homeward bound

Checklist:
Light hip waders.
Shorts with a zillion pockets.
Long-sleeved shirt to keep bugs off.
Wide-brimmed hat.
Bandanna.
Sunglasses.
Bug spray.
Bamboo fly rod.
5-weight reel w/weight-forward floating line.
Graphite fly rod.
4-weight reel w/ floating line.
Extra tipped and leader material.
Cheat sheet for tying said tippet to leader.
Box of Yankee flies.
Trout net.
Fly vest, fully equipped.
Fly-tying kit.

I'm good to go at this very moment, but there are still 14 days before the trip.
Now, this isn't a fishing trip. Just ask my bride. But it's not very often that we get back to New York State, and the rivers of the backyard of my youth.
I'll spend sometime with Tom up in the North Country. Last we talked, while getting skunked in 20-knot wind here on the South Carolina coast, he said he knew a couple of good places that he wanted to trek to. I can't wait. I bet his fly box is teeming with the correct bugs. Me? I have some old stuff and some new stuff, but after living a dozen years in the South, the Adams and Wulffs get dusty. I can still tie them, though. And I had better get started.
Before he North Country, I'll venture down to the end of the road where my Mom's house still stands, the gem of Riverview Parkway North. There at the end of the road, the dead end sign and a pile of dirt to keep the motorbikes out. Ironically, it only serves as an awesome little jump to kick-start the dirt-biking.
And there, through the pine and maple and pebbly trail, the sound of the Mohawk River lazily moving by.
Much of the river was polluted for years — garbage and chemicals — but it's been cleaned up a good deal, although I don't keep the fish, so it doesn't really matter in an eating-chemicals sort of way.
The Mohawk's checkered past notwithstanding, it's a pretty river. It's gentle, has it's shallows and there are fish in it. Trout, as a matter of fact. The best spot on the river is right at its source, the Lake Delta dam. Right below the dam, the trout can travel no farther. So they just pool up at the enormous concrete structure and grow fat and old.
Occasionally, they get caught.
Like the year before last when I corralled my brother-in-law, Bobby, to come out and fish at 6 a.m. I was using a 5-weight — a little seven-and-a-half footer when something probably in the 8-pound range grabbed my fly, tore my tippet and left me skunked before I could even think to let out the drag. I really don't think my hand was even remotely close to the reel.
I tried more and more to get that rascal to come back, but he had me figured out. So I moved to the other side and came home with a goose egg but a neat little story about how I should have brought the bigger gear.
Or develop more skills.
Live and learn.
There are several stops along the way on the Mohawk. It's astounding to me, however, that I rarely see any fishermen out on the water. Another year, I fished three spots that I used to fish as a boy. Some are pretty rapid and technical, and I've never done well. Others, well, they were decent, but the years and the development have caused a rise in the water's temperature, and that's that.
The important thing is that I'll be able to fish a couple of times in my home state, and if Providence smiles upon me and graces me with a fish, then it will be well worth the walk along the banks.
If not, well, it will still be worth it.
Which leads me to another point: No fisherman enjoys being skunked. I've read countless times about how fly fishermen don't wade into a river with expectations of actually catching fish.
I suppose some of that's true. It's merely reality: It's hard to find fish on some rivers, and even if you do, you can't just plunk in a worm on a hook and catch them.
Well, actually, you can. But you can't throw an imitation worm on the end of a fly hook and just expect the fish to be sold. The presentation, the equipment, the current, the temperature, the time of the day or year, the fish's disposition (yeah, there, I said it) and a number of other factors weigh heavily on whether Mr. Trout will play along.
That right there is the science of it. In other words, not only do you have to be a student of "the game," you have to commit yourself to being near the fish at the right time.
You hear of anglers waking at the crack of dawn, heading out to the river before the sun comes up, taking water temperature reads, scouting the hatches and going through a whole smattering of details before the fly is cast. And coming up with a goose egg.
Then you hear of the guy whose been fishing the river for years, and he strolls down at 11, just when you're packing it in, and he managers to land a 15-inch rainbow on the first cast with a dark Adams.
That's because he's a student of the river. He knows when the hatch is, what the trout eat, and what time of the day all this happens.
Dumb luck aside, you're not going to catch very many fish if you just show up at the river on your schedule and not the fish's.
The problem is that most of us have jobs, and can't simply duck out because there's a sulfur hatch on the east fork or camp out for three days to fish two or three elbows for 18 of the 24 hours each of the three days.
That's where guides come in. But not all of us have that luxury either.
So, what it's about is convincing the bride and those you are visiting that you'd love to get a couple of hours in on one of those streams of nostalgia and you'd be back definitely before lunch, or sooner.
Sometimes you make bargains to do this. In fact, you do whatever it takes.
But the hatch will be three hours after you leave the river to get back home by your bargained deadline. Or, worse, the hatch happens just as you're taking off your waders.
Chances are, it will rain very hard, or flood, or snow or someone will need to go to the hospital, God forbid, and there's that. You've packed up 2o pounds of gear just to haul it in the back of the SUV across 14 states.
And that's exactly why we say it's not about catching the fish; it's about getting out in the river, and nothing more.
And if there are no fish to be caught, it will still — it will always — be worth it.