I used to fly fish when taking pack trips back into the high country of the Sierra Nevada. I haven't backpacked since my early 20's, so haven't made any attempts at flexing my wrist or guiding a fly towards a pool in a mountain river in a long time. My fly fishing experience began when riding horses and leading pack mules for family excursions to high mountain lakes. Sometime I need to write down some of those stories from the 1970's, maybe in the style that Brooks Gist did in his 1950 book High Sierra Adventure that describes holidays in the back country.(1) When my folks packed up on the farm and moved to town, I acquired their copy. It sits on our book shelf with a few other family heirlooms.
The only remnants of those summer fishing days is a rod in the garage, a saddle in the guest room for our grandsons, and three old creels that my dad gave me when he sold all of his pack gear a hand full of years before he and Mom moved because he wasn't able to physically tolerate the high altitudes of the back country in his later 70's. The closest I have been to a fly rod lately has been watching a friend do some casting in Montana 12 years ago, reading George Black's book Casting a Spell, walking through an Orvis store in the Park Meadows mall in Littleton a week ago, and looking at a copy of Trout of the World in a Cold Water Creek store while Jan bought some new clothes - is this a sign?
Old fish creels |
Live trout tank |
Stuffed animals |
Perhaps with the exposure to the Colorado outdoors since moving here will have an impact on my part-time interests. Given the great number of recent chance encounters with fish and fly fishing, perhaps I will need to pick up a fly rod and reel sometime soon, and see whether I have a little bit of my muscle memory for casting still in me, and can pass that on to Josiah.
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(1) Brooks Gist's brother was one of my middle school teachers.
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