How it all comes to pass
Introduction is a formality I’ll have to entertain despite my best efforts to avoid it. I’m in my early 30s as of this writing, inching (hurtling?) ever closer to mid-30s and coasting through employment that utilizes my skills, a term I use loosely to make myself look good on paper, to a bare minimum. My parents, friends and perhaps most importantly my wife probably have a hard time dealing with my lack of focus on anything except throwing or tying flies. This time of year is toughest for me because my brain generally wanders off to western NY preoccupied with fishing for lake-runs. I grew up in Rochester and formed my approach through a modest evolution from crude means of catching fish to the step-cast-swing or cast-mend-drift methods that kill my inner troll from hours at a time.
Spending time skateboarding in college was, in hindsight, really just a sad distraction from the excellent fishing in which I could have constantly indulged in the Syracuse area. Trout streams (no fewer than four excellent options within an hour of school) and the Salmon River went glaringly underutilized by yours truly for most of four years. Then grad school in Baltimore called and it was years before I began a love affair with the Gunpowder tailwater. It was during the last few years there that the car was frequently pointed toward small streams in the Catoctins and even western MD and the next phase of my addiction - small stream brookie fishin - took root.
Richmond isn’t so bad. Two hours to the beach, two hours to the Shenandoah NP streams, and the James is ten minutes away. March and April bring the shad run, while June and July are good for a few days chasing big flathead catfish that migrate up from the tidal section of the River to spawn. But the pull of the dark side is strong, and July is when pull begins. Terrestrial season kicks off on the limestone meadowy streams in the Shenandoah Valley. The toads come out to play and that does not bode well for my continued wage earning. It really heats up in August and September, but the big trout get finnicky somethin terrible by then, and around the beginning of October the hoppers are done jumping into the cricks.
It’s then that the long, terrible waiting game begins. Sure, the spring crick trout are thinking about doin’ it (the browns are, anyway) and they’ll hammer streamers. And there’s the promise of heading up to western NY at some point over the coming months, but the brookies are jonesin to make babies. So I avoid my favorite place - the central east slope hollows of the Shenandoah NP - in favor of giving the horny char a break. Plus the water’s probably low and they’ve struggled through another miniature drought.
Even though it’s pouring outside right now, things are looking up as the squaretails will be bulkin up for winter. They’re long post-spawn and eager to bend the bamboo into pretzels. And for my part I’m happy to oblige ‘em.
