Volume 2 Season 22, Epilogue

The great frontier tends to dominate our minds and, rightfully so, is the capstone of our season.  Of course this year was consistent, in that it was new and unpredictable- and the first time since our rookie outing that the weather got the best of us.  But as I pulled in the last rainbow trout today from my home waters- I realized that AK this year hadn't defined my season.  I guess my season has become so long, with so many regular outings, AK is just a grand chapter this year, but not the whole story.  Seems it just reinforced this seasons plot line.

One of the prized pictures in my home study- thanks to Pablo- is one of a young Jack Berry holding a monster Lahonton Cutthroat in the kitchen of our house on Welling way.  Just a little taller than the trout he is holding is an 8 or 9 year old Mickey, decked out in pajamas and grinning in amazement.  A premonition?  Well, I had some great early days chasing trout on Paradise Pond, right in the heart of Reno and taking a date to catch rainbows in a big pool below the substation on the Truckee.  Dad took us with Grandpa to cast to ocean run Shad on the Feather River and we regularly cast for bass in the dredger ponds of California or Lake Lahonton.  But as happens- basketball, girls and whatever else, soon pushed out the fishing and for many years I never took a rod in hand.  Almost fatefully, my last winter in Provo I think the stress of grad school and the looming weight of a professional career drove me back to the water.  I so distinctly remember one late March day, rising early and with a bottle of potzki's balls of fire, crawled up on a railroad bridge and took a couple of rainbows from a big deep pool on the lower section of the Provo River.  The morning chill, the calm solitude, the flowing water and the wriggling trout- I had found something I'd lost, something I needed.

A couple of years later, Pablo introduced me to the fly rod and I began scouting the waters of Appalachia.  It was slow and tedious, but just being in the woods was reward enough. Jones' Hole that year truly marked the beginning of the volume I'm still writing.  Neoprene waders in the July heat and huge, locally procured crane fly larva tied with rubber bands so as to be chewy- yielded for me a few rainbow trout at the base of a 400 foot red rock wall- a setting beyond description.

Today the conditions were challenging.  Fish weary from a thousand drifts and dwindling like August Sockeye, skies cold and windy- but it wasn't frustrating.  It wasn't endurance.  It wasn't opportunity lost.   Thoughtfully, peacefully I switched flies, wrestled greedy tree branches, laughed out loud at the refusals and long distance releases.  Made great casts and sloppy casts and even took a few memorable fish.

I believe this season has ended the volume begun on the railroad trusses over the Provo.  I don't need a counter, I don't need pictures of red striped behemoths, or tales of the backing.  I just need the water, a rod and a fly and I'm back in my pajamas in the kitchen on Welling Way, a big ole grin on my face.