Reflection

Fall is a bittersweet time for me. I tried to use another word, bittersweet seems so overused when applied to autumn. I even went so far as to look it up and try and find a synonym that worked as well. I didn't, so bittersweet it is. The definition of bittersweet is a combination of happy and sad. Exactly the expression of how I feel about fall. There is such exquisite beauty in fall. But it is the beauty of death and dying. I crunch thru the fallen leaves and realize another summer is past, gone. You only get like eighty or ninety of those in your lifetime if your lucky. With the passing of each I feel a twinge of guilt. Did I wring every last drop of summer that our busy lives allow out of it? In midsummer I am Huck Finn along the river. Baking catfish over the fire, wading wet, summer is a grand adventure with no end in sight. One continuous thing. Fall instead is a collection of moments. Each trip a precious jewel with every trip different, every day changing. Trips in fall feel like that last piece of your favorite cake, you savor it, eating slowly knowing soon it will all be gone. But then I find an excuse to be out again the next day, like a bear sensing the coming of winter I gorge on the next moment and then the next. I can never get enough.
Even my approach to fishing itself changes. In spring and summer I take fishing trips, going to a section of river and fishing it in it's entirety, exploring each riffle, each eddy, each pool. Come fall that all changes. A days fishing becomes more like running a trapline. I might tramp thru half a mile of fallen leaves to fish one seam for an hour then drive twenty miles to stand in one spot and fish another spot for two hours. Hemmingway once said that some writers are born just to help another writer write just one sentence. I sometimes feel my whole years fishing has been just a prelude to catching just that one fish. A giant faustian bargain for that one or possibly two twenty inch smallmouth. And heaven forbid you lose a giant in October, a dukkha settles over you. What if that was the last chance, the one chance at THE fish your going to get this year?. After losing a grand fish I can become a professional melancholic. Some years I feel the need to stand up in front of the group and say, "hi I'm Steve and I'm a melancholic". Then other years the mood is different. You've caught The Fish early. Possibly several and the losing of a grand fish comes with laughter instead of heartbreak. Once or twice over the years the fish gods have smiled so much and so often that my appetite is satiated. It's fall and the fishing is good and I've proven to myself whatever it is I set out to prove when I begin the yearly quest for The One.  Twice now I've had years where I've landed a great fish and released it without measuring her. What does it matter if she was 19.5 or 20? Does it make the fish and the experience more rare or special? Just today a friend texted me describing the fight of a great fish. He described a jump then said "it landed like a log". What a great line. I never even asked how big it was, it didn't matter, it was obviously a grand fish. But those moments are few and very very far between for an obsessive like me. But no matter what my mood I do always try to give thanks. Not a ritualized contrived thanks but a simple and natural one, much like sitting beside a harvested deer for a moment to reflect on the hunt. I've been lucky to be blessed with more time to fish than anyone should ever have but I still try to fish with childish joy at just being able to be outside at such a glorious time. I remind myself that even in summers death, everywhere you look nature is planting the seeds of next years rebirth. You can see it in the antics of squirrels planting acorns, the ruttng of deer even the burrs stuck on your jeans at the end of a day. Life itself is a glorious circle. I chose to find my place it by watching the fog lift off a river at dawn, reveling in the riotous palette of autumn leaves, the sunlight reflecting like a thousand diamonds off each drop of water as a smallmouth leaps in evening sunlight. My obsession somehow grounds me, connects me back to what is true.
Right now, today, tomorrow, this week, is just about the best chance to catch The One you will have. But notice the pattern of morning frost on the leaves. How the crunch of leaves underfoot somehow makes the silence of the woods deeper. Notice the cormorants floating on the pool downstream, the steam as a deer breathes in the cold morning air across the riffle. Not only is the fishing as good as it will ever get but the whole experience of fishing is as good right now as it will ever get.

Some moments from the last couple weeks I cherish:

A popper that bounces off a boulder arcs a foot thru the air and is struck simultaneously as it hits the water. Surely that fish tracked it thru the air.

A little glance structure or current guiding wall that had such a steady stream of shad pouring over it that every few minutes one would flop out on the wall itself and you could capture them by hand. Which I did with two, hooking them and then lobbing them out and letting them sweep back down on a tight line. One caught a channel and one caught a hybrid. It was a perfect moment.

Arriving at a hole right after daylight to watch a flock of mallards wheel overhead as a dozen cormorants ran across the surface in a panic liftoff.

Another morning walking up to the river and having a hybrid chase bait almost right at my feet. I underhand out a grub and have the rod almost torn from my hand as it strikes four feet from the rod tip.

Seeing a shovelhead in gin clear water looking like a prehistoric sea monster.

Coasting along on the kayak as a beaver passed twenty feet away going the other way.