ely and Pole Islands aiming for a big slow eddy where we pulled ashore. 

There, under a thick grove of river birch and maple, 
we had a morning snack and shot the shit for an hour
until the rain passed through.
We watched the water.

​I notched off a piece of skin, right at the base of my pointer finger, last night. 

Being stubborn when a simple snip would have done. 

This morning, I knew I had to get out and up into the woods. 

I left in the dark and hit the dirt roads just as my Stanley mug drained of coffee. 

Black winged caddis fluttered and flailed up stream.  Inches at a time.

The wind caught some rhododendron and for a second it sounded like 
barbed wire on aluminum foil. 

Most people are with family today for the holiday.  It's why I have this water to myself. 

Just a thought
​while I change flies, chew on some beef jerky, and let the cold limestone water, 
the hue of moss and mud, 
wash my wound clean. 

Like a Tibetan Buddhist shrine deep in the Himalayas, here stands a trash shrine along the banks of a trout stream in central Pennsylvania. For sure it's ugly, but it's the creation of all the mangled jumbled plastic bits that run down the currents of this stream. A reminder as you cast of our ceaseless over-consumption and apathy for our environment. 

It's hauntingly beautiful when the wind catches the used quart of oil bottle and it raps against the beheaded doll. Maybe we need more of these shrines since it's become so easy for us to flush away any semblance of pollution or swipe left when glint of a disturbing image catches your eye.  

Things to do before Tuesday's Snow Storm

Drink another cup of coffee. 
Build a fire and howl at the cold clear night. 

Cut down the tall grass that's browned thru the winter. 
Pick up large dead limbs taken down by the wind. 

Listen to these records: 
Loyalty - The Weather Station
Singles- Sun Ra
Helplessness Blues - Fleet Foxes
Superwolf - Superwolf

Get out the shovels. 
Go fishing. 

Its edge,
              I swear, 
will fall into the river.
Somehow the beavers keep it solid.
The water behind 
is murky with mud and bugs,
grasses and dead wood. 
It captures the moonlight
as mayflies hatch.
In the spring it flows.
In the summer it shrinks.
In the fall it fills with leaves.
In the winter it freezes. 

​The ingredients of a great weekend: 

Good friends
Cold water
A cabin in the woods
Snow
Wild brown trout

Winter in Pennsylvania

Hemlocks and pine 
The old rust of last season
wake up covered in snow,
Gone by mid day.
​
Stone flies,
hare's ears on ice. 
​
Killed a 6-point buck with the front end
of my car. Early Friday morning.

​"A clean patch of ground after a rain
an ancient pine half-covered with moss
such things appear before our eyes
but what we do with them isn't the same" 

​-Stonehouse 

There's a county up near where I live that is the pariah of the Susquehanna watershed. Whenever anyone has an incest  or meth joke to tell, they be sure to locate it there. It gets written off fairly quickly and regularly, even by neighboring politicians who make bureaucratic jokes at its expense. Most people see it from the interstate - a nice farm valley butting up against a slice of the Appalachians. In the winter, like today, the mountaintops have a glittering of frost on them, like grouse tracks traversing the ridge line. Most of the crevices and caverns aren't seen by anyone but the locals; I think they like to keep it that way. 

I took a drive up there today to explore two different watersheds. The day didn't warm until right before lunch, when the sun was halfway through. I started on some nice water in search of roaming brown trout. A few deep pockets and nice runs to check out for the spring, when water is up a bit more. I followed it up to it headwaters and found brook trout before cutting up and across the mountain down into a hemlock holler that cradled shavings of some riffles and runs. 

It was getting on into the afternoon by the time I crested the last ridge and headed down into Henry's Valley. The last creek turned out to be the most enjoyable. The stone were freer when they tumbled down this ravine and in return, they were rewarded with a plethora of cold springs. Ice shelves created pocket water and opaque slices up and downstream.  I found a frozen over beaver pond that will be great to fish in the late spring. 

It's been a slow fall of fishing for me. Points just didn't seem to connect throughout the last two months. I ended the summer of fantastic bass fishing and big Maine brook trout and landlocked salmon by falling quickly back into a deluge of work. I lost all my headspace that allowed me to explore in a pile of papers and lesson plans. So it goes. No complaining here. Sometimes it's just hard to not let your life become, as Jim Harrison mused, "the sloppy leftovers of your work." This is just to say that it's easy for me to trace my life over the lines of fishing and come up with a pretty dynamic and accurate portrait of how I've been living. The past few months have held very few points and the lines that were connected seemed short and didn't draw much more than a few incoherent shapes that look like they were traced left handed by a right handed person. Pretty symbolic of how I've been feeling. 

It's easy for us to measure our life by one or two points: relationships, work, hobbies, money, politics, things, whatever our focus goes to, and not take into account the whole landscape of what we've been living. Now that the leaves are mostly down and the sun is gone by 6, I'm left with some space for reflection. It's easier to see further when the trees are naked, but you have less time for it. Anyway, a few points have bolded themselves and have marked the last few months. One has been Jack Gilbert. Life seems to always go back to his words. There is one poem that I keep coming back to, rereading every other day - "I Imagine the Gods" . Two lines in particular. 

"Teach me mortality, frighten me
into the present, Help me to find 
the heft of these days." 

If ever there was a prayer that I should say every day, this is it. 
On a purely stylistic note, I absolutely love his choice of "heft" instead of "weight". Completely different connotations in this context. Weight holds us down, requires strength to maneuver. Whereas Heft has the duality of functioning as both a noun and verb, thereby not immediately attaching itself to its root meaning of weight, but also of action and active engagement in the moment. 

You can tell a lot about a person by their favorite Dylan record. If they don't have one, well, I'm not sure you even want to fish with them. I met Justin when I was taking my dog Whitman for a walk and Justin was walking back to his car after an evening of fly fishing on the river. I saw him with a fly rod so I struck up a conversation about the river and the fishing. We quickly discovered that we had a lot of common ground - he teaches writing at the college level, I teach high school English, he likes good music, I do to, and most importantly, we both like to fly fish. We quickly exchanged numbers and  set a time to head out to the river in the near future.

He just moved into the area, so I took him to a spot on the Susquehanna that I recently discovered. This is my first season fly fishing for bass and I'm now in full bronze mode.  These past few weeks have been terribly hot and humid - horrible weather for trout fishing. In past summers, I would have sulked and been agitated not being able to head out on the water. Realizing that I can have an incredible angling experience right outside of my house has been a gigantic blessing. Instead of driving all over the place looking for spring creeks and limestoners, I've been getting on my bike, riding up the rail-trail along the river, and drifting a crayfish pattern for beautiful bass.

​Talk turned to music once we were on the water and Dylan came up. I asked him what his favorite Dylan record was. "Time Out of Mind", he said. "Seriously? Mine too!". Yeah, I know, it's just a record, and really, who cares? But if you don't know that record or why it's one of Dylan's best, then that part of this anecdote will never make sense. Some day I'll do an entire post about the genius of that record. Either way, it's great to meet someone that understands the magnificence of that record. That record is everything that Dylan was meant to do as an artist. It quickly became obvious that we shared a lot of the same interests and that our lives had struck the same chords at some point or another. We hit it off and quickly started catching some really nice bass. ​

Over the past month and half, I've caught a ton of beautiful, healthy looking bass. Only one had a sore on it. I've also caught bass ranging from 8"-16". Justin recently landed a 20" and an 18". It's great to see the bass population seemingly doing well. They've been nailing dark poppers, crayfish patterns, and Clouser minnows; the deadly three when it comes to bass flies for me. If they are healthy and doing well, it also shows that the river has a lot of great things going on. If we don't acknowledge the vibrant ecosystem of the Susquehanna, we'll never care enough to keep it healthy and work to make it better. We aren't only catching really nice bass, but we're seeing a ton of egrets, herons, and bald eagles. Just the other day we stopped fishing to watch two bald eagles circle over use for a few minutes. Their nest must have been close. 

It has been a blast discovering this river. For my entire life it's always been in the periphery, but now it's coming into focus and I'm loving what I see. Get out there and enjoy the water. ​

I hadn't stepped foot in Maine for almost ten years. A lot has changed since then. I no longer bust my back doing trail work, I'm married, I've got a great dog, I fly fish. I've been antsy to get back to the North Woods for awhile now, to check out some places that I used to go, to explore some new ones, and to catch some nice brookies and landlocked salmon. I love the wildness that still exists in Maine. After living out west and visiting most of the lower 48, I feel that Maine is the wildest state down here, Alaska light some might say. I could easily see myself making it my home one day. There's a lot of poetry to be written up along those cedar-lined banks. 

​After spending a few days on the coast, we took a rainy day and headed up to the West Branch of the Penobscot. The only way to get there is the Golden Road, a rough logging road that, if you get through without a flat tire or getting run down by a logging truck, you should count yourself lucky. It was pouring down rain when we got to camp, so we heated up some hot dogs on our stove and quickly crawled into bed to nap off the weather. It worked. By the time we woke up, the rain had broke. I took that first evening to explore the water right outside of camp. 

I began fishing at the top of an eddy where a set of rapids came in, working the edges and the seams. The Penobscot is big water. Rafters use it all the time to send its Class 5 Rapids. I don't have much experience fishing water like this, so I took it small and fished the water right in front of me, trying to pick apart each current and little riffle. I eventually got into some nice wild brookies using a nymphing rig. While doing so, an old timer, Richard, came out to the river about 30 feet below me. He was throwing a big spoon in the rapid, but wasn't having any luck. With each fish I would land, we would just nod his head and give me a grunt. I took it as a good sign, like I was doing something right, something that he approved of. Eventually, I worked myself up to the top of the rapids and began nymphing a small eddy in the middle of two sets of pretty rough water. I landed my first landlocked salmon out of it, a small guy that took for me a wild ride. Landlocks are ferocious fish. They attack your fly and when hooked, will take you for runs up, down, and deep into the water. They'll jump a few feet out of the water, trying to shake that damn hook out. They're a blast. A large (at least for me) landlocked grabbed my hare's ear and took off down stream. I fought him for what seemed to be minutes (it wasn't), and eventually got him close to net. As I reached out to net him, I hear Richard yell, "Watch out for the eagle!" right as I come face to face with a large Bald Eagle swooping down, wings fully outstretched, talons out, trying to poach the salmon I'm about to land. Luckily, he misses by a few inches and flies away, down across the big eddy and perches himself at the top of a big pine, watching us for the rest of the night. It was enough to break the ice between Richard and I. We shared a good few minutes of amazed laughter and "Holy shits" before swapping stories about fishing and life in Maine. It was a great way to end my first night up in the North Woods. 

After a few days on the West Branch, we took another rainy morning and headed southwest to Lily Bay State Park, situated on Moosehead Lake. We took the Golden Road all the way to Kokadjo. 38 miles in 2 hours. It got rougher the further out we got, so we went a steady 15 mph. It was a great drive, though a bit stressful at times due to the road conditions. We did see a moose along the way. The road turns to pavement in Kokadjo so we decided to stop in at the general store to get a cup of coffee. As I pulled up, I could smell bacon wafting out of the windows. We got inside and immediately decided to get a second breakfast. It was one of the best breakfasts we've ever head. 

The Lower Magalloway is a beautiful tailwater just outside Rangeley, Maine. I only had a morning to fish, so I woke up wicked early and took a long hike to get into some good water. It was worth it. I was taking the skunk until I tied on a bugger with a nymph dropper and started stripping it up the banks of the river. I quickly got into some nice brookies and salmon. I worked my way downstream until I got to a really nice looking pool. I picked up a few more fish stripping the bugger and then, due to the time of the day, decided to throw on a nymph rig and see what I could pick up. I quickly got into some of the nicest, largest wild brook trout I've ever landed. They were all in the 12-14 inch range. The largest and last fish I pulled out of the pool was between 15 and 16 inches. Unfortunately he slipped out of the net before I could take a photo of him, But the old timer in hip boots on the other side of the pool gave me a thumbs up, so just ask him about it. I threw on a big stimulator and worked my way back to the car, picking up a handful of brookies and landlocks along the way. It was a great morning of fishing and I can't wait to go back. 

​We finished our trip with a few days in the White Mountains. After doing some hiking and checking out some falls, I fished some nice water in the National Forest. Using a 3 wt and a big stimulator, I was able to bring a few native brookies and some wild rainbows to hand. After fishing some really big water in Maine, fishing these wild mountain freestone streams was a nice way to clear the head and keep things simple. A good way to end the trip.

I really dig a spot that makes you feel like you're in a completely different place than where you woke up at. I took my good friend to a stream just out our backdoor that holds wild browns. This place requires some work to get to, which means very few people venture to it. As you drop into the ravine, the air immediately grows cooler and the susurrus of water drowns out all other noise. You are transported to a wildness that is extremely hard to find in the haze and congestion of this area. 

I know the angle of that photo is odd, but I wanted to capture the giant slab of a rock that is jutting out the side of the hill. If one was so inclined, a boulder pad and climbing shoes would open up an entire world of possibility throughout this area. 

My buddy brought quite a few nice fish to hand with a beetle smacked on the water. The fish are spooky and with the low water they were mostly found in fast riffles hugging boulders and rock shelves.

#8
Clambering up the Cold Mountain path,
The Cold Mountain trail goes on and on:
The long gorge choked with scree and boulders, 
The wide creek, the mist-blurred grass.
The moss is slippery, though there's been no rain
The pine sings, but there's no wind.
Who can leap the world's ties
And sit with me among the white clouds? 
​
- Han Shan, Cold Mountain Poems

I was last here two years ago. We came up to the Catskills mainly to christen our new-to-us pop-up camper and to take our dog, Whitman, on his first camping trip. Fishing was definitely at the top of my list of reasons to check this area out, but it wasn't the only one, therefore, I only got to check out a few of the hundreds of miles of great fishing up that way. This time around, we were just taking a couple of days to get out of the lazy summer routine we find ourselves falling into once school is out. We were also showing the ropes to a friend who recently decided to get back into camping. This is just to say that there is still a ton of stream I want to explore.

The water temperatures got too hot to fish come 8 a.m. each morning, so I only had a couple of hours of fishing each day. Luckily, our campsite was right along the river, which let me wake up, make a quick cup of coffee, let it cool while I put on my boots and rigged up, slam it down, and head out on the stream. The last time I was here, I wasn't tying any flies and was just getting into fly fishing. I went home with a few fish landed and a good memory, happy that I caught trout in the Catskills. This time around, I wanted to fish some of the holes I remembered from last time and see how I could do. Have I progressed at all? What have I learned? How is my approach different? What did I miss last time?

This is where the idea of revisiting water became so important to me. Like a notch on your walking stick that you carve after climbing a peak or venturing into a place that you've always wanted to, catching trout on a stream that you've already fished can act as a mark in time to show your progress as an angler. It's not always about the numbers or the size, seriously. I know that's said a lot, but it really isn't, only when it is. Having already fished this water, I wanted to see if I could catch more trout and hopefully some bigger ones on flies I tied. If I did that, then it would show me that I have grown in my craft of angling and in the art of stream approach.

So, did I? Yeah, I did, and it felt really damn good. I only got to fish a few hours each of the two mornings I was there, but that was enough time to land some really nice looking fish on flies I tied. The dry-dropper rig worked best, with a fat orange stimulator as my dry and a hare's ear or hot spot pheasant tail as my nymph. The brookies tended to really dig the stimulator while the browns scarfed up the nymph.

I was especially stoked when I landed this dude on a hare's ear nymph that I've been tying a lot lately (and catching a ton of fish on). He was sitting in a short, deep pool behind a large boulder sipping bugs as they flew by in the express lane seams created by a series of rocks laid out in the stream like three thumbs up. ​This brown trout is definitely one of the largest I've landed on a fly I've tied. Based on my net, he's between 17 and 18 inches. He took me up stream hard when I set the hook and I slowly worked him back down towards me and over to shallow water where I could net and quickly release him. This is one of those trout that will be a mark of a moment for me. One that I will go back to and replay in my head when it's cold and rainy outside. I'll venture back to that spot and work through my approach, how I added just a bit of weight to my line right before casting, where I let the fly drop so it would follow the inside of the seam and drop quickly into the pool right behind the boulder, how his take was subtle, but fierce at the same time, and how we played each other until we were released from that moment.

​

​It wasn't just a fly fishing trip, which is a nice change of pace for me. The last few camping trips I've gone on have been focused on the water (something that will never get old for me). This trip took us on a beautiful hike to a mountain pond and meandering around back roads, exploring the mountains. The Catskills are beautiful. Life is good when you can just get in the car and explore with good people.

I spur my horse through the wrecked town,
The wrecked town sinks my spirit. 
High, low, old parapet-walls
Big, small, the aging tombs. 
I waggle my shadow, all alone; 
Not even the crack of a shrinking coffin is heard. 
I pity all these ordinary bones, 
In the books of the Immortals they are nameless.
- Han Shan
#4, Cold Mountain Poems. 

Head for the mountains; my first inclination and instinct when my summer vacation starts. I packed some books, fly rods, good food and brew, and headed up to Potter County to get away from the constant murmur of traffic and work that seems to have taken a strong, subtle hold of life here in Lancaster County. 

The winds shot up Route 44, tracing along dark early spring clouds and short bursts of showers as I weaved my way down into the valley.  Within a half hour of pulling into my campsite, I was set up and back in the car to pick up some flies from the Kettle Creek Tackle Shop, one of my favorite fly shops. The owner is always eager to share some stories and knowledge and he has over 300 of his own, hand made fly rods for sale. One of these days I'm going to pick up one of his bamboo rods. One of these days.  I was on the water soon thereafter and quickly hooked into a mess of rainbows and native brook trout. 

I got up early the next day and hiked up into a beautiful wild area. I only scratched the surface of one of the more remote places in Pennsylvania, and am looking forward to taking a full day to fully explore the stream. 

The afternoon brought more rainbows. So many that I started trying new flies and different techniques, just to see what would happen. I was hoping for more wild fish, but I'll still take a 30-40 fish day over getting skunked every time.  Every time a few bugs started coming off the water, a burst of wind would tumble down the mountains and put them back down. A hare's ear variation that I tied up before the trip landed most of my fish. In fact, most of the fish I landed the entire trip were on flies I tied. A big improvement over the last time I was up here a year ago where I didn't even know how to dub a hook. 

That evening, after a killer supper of rotisserie chicken soft tacos, I ventured upstream and soon found myself in a thick haze of bugs - mayflies, some sulphurs, and even some slate drakes. This part of the stream held a lot more wild fish and browns. They were keyed in on Light Cahills and the evening quickly became one I'll remember for a long time, a memory that I'll go back to and re-fish when I'm lost in a daze of work and habit. One after the other, these trout would swoop up from their deep lies and hit my fly. Eventually, I realized that I didn't need to count fish anymore and instead fell into the upstream moment, looking for the next seam to throw my dry. I fished until dark and took a nice long stroll back to camp under a beautiful summer night sky. 

I settled at Cold Mountain long ago, 
Already it seems like years and years. 
Freely drifting, I prowl the woods and streams
And linger watching things themselves.
Men don't get this far into the mountains,
White clouds gather and billow. 
Thin grass does for a mattress,
The blue sky makes a good quilt. 
Happy with a stone underhead
Let heaven and earth go about their changes. 
- Han Shan 
#7, Cold Mountain Poems 

My buddy Scot came up to meet me early the next morning. We had a quick chat about the state of the world over some coffee and oatmeal, then headed out to a nice size trib teaming with wild browns and native brookies. Within the first run I fished, I hooked a double on a GW emerger and hare's ear. My first time ever catching two fish on both flies I was fishing. This was definitely one of my favorite streams I fished the entire trip. It's a classic mountain freestone with deep pools, fertile riffles, and plenty of room to make a back cast. When I head back up there later in the summer, I'm already planning on spending more time fishing it. 

To get over to Scot's camp, we weaved our way through the mountains bordering a Wild Area and down into the next valley over. I love these long dirt roads that traverse the mountains. It reminds me of being out west and driving through National Forest lands. You could spend a day just getting lost on them, stopping where it seems right, fishing for native brook trout. There's a freedom you only get where there are no stop signs or pavement and if you break down, your walking miles to get to a camp with a phone. 

That last few days of my trip were spent at Scot's camp with Kurt and Andy, helping them christen their new-to-them old-school-trailer that they rented (appropriately named Wild Boy Hops & Trout Camp). I am blessed to have good people in my life willing to share their places, their knowledge, their jokes (Kurt is the best joke teller I have ever met, a master of the lost oral tradition of making people laugh with great timing and a good pun), and cured meats (not a euphemism). We explored the valley, caught a ton of fish, sat by the fire while an old white skunk skulked around us, and ate great charcuterie. It was an awesome trip and just what I was looking for to start my summer. I explored a bunch of new water, landed over 100 fish (most on flies I tied), embraced some magnificent solitude, hung out with good friends, and had beautifully deep sleep each night. I can't wait to head back up there.   

The river sits deep in the western Maryland mountains. I met up with two good friends at Big Run State Park to camp, reconnect, and fly fish for a long weekend. We found a beautiful campsite along Big Run and spent most of the weekend exploring the watershed. 

The water was low and cold, but the fish were active once the sun hit the water. Long drifts slung with 3 weight rods was the rhythm of the weekend. We saw midges, caddis, and mayflies in the air and plenty of stonefly nymphs crawling under the rocks. 

This is Justin's first season fly fishing, so the first night was spent filling his fly boxes and showing him how to set up nymphing and dry-dropper rigs. He was a quick learner and landed himself some nice fish. It was my first experience teaching someone what I have learned and by Monday morning, I realized that I learned just as much by teaching  than by being out on the water alone. 

I hadn't seen Jeff in ten years and, with fly rods in hand, we quickly reconnected and fell right back into where left off the last time we had seen each other in the deep north Maine woods. He has a distinctive, independent style when it comes to fishing. Not a purist or an elitist, but one who fishes to be out on the water and in the moment. A true individual and an absolute blast to be on the water with.