Gingrich

"A trout is a moment of beauty known only to those who seek it."
- Arnold Gingrich

For Betters or for Worse

The first time I met legendary fly-fisherman, rod builder, fly tier and author Fran Betters, I was 20 years old and didn’t know a Wulff from a caddis. I also didn’t know that the west branch of the Ausable River in Wilmington, N.Y., or more specifically the trophy water stretch near Fran’s Adirondack Sport Shop, would come back to haunt me some 22 years later.
Yet here I am.
I spent my college years at Plattsburgh State studying journalism, environmental conservation and the rivers, trails, peaks and history of the Adirondack Park, a park so vast you could fit Yellowstone, Yosemite, the Grand Canyon and Glacier National parks into it and still have room left over. This place is familiar, if not sacred, to me.
Needless to say, perhaps, the park’s trout streams are also legendary, and none more so than the Ausable, which bounds along in two branches as it rushes its way into Lake Champlain nearly 40 miles east and over boulders so big and gorges so steep that only God himself could have created them.
Anyone who’s fought a brown trout in the blue ribbon waters or seen Fran cast a fly into a paper cup is probably a believer, too.
Some 23 years later, here I watch the mighty Ausable once more. June has given way to July, and the dry season has begun. The river’s level is by no stretch low, but the whitewater-adrenaline kayakers have long left the rapids brought on by the High Peaks’ snowmelt and spring rains.
Surprisingly, I don’t have a fly rod in my hand. Instead, I have a thought in my mind as my wife and two boys peer over the roadside from inside my slow-moving SUV up a 10 percent grade.
Could I do this again?

###

After a ham sandwich at The Evening Hatch, the restaurant attached to Adirondack Sport Shop, I chat with the eatery’s new owner, John. I ask him how business is, how long he’s run the joint and what the future looks like. Nine months in, he’s optimistic. But there is a little hesitation, because his landlord, Fran Betters himself, is approaching the end of his life. His heart is giving out.
I’d known this: It’s the reason I’m here, in a peripheral way. See, Fran’s selling his shop, and, although it still sounds a million miles away, I’m interested in buying it.
That is, me and just about everyone with a connection to this place.
Now, those of you who know me know I don’t have boatloads of venture capital, and I’m leagues away from being a trust-funder. But, as the saying goes, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
I walk back to the fly shop through a french door where Fran, now in his late 70s, occupies a chair at the opposite end, but stays still sort of in the middle of it all.
He doesn’t look too good. The first indicator is that he is half resting on a bed pillow, sort of propped up, and the second is that he is breathing somewhat laboriously through a tube. He also doesn’t look up from his fly-tying bench as I approach, but I pick up my oldest son, Kostyn, just a smattering over two years old, and tell him to say hello to Mr. Betters, thinking it will bring a smile to the old fisherman’s face.
It works. But I’m more than a bit taken aback by Fran’s condition. Admittedly, I choke. I want to tell him what an influence he was as a fisherman and a writer, and that, although he won’t remember me watching over his shoulder as he expertly tied his famed Ausable Wulff pattern or signed a copy of his book, “Flyfishing in the Adirondacks,” he is a giant. And although my son probably won’t remember this day either, at least he can say he met the man.
In the end, that’s good enough for me. Fran looks up from his chair, half-smiles and says, “I bet you’re going to be a fisherman someday,” or something along those lines, I don’t quite remember. It’s a nice gesture. I keep thinking that this might be the last time I come back to his shop, at least with him sitting here.

###

As the story goes, when Fran was a young man with dreams of becoming an engineer, he was in a horrific car accident and suffered a broken back and some other bones. He was lucky to be alive let alone walk, and he was told he probably wouldn’t live into his 40s. In the mid ‘6os, he traded cut logs for the property that his former shop sat on -- less than a half mile up Route 86 from where the current shop is. For nearly 50 years, he has continued to inspire, teach and motivate thousands of fishermen -- like me -- as they plied the waters of the Ausable, Saranac and Bouquet, or some other waters around the planet.
He’s a master fly tier, and at least two of his patters, the Haystack and the Ausable Wulff made him world famous. Field & Stream magazine named his Wulff a top 10 pattern of all-time. That’s saying something in a fly fishing world that has literally thousands of patterns and variations, and more coming every day.
Fran likes to share his knowledge, holding clinics, classes, writing guides and books and just chatting casually from his helm in the fly shop. That’s where my education began. I flipped through a book in his shop one day after a unsuccessful jaunt on the river, and I decided I’d buy it. The author, after all, was sitting right there. The woman behind the counter told me he might just sign it for me, as if to help make the sale. He did. Then I asked about the river and the fly patterns. When I left, I had with me more than a few famous flies and a signed book; I had inspiration and a bit of knowledge I knew even then I probably would have to grow into.
It’s probably worth noting that I didn’t leave Plattsburgh that summer to go home like most of the other students did. Stupidly, I was married young, and I took a lot of the mornings I didn’t have to work and headed into the mountains to hone my fly fishing skills. Little did I know that learning to fish in the Ausable was at least as stupid as getting married as a college kid. No use in dredging that up, but I did have a lot of time in that short year of matrimony to fish and learn a lot about the area.
But once my studies ended, I left the region and never went back.
Here are some highlights from that time (out of order merely for effect):
1. Catching a 12-inch brown in the trophy section of the Ausable out of probably nothing but dumb luck;
2. Learning how to fish pockets and cast long in the Saranac;
3. Stumbling through logging roads and coming across the most beautiful stretch of the Bouquet River imaginable;
4. Learning to nymph in the early spring’s ferocious cold; and
5. Watching Fran Betters tie an Ausable Wulff.
Years later, I spent some time in the Catskills, then back up to Albany before leaving the Northeast for Florida then South Carolina. It was in South Carolina that I hit what may have been my midlife crisis, and wanting all things from my childhood and the glory days that followed, I bought an old hot-rod truck, started drumming again, plotted to move back to the Northeast and began fly fishing exclusively (except when I went to the Outer Banks, but I promise that this year, I’m bringing the 10-foot saltwater flyrod).
Now, back in the Northeast and fishing some pretty incredible waters in the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, area, and the Adirondacks closer within my reach, I find that, like a magnet, the peaks and the Ausable are tugging pretty hard. After all, this was the place this once-young idealist thought he’d end up. And maybe it’s not too late.
Or maybe it’s not meant to be, who knows? But it’s a load of fun to think about, and I’ll always have those memories and be building more as time and the good Lord allow.

###

As I leave Adirondack Sport Shop in the fog Fran leaves me in, I think about a life back near Lake Placid, in the shadow of Whiteface Mountain and the High Peaks. I think about mountain biking, hiking, skiing, snowshoeing and fishing. I think about my boys running around a lodge that I’d have built up with the help of family and friends. I think about the satisfaction of handing it down to those boys, who would grow up, much like Fran, solid and knowledgeable fishermen and all-around good men. I think about my wife, our families, working hard to build a dream, and that this dream wouldn’t be mine alone.
That’s all the stuff you think about when dreaming, isn’t it?
I wonder how many other folks who have been moved by Fran feel the same way. I wonder if they’re contemplating looking at his tax returns, what’s coming in, what’s going out. Talking to Realtors, banks, family. I wonder if it could work. Is it too much a gamble? Is the competition too great? Too emotional to be a good deal? How would I run a shop that a master fly tier and rod builder, a practical legend, built? Who would come to see me?
Maybe I can tie a fly that would make Field & Stream’s top 10 of all-time. Probably not. But maybe I can make a go of it.
God puts us all in places that we never know we’re going to be, and whether we’re OK with that idea or not, I tend to find comfort in that. Testimony: I’ve never found myself eating out of garbage cans or shivering under a bridge, for that matter.
So I’m doing three things this week (again, not in order, for effect):
1. Calling the Realtor to look at those returns;
2. Putting together a simple business plan; and
3. Writing a letter to Fran to properly thank him.

The Birthday Trout

There are two types of old men in this world: Those with the patient, gentle-breathing tranquility and perspective only years of experience and perseverance can bring, and those too impatient to look behind them when they’re backing out of their driveways, blaming the kid who put his now-flattened bike beneath the grump’s Buick in the first place.
And it’s becoming more and more apparent to me that the older I get, the more I am in the former camp, but still have the tendencies of the latter.
Fortunately, though, and for the record, I am neither, simply because I’m a mere 43. I seem to be, however, at sort of a crossroads deciding which direction to take.
I know this because when Jerry and I made plans a month ago to fish on West Canada Creek, I had to hold back from telling him that I wanted to be on the river bank before the sky even considered graduating from coal black to that steely silver, you know, were you have to squint really hard to see where the land ends and the water begins.
“OK,” was all he said when I called when I got into town and asked if he wanted to pick me up at 6. It’s not that he didn’t flinch. It’s that he paused a second to calculate from 6 a.m. just when he’d have to wake up.
See, Jerry lives about a half hour from my Mom’s house in Rome, New York. That’s where I was staying along with my two sleepy kids and an even sleepier wife.
(Generally, when my fishing alarm goes off, the dog wakes up, which sets into motion a cadre of dog noises: the dog-collar jingle when she shakes off, grunts, groans and scraping her nails on the hardwood as she stretches, and the flit-flit-flit-flit-flit-flit of her scratching an itch on her belly. All of this, of course, wakes the baby, who begins to coo, kick and flail and, without fail, cry. Which wakes up the toddler, who roles over, asks for Mama or Dada’s hands, and when he doesn’t get them, moans, then cries, then sits up. Which means Mama is up with two crying boys and an itchy dog, and Dada is scooting out the door trying not to make eye contact with his bride.)
So Jerry had to get up earlier than I did, and, as unwritten home-rule protocol suggests, he had to stop at the coffee shop for both of us and also fill the Thermos with coffee for the rest of the morning. I do the same when he fishes my home waters in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. It’s a good system. All told, my guess is that Jerry had to get up at least 45 minutes before I did.
But, what I wanted to say on the phone the day before as we made plans was, “How’s 5 o’clock sound? (Or 4:30?)
I’m freakish that way. And it’s not as though I don’t enjoy sleeping. I do. Hell, I’m tired right now. And with a baby and a toddler, well, sleep is often hard to come by as it is, never mind waking up in the middle of the night to get to the river before anyone else steps foot in it or to get that extra hour in or just to have something to talk about in the off event that you didn’t catch a fish that day. Something along the lines of, “Oh, but you should have seen that osprey nest up there on the far bank. The chicks just hatched and were chirping up a storm.”
So I was patient as I waited in the driveway, gear in hand, for Jerry. And we drove the 20 or so minutes up into Trenton Falls to a place just up river from where the Cincinnati Creek tributary intersects with West Canada Creek.
And even as we drove by the dam, the Cincinnati and a few choice parking areas, I breathed easy. I knew we’d be on the river shortly. Even during these longest days of summer, when the sun rises at 5:30 and already it’s at a 30-degree arc. Soon, I thought. Soon.
So when we pulled up to a little-used trailhead outside of the trophy water section, I thought, “There are bound to be fish here, too. After all, we’re only a mile or two downstream from the dam and a mile from the tributary. We grabbed our gear and made our way down the trail to the river. Greeting us was a wide expanse that was nearly glass smooth and too deep to wade across. Upriver, though, there were plenty of riffles and some boulders placed by God himself. Good feeding channels. Problem was we’d have to huff it nearly a quarter mile along the rocky banks.
More time ticking off the clock.
But there is a correlation between fishing the right spot and catching fish, so the effort would more likely give us a greater return on investment if we could avoid spooking the fish and getting below them.
I should mention that it was my 43rd birthday, and Jerry let me wade in a few yards above him. I picked a good cut, got in to the top of my hip waders and began casting a No. 16 pale morning dun that I guessed would hold me over till I could better study the river’s bugs and, hopefully, hatches.
There were a few PMDs floating by, but more light drakes than anything else, so I retied the same size in that pattern and just like that, I had an 8-inch brown trout in the net.
Some of the fish on West Canada are stocked, and they have tags affixed to them. You’re supposed to write down the number and call the game warden to let him know how Fish No. 423785 is doing, length, weight, spunkiness, etc. This one didn’t have tags. The New York State Department of Environmental Control stocks the creek pretty hefty, which brings throngs of fishermen nearer to the dam upstream. We’ll call the untagged fish the “real” fish and feel a little better if it isn’t in the 12-inch range.
West Canada Creek starts in the southern Adirondack Mountain foothills and weaves its way to Herkimer, New York, where it empties into the Mohawk River At one point, a dam in Trenton Falls creates the Hinckley Reservoir, where camps and homes line the picturesque water body. If memory serves me, there’s even a beach. Interestingly, folks seem to think the West Canada Creek begins or somehow has a connection to the country to the north. Not so. “Kanata” means “settlement” in Mohawk Indian speak.
Though all that thinking, though, I realized that an hour had passed, and the fish were probably going to slow as occasional shower bursts let go from the low clouds that brought with them a steady 10 mile an hour wind and a few short bursts that squelched any ideas of fishing like a gentleman, into the current.
So I got just below and to the side of a nice-sized boulder and made my cast. The current was pretty strong, and the rain was steady, so I figured the fish wouldn’t notice me even if it wasn’t a great presentation.
Turned out it was good enough. Funny thing, though, the line went tight once it all was a good distance behind me, and I was just thinking of pulling it out to cast again. It felt good to have a little more heft on the end of the 3X tippet and the No. 16 Cahill. I felt as if this was a fair fight. I’d never fished this river before, I couldn’t get in any deeper without tea-bagging or, worse, drowning (you always hear about the poor guy who drowned on his birthday, or his honeymoon, or some repeating holiday that makes the untimely death all that more ironic or, at the very least, more sexy for the newspaper headlines). I also didn’t know what was in that deep green water that was muted by the overcast sky and rain. Might just as well have closed my eyes.
He did surface a couple of times, enough for me to see his head, brown belly and tail, all in that order, and after a minute or so of getting him close enough to the net, he was tired out, all but flipping futile just to see who was handling him.
We only kept him out of the water a matter of seconds to snap a few pics. I thought he was a foot long, but Jerry said 14 inches, and he’s a better judge of distance because he’s an investigator and I’m a writer, so I’ll give him that.
I set the trout back in quietly, pushed the currents into his gills and eventually scooted him away from the bank and into the current where he swam away, albeit dazed.
No tag, either.
After a coffee break and a bit of time to admire the irises along the bank, we fished another hour, which was largely unproductive. Another 6-inch untagged brownie, and we called it a day.
I wonder what another hour or two in the river would have gotten us. Probably just more soaking wet.
Then again, you never know, do you?
Still, on the ride back, there’s the usual reliving of the morning, the details, which we compared to how far you got with your prom date in high school. If you’re lucky, you have them, and if you’re really living right, there are a few swigs of coffee left in the Thermos.
Thing is, there are never any regrets. Sure, you could do this all day long, and you make plans, as we did, for the next time. Maybe in a canoe. Maybe back down in Pennsylvania. Maybe a fishing weekend, camping out, fishing the morning and the evening hatches.
Maybe, hopefully, all of the above.
Life is finite; it isn’t there forever. And you can’t depress yourself counting how many potential fishing weekends there are left in your life (believe me, I’ve done this. Tally up your life expectancy foregoing any accidents, such as drowning in a trout stream, figure out how many possible fishing weekends or Saturdays there are in a normal year, subtracting the winter months, of course, and time spent with family, at weddings, with the crud or watching Penn State play, and add it all together).
But you know there’ll be a few more, and although an hour here and an hour there may add up to a few days and a few fish, the important thing is that you enjoy the company and the time. And coming to grips that time isn’t really a unit of measure after all, but that it’s ethereal, and it allows us only a place to connect, and go in and come out of green-gray rivers, and fish among untagged brown trout.
At that crossroads, I prefer the gentle calm of that silver morning. So I think I’m heading in the right direction.